God made each of us uniquely and everyone has unique ways to serve God. For some, it’s as simple as sharing videos on a tablet. For others, it’s using their talents for missional projects.
Juma was a secondary school student in Tanzania who was raised to follow a different religion but came to accept Jesus as savior in 2020. For two years, he kept his new faith in Christ a secret. Out of fear and awkwardness, he didn’t want anyone to know that he was a Christian.
But then he attended an after-school club session, where a teacher, Neema, showed a short evangelistic film from the Walking With Jesus series. In a film, a tribal chief tells his family about the importance of talking about Jesus at every opportunity. Juma felt convicted to share his faith.
After the film ended, Juma asked Neema to teach him how to share the Gospel. She gave him training in how to do digital ministry using short films, apps, and other tools. Armed with a tablet and a passion to share the Good News, that week Juma started showing evangelism films to his classmates between classes and at football practice. Many of his fellow students showed interest in hearing more about Jesus and some of them came to accept Christ.
Juma started leading his own discipleship group and a few of the people he’s discipling made their own disciples. It’s estimated that 97 students have come to know Christ due to Juma and the others in his discipleship group.
Serving God through design
Jessica was a college student in California who was pursuing a career in education but loved creating designs as a hobby. Over the years, she had gone on many short-term mission trips with her church, but when lockdowns from the 2020 pandemic hit, she was unable to travel.
When she heard about the Indigitous Serve Cohort, she was intrigued. The cohort offered an opportunity to use her design skills for the Lord. Students in the cohort collaborated on a project to create a booklet that encourages prayer for frontier people groups. “This project changed the way I view missions as a whole,” Jessica says.
During their time together, the students conducted research on the different frontier people groups, wrote out stories to help people connect with the groups, created cartoons to represent them, and then used that to design the booklet. “God chose to take a hobby of mine that started up again during quarantine and use it for this mission project,” Jessica says.
Mentoring through email
Since she was a child, Priscilla had always been interested in mission work. She was active in her local church and volunteered with Gideons International. But it was when she started volunteering as an online mentor that she really saw God working through her.
“Becoming a mentor has just taken it to the next level, where you are a little bit more into people’s lives and focusing on their needs and helping them to grow,” Priscilla says. “That’s very satisfying.”
Priscilla has volunteered with The Mentor Ministry for 18 years and has been able to journey with countless hurting people during that time. One such person was a 14-year-old mother who was addicted to drugs and worked as a prostitute. The girl needed help and Priscilla was there for her to answer her questions, listen to her struggles, and pray with her. Priscilla was the first person to share the Gospel with the girl. They talked about the Bible, God, and faith often, but the girl wasn’t ready to accept Jesus. At least, not yet.
Then one day, the girl became desperate. In the middle of an alleyway, she prayed to receive Christ and asked that God lead her to a better life. It took years of talking with Priscilla, but the girl has left the life of prostitution behind and she now wants to become an online mentor herself.
We all have unique ways to serve God
God created each of us uniquely and because of that, we all have unique ways to serve God. For Juma, it’s sharing short evangelism films on his tablet. For Jessica, it’s using her design skills to encourage prayer for frontier people groups. For Priscilla, it’s being a good listener and being there for people as an online mentor.
If being involved with your church feels awkward or unfulfilling, you might be doing the wrong thing. If you think there’s no way you can be a missionary, you need to rethink what it means to engage in missions.
But how can you find your own unique way of serving God? No one can answer that question for you. It’s something you need to figure out on your own, but here are some ideas for reflection:
- Pray for God to reveal to you how He would like you to serve Him. Don’t be surprised if He answers.
- Think about what you enjoy doing. What are the activities that bring you joy? What are ways that you can use them for the mission?
- What is your preferred way to socialize? Serving God always involves other people in one way or another, so how do you prefer interacting with people?
- What are your spiritual gifts? If you’re not sure, take this assessment.
God has called all Christians to serve Him, but not all of us will do so in the same way. We are all part of “one body” of Christ, but in that body are “many parts” (1 Corinthians 12:12). One of the most important things we can do as Christians is find out what role we can play in the body and give ourselves to Christ in that role.
We all have unique ways to serve God
Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. (Habakkuk 2:2)
- Pray about your unique way to serve God.
- Ask God for opportunities to serve in that way.