Ahh, wisdom. I hear it comes to those who seek it and ask for it. I believe last night God gave me a bit of married-woman wisdom. It was hilarious, and beautiful, and I don’t want to forget it.

Greg (my husband) has been working long hours for the last 6-8 weeks. He’s working to help open a restaurant. It’s temporary, and we both agreed it was a good decision, and that it would take sacrifice for both of us. Because of this, he’s often tired when he comes home at night. Of course, the kids don’t adjust their schedules based on ours, so we still face the typical diapers, supper, & bedtime routines every night.

Last night, after changing our youngest, we put him down with his sister. Closing the door, I had a somewhat regular feeling surge through my body: relief. “We’re DONE! They’re asleep!” In my excitement, I pulled Greg into our bedroom and began kissing him. Greg had a confusing response. He kissed me back, but let’s just say he was choosing to stay at the beginning of the ride instead of proceeding forward. In my mind, I thought this was a beautiful opportunity for us to enjoy time together, and I didn’t understand what could be wrong. I pulled back and looked at him questioningly. He smiled and said, “Sometimes it’s hard to be romantic when you’re holding a dirty diaper.”

I collapsed laughing as he went to the diaper pail and disposed of the pee-soaked diaper he was holding in his right hand. Lesson learned, Melissa! When initiating romantic time with your husband, first check BOTH his hands to ensure dirty diapers are where they belong!

I love my church. I’ve learned so much from our pastors, the deacons & leaders, and the people who call it home. Let me first credit God for the teaching, for I believe the Holy Spirit chose at each moment to open my eyes to the truths in the Bible. I believe He put the connections together for me, just as He opened the eyes of two of his followers to the truths in Scripture concerning himself (Luke 24:13-27). I also believe we will never reach the end of understanding God and His story, as He is eternal & unsearchable (Isaiah 40:28, Ephesians 3:8).

My eyes are being opened to understand service in a new way. My old understanding was this: Jesus came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28). Since he served us, we also should serve. I believed service to Jesus is what we do for him. I believed it’s however you choose to serve your local church (kid’s ministry, teaching, welcome team, ushers, community group leadership, counseling, women’s ministry, etc.). It’s how we choose to use our time. It’s loving others around us.

What I’m coming to understand is these various acts of service, while part of how we as God’s children serve him, are not the primary act of service. I hope & pray I don’t get lost in semantics here. Let me propose that the primary way we serve Christ is loving him, treasuring him above all things, desiring him and his glory above all else. The primary way we serve Christ is with our hearts, not with our actions. Our heart precedes our actions. I do not want to separate heart & actions, because James does state that “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17). However, I want to remember that it’s possible to do good-looking acts of service with impure motives. For example: I could serve at church every week in order to please people, because I’m too afraid of telling someone no. I could volunteer at a needy ministry in town because I feel guilty about not giving more of myself to others. I could counsel others because of how good it makes me feel to have the “right answer”. It’s possible to do these good-looking acts of service, presumably for Jesus but in reality for myself or to please others.

Our heart precedes our actions. We do what we love. If we love ourselves, we’ll do whatever we can for ourselves. If we love Jesus, our actions will flow from that love, and all we do will be motivated by that love. When I say “love Jesus”, I mean love & desire him above all else. Above your comfort, your marital status, pleasures, self, ultimately above your own life. He is what you want more than anything. He is the one you run to for comfort. He is the one you rejoice with in celebration. He is the one you can’t do without.

Let me go to a higher authority than myself, for I know I am flawed and in need of my Savior. What does the Bible say about this?

• Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (John 6:28-29, ESV)
• John 15. The whole chapter, but in particular, verse 4: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”

Oh, I could write for hours about those verses! Let’s summarize what they’re saying:

1. The work of God, according to Jesus, is believing in Jesus.
2. We have no power to produce fruit, or good works, on our own. We must abide in Jesus, the vine, who produces the good work through us, the branches. A good friend, James Noriega, the pastor who married us, put it like this. We’re a garden hose. We have no ability to produce the water. We channel it and spray it out, but the water does not come from us. So it is with fruit, with kingdom work.

So the work is fighting to believe Jesus. We forget often, so we must fight to believe. We must be reminded over and over about the gospel of Jesus Christ. We never outgrow it. We never outgrow our need for the gospel. We are saved by Jesus Christ, and daily we need reminders of Jesus’ work on our behalf. We fight to remember that we are righteous because Jesus gave us his righteousness and took our filth. We fight to remember that in our rebellion and our failure to give God the glory due him, he saved us. We fight to remember Jesus’ words on the cross: “It is finished.”, meaning the sacrifices, work, and striving to be in right relationship with God is over. We fight to get low, to humble ourselves, and to remember all God requires of us to be saved is to fall and say, “I need a savior, and you, Jesus, are it.” We fight to remember how forgiven we are when we struggle to forgive others. We fight to remember how loved we are when we struggle to love the unlovable. We fight to remember how blessed we are when we struggle through pain, unwanted circumstances, broken relationships, and the effects of living in a sinful world. We fight to remember what’s to come, and that our hope is not in this life but in the life to come.

We fight to remember Jesus’ words, and God’s story, and his redemption, and the love & grace & sovereignty of our God. We fight because as we remember Jesus, we realign to his work and his desires and his mission and his heart. As we fight, we draw close to Jesus, and we become more and more like him. Have you noticed the more we spend time with someone, the more like them we become?

Jesus is faithful. His Holy Spirit lives in us. He will accomplish his work. Period. So fight to believe in Jesus, and in doing so, you are doing the work of God.