A Heart That Serves: A New Beginning

Christians are called to serve. We serve God through serving others.  But serving Him shouldn’t become a burden to us. It should be our passion.

As we humble ourselves and confess our sins to God, He is always ready to forgive us and give us a new beginning. I believe God looks at our heart when we serve, not on our accomplishments.

Here is a beautiful story of how God can give us a new beginning to serve Him even though we have failed.

I am Jude Agbayani, a follower of Christ, a wife, a mom to two kids, and a servant of the Lord. I am a writer/blogger at Inspirited Mom and a small business owner. What I do now is not in any way related to my profession. I am a dentist by profession but am no longer practicing. This transition is another story altogether.

Here is just part of my story on how the Lord disciplined me as a servant.

Many years after I became a Christian, the Lord prompted to share the gospel to a friend whom I have also invited to join the ladies bible study group. After that sharing, I was led by the Holy Spirit to start a bible study with her. She agreed and soon a ladies group was formed. More women came and joined the group. After a few years, my husband and I started our own couple’s dgroup.

Even if I was a Christian, there were still parts of me that were “unchristian”, so to speak.  I was labeled as sassy or “mataray” and people were fearful of me. Somehow that behavior hurt the people in the discipleship group. They have been offended and that has pushed some of them away. This happened in 2017.

I was so hurt when they left. I felt judged and hopeless. I was also angry with God and had the audacity to tell him, “If this is what I get for serving you, then I don’t want to serve anymore.”

It was one of the darkest times in my life. I disconnected from social media, refrained from volunteering in church activities, and suspended our weekly dgroup meetings. If it were up to me, I want to move to a different church or move to another country immediately. The thought of ending my life was real because I felt so ashamed and disgusted with myself. I saw myself as a failure.

A Revelation From God

When the 2018 Prayer and Fasting came, I had no intentions of praying for anything. All I wanted was to hear from the Lord because I was so broken. The Sunday before the start of the Prayer and Fasting, Bro Babes Simpao was assigned to preach. He kept repeating the verse in Haggai, which says, “Consider your ways” and it stirred my heart.

The following day, instead of going through devotions in the fasting booklet, I opted to reflect on the book of Haggai. The first verses hit me. I cried incessantly because I received a thorough yet gentle rebuke from the Lord.

He made me realize that I have been too busy serving Him. My act of service became a sense of accomplishment.

I put too much expectation on myself as a leader and on what people will say about me and my group.

I neglected the Lord many times.

I became a Martha instead of a Mary.

I became too proud and complacent thinking He wouldn’t mind if I skipped reading my bible or praying.

I put God on the sidelines while I took control of everything.

As part of my devotions, I read that even good deeds done for God can be tainted by sinful attitudes. The only remedy is God’s cleansing. I needed to be cleansed once again by the Lord, and He did.

A New Beginning

I confessed my sins to the Lord and I was comforted with the words he uttered to Zerubbabel in Haggai 2:18-19, that he will bless him and that he has chosen him. After all the shame I caused His name, the Lord still blesses me with a new beginning. He has given me a signet ring to start over and restore what was lost.

Soon, I found the courage to go and apologize to the people I have hurt. The Lord also reminded me to go through the Glorious Hope Recovery Program to complete my restoration and recovery.

The GH program has helped me unearth my past experiences as a child and how these experiences shaped who I am today. Now I know the reason for my sassiness and it was because of unmet desires from childhood.

Though I have completed my GH journey last year, my healing process continues. The Lord Jesus is continuously removing that unchristian part of me, among other things.

In Jeremiah 29:13 it says, You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart. The Lord needed to break so that I would seek him with all my heart. He then turned my brokenness into something more praiseworthy.

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I know every one of us has a story to share.

A story on how God taught you…
… to forgive,
… to be still amidst the storms of life,
… to be faithful,
… to be a loving and respectful spouse,
…to be a mom or a dad with unconditional and sacrificial love,
… and so much more.