Obligation

People have always told me how God's work should never be an obligation or even a burden.

They're right. 

We should serve God with joy in our hearts and love for what we do for his kingdom. But I can honestly say I only know about a handful of people who serves with joy. There are times where I feel burdened by the things I've done or am doing right now. How did something so joyful become a joysucking job? 

Most people point at the person and call them out for their lack of passion. Maybe its true and that person has yet to figure out how great of a job God has placed in our hands; how important of a job and amazing it is that we're even allowed to contribute a little bit of ourselves to serve his kingdom. Maybe the person still needs to understand that. But maybe, the leaders are also setting up this "you're obligated" environment for those who serve under them. 

I've seen it so often how leaders would tell their members to serve with joy and don't do it for the wrong reasons. But when some members decide that they will not take part in certain things, guilt tripping automatically comes into play. Sometimes people's walks are even questioned (sounds extreme, I know, but its happened). No matter what these members have done before or sacrificed for God, this one time "no" becomes something used to question their walks. How would that make your members serve with joy? Leaders probably justify it as "I'm encouraging them to act with God in mind" but I see members act to shut their leaders up much more often. 

I understand how difficult it is to want something to be done and people just don't want to do it. But I think there's a clear difference between encouraging and flat out manipulating. Priority, I believe is something that most people gotta figure out for themselves and we can give them a nice gentle push towards the right direction from time to time but it should never be forced. 

To those serving the Lord out there, I hope we will all remember that God deserves our time and efforts. Nothing is greater than he and doing his work should be up there on our priorities list. But that should also happen with a genuine heart. Most of us know what we need to do or what we "should" be doing but when we do these things without a sincere heart, our intentions for doing them is literally because its a "christian thing to do". 

"It is not what you do as a Christian that determines who you are; it is who you are that determines what you do." -Victory Over Darkness by Neil Anderson