Living out your faith through service

Opening Question:

What do you think a plunger, phone, dish towel and paint brush have in common?

These are all symbols of ways you can put others first. A plunger to clean toilets, a phone to listen to someone else, a dish towel to clean and a paint brush to fix something. By doing these things, you will be helping others by doing them yourself rather than have people do them for you.

Last time we looked at sacrificing our entitlement and give to others and help them. Today we are going to look at what else you can do for others. But, before we do that, I want to look at yet another reason as to why we should help and serve others.

Scripture

Read James 2:14-18
1. Is just believing in God good enough?
2. What else do we need?
3. Why do you think it says that we need to have actions to go along with our faith?

Say, for example, you believed we shouldn’t kill animals. However, you show up after Christmas break with a brand new fur coat while eating a steak. Do you think people would respect your beliefs? Of course not because you obviously didn’t believe in the no animal killing stance enough to prevent yourself from getting a fur coat or eating the steak. Your beliefs and actions don’t line up.

We are challenged, here, to take action. It isn’t enough just to believe, we have to do something about our belief. In fact, it is being implied here that true faith has to have action to go with it.

So, what kind of action do we need to do?

Read Acts 6:1-4
1. What was the crisis?
2. How did they choose to handle it?
3. What was the criteria for these waiters?
4. What does this communicate about the importance of these waiters?

What kind of action do we need to do? Anything in which we are serving and helping others.

They had to meet certain qualifications which means not any “bum” off the street could do it. You had to fit a certain criteria because it was AN IMPORTANT JOB.

It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you are serving someone else. In fact, some people aren’t gifted to do every kind of service. I can’t help with plumbing or car repairs. But, I can help cleaning toilets, doing the dishes or painting.

Every job is important.

Application

So, we have 2 truths today:
· Faith without actions is useless
· There is no service job unimportant

Now, what are you going to do with these truths? What can we do? (Let students answer)
Your thoughts were all great.

I want to encourage you, that no matter where you are in your relationship with God, you can start looking for ways to serve and live out your faith that way.

You can:
· Serve your parents by doing the dishes, being nice to your siblings, helping them with things around the house
· Serve your brothers/sisters by being nice to them, helping them with their homework or chores
· Serve your friends by going out of your way to do something nice for them, by listening to them
There are plenty of things for you to do. You just have to seek them out and do it. Remember, your faith without some action is useless and there is no unimportant job.

The question now remains, what will you do? How will you serve and what will you do to help others this week? Remember what we talked about last week. Christ made a ton of sacrifices for us. We should do likewise.

Take a minute and write down 1 thing you will do for your family or your friends this week. Then, go out and do it.

Pray