I occasionally ask my 7 year old son to help me do the dishes. Standing on the stool, sleeves rolled up he tries his very best to scrub each plate. Water splashes on his clothes and down to the floor. When we are finally done he’s practically had a bath himself. After sending him off to bed I mop the suds up off the floor and spot check the plates for missed spaghetti sauce. Could I do the dishes better on my own? Would it take less time? Be less mess? Yes, in fact it would be a lot easier if I did it on my own. That’s not the point. You see I don’t need a 7 year old boy to do my dishes. I can do them fine by myself. Much better that he can even begin to. There are three reasons I have this little guy doing such a big job. By him helping with the dishes he learns obedience to his mother, we have a time of fellowship in which we get to talk and share with each other, and he is learning skills for the future.

These are same reasons God asks us to work for him. Not because he needs help but because he is a God of relationship, he has created us for fellowship with him. We grow closer to Him through obedience.

Recently I have been hearing repeated myths considering God’s strength and our role and relationship towards him. The phrase “God has no hands but yours” has been thrown around a lot lately. I’ve heard many variations on this, stating that He has no voice, no feet, no eyes, and even no heart but ours. “He has no hands to heal but yours, no feet to reach the people, without you God cannot change this world!” Uhh. . . no I don’t think so! I understand people are trying to “rally the troops” and encourage the team to “get out there and win win Win”. Yes, we the church are the body of Christ and he has commanded us to go and make disciples of all the nations. I do not dispute these core beliefs. However a good cause and good intentions are no excuse for the misrepresentation of God.

God is not some helpless genie waiting for us to let him out of the bottle. He is God. It is only through Christ that we have been even allowed to serve God, and through the Spirit that we are given the power to. We are not here to meet his needs. He doesn’t have any. He is God! Besides didn’t he create the Universe just fine without our help?

God chooses in his divine wisdom to work in many ways. One of those ways is through us but he is not tied down or restrained by man in anyway.

Acts 17:25
And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.

Should we not serve God? Why yes, yes we should. It is the attitude and purpose of this servitude that I am discussing here. We are admonished through out the Bible to serve the Lord. He does not ask for us to serve him because he needs our help in anyway, No our wise King has other reasons for his requests. Like my asking my son to help me clean the kitchen, God asks us to do things not because he cannot do them himself but because he wants to draw us closer to him in obedience, fellowship and wisdom.