The Joy of Serving Christ

I have always reiterated that DCF is not my ministry, your ministry or anyone else's because it belongs to God. When I started praying for the revival and establishment of several dorm fellowships, God impressed on my heart the powerful words of 2 Corinthians 4. In this chapter, we read some of the most encouraging verses for ministers and evangelists through the ages.

I am particularly moved by the first verse that says, "Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart." Whenever I read this, I am reminded of my status as a steward of the dorms ministry and never its owner. By the mercy of God, we continue to serve our fellow dormers. By the mercy of God, we continue to meet and worship. By the mercy of God, we continue to share His Gospel to all who are willing to listen.

But I have to confess that everytime a new chapter dawns on the ministry, I become anxious. Who will take over the leadership? Who will be the next core leaders in the dorms? How will we encourage students to step up and serve?

These are but a few questions that plague me these past days. However, I remind myself that as long as God finds this ministry useful for His greater glory, there is no reason to doubt His faithfulness. I have not yet seen a ministry fold up and die a natural death. There are days, however, when I ponder upon the possibility of God taking away the dorms ministry. But I fight these thoughts off not by sulking on one corner of my room but by encouraging all the able DCFers to continue shining brightly in the dorms.

I praise God because His response to this desire for more ministry opportunity is evangelism. In my six years and counting with DCF, I witnessed for the first time all the dorm fellowships having one heart towards sharing Jesus to the dormers. There are several students who are not used to doing room-to-room and stranger evangelism, but I am greatly encouraged by the stories of those who overcame their fears by God's grace.

At hindsight, I believe that God takes us away from our comfort zones to remind us to depend on Him. When this batch of DCFers saw the challenge in numbers and man-power, their response was to go and share Christ. The motivation was not to increase in number and influence, but to grab the opportunity for God to display His power and glory by using few, willing men and women to take on great feats in their dorms.

Yes, deep inside I do pray for more harvest. But the challenges we're facing in DCF taught me to find joy in the process of evangelism as well as in its fruits or outcome. I once told the leaders that there is a possibility that they will not see the fruits of their labor. God may have called them to sow what the future generation of DCFers will harvest. It's a tough news to break. To this, God answers with the closing verse of 2 Corinthians 4, "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

Having a vibrant and flourishing ministry here on earth is a wonderful blessing, but what is this compared to the awaiting glory of eternity? As long as we are here, we offer ourselves to God's service in the dorms. If God gives the increase, we praise Him. If He chooses otherwise, we praise Him still. Afterall, the ultimate joy of ministry is in gaining the approval of Christ and hearing Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"


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