Serving the Lord, the Community and our Sisters

“Nevertheless, they shall be servants to him, that they may know my service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.” -2 Chronicles 12:8

These past few months I have been trying to dive deeper into my position on the board: service. We all have our different roles on the board, but I am lucky enough to have a role that sits clearly in our creed. I have tried to work on defining this role, understanding what it means for our sisterhood and how I can better incorporate it nationally with our sisters, but also with each of us board members. To me, service for our sisterhood has three parts: serving the Lord, serving the community and serving our sisters.

Serving the Lord

The Lord longs for us, His servants, to be willing to do anything, to seek His plan for us. Each with a unique path given by the Lord himself, our strengths are bestowed upon us in order to do His work. The only request in return is our service to Him. This is not meant as a chore, but as a joyous task. He wants us to come to Him excited and happy to provide service to Him. Serve the Lord with gladness: come into his presence with singing (Psalms 100:2). This gladness is discussed in Acts 17:25, God is not “served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”. We do not hold the burden of meeting his needs, as He has no needs. Therefore, we take pleasure in a service where He meets our needs. As we serve, we receive grace from the Lord.

We are to faithfully, respectfully and honorably serve God. To faithfully serve, you must not be distracted, but commit to Him and only Him. To respectfully serve, you must not complain nor question His decisions. To honorably serve, you must take this as a command, not just as a task. We are to enjoy serving our Lord, putting this before all else.
We forget that the Lord has placed us in this exact position to serve Him, as a teacher who shows the Lord’s forgiveness, as a parent who plants the seed continually or as a neighbor who continually prays with the elderly woman next door. We must remember that each role He provides is just as important as the next and that He has no limitations. Feeling inadequate as one of your students struggles to pick up on a concept? God can provide knowledge and patience. Feeling exhausted and helpless after a tough day trying to show your child the Christian way? God can provide strength. Feeling unsure of how to help your neighbor with her declining health? God can provide healing and clarity of the situation. He will provide, but it may not always be how we want it to be. We cannot stray from serving Him just because we feel unsure of His plan, angry for the path He is leading us down or stubbornly hoping our way is best. We must trust that He will provide, empower and call us to do His work.

Serving the Community

One of the ways we are to serve the Lord is to serve one another. “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.” (Galatians 5:13). We are not saved by serving, but instead we are saved to serve. Before you can serve, you must be set free by Jesus, as Paul explains: “You were called to be free.” Without feeling God’s grace, you serve others for the wrong reasons, from seeking approval to try to impress others and God. This type of service is not motivated with the Lord in mind, but instead will leave you feeling mediocre and unworthy. Paul touches on a very important part of the foundation to building community, “Serve one another in love.”. The Lord wants to see you serving readily and eagerly out of love for Jesus. He is more interested in why you serve rather than how well you serve others. You are closest to Jesus when you are serving others. After washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus said, “I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.” (John 13:14–15)

Serving our Sisters

Chapters work so faithfully to serve their campus’ and surrounding communities, but their duty to serve their own sisters sometimes falls through the cracks. Our roles on the board are very business-oriented and we sometimes fail to recognize the service the Lord intends for us to have towards our sisters. As trustees of the national board, we hold ourselves accountable to: further this organization, help it grow and instill the ideals of our sisterhood onto sisters leading by example. Serving our sisters is serving our community, which in turn serves our Lord. As we continue to fulfill our duties as board members, may we remember to serve each other and our other sisters in more ways than philanthropic efforts and our time volunteering. Let us faithfully, respectfully and honorably serve our Lord by serving our sisters.
One of our ideals as a Christian sisterhood is service. This expands further than a service committee with fundraisers and trying to raise awareness for our philanthropy. Those aspects of our service tie into serving our community. We need to remember to serve each other. What does this look like within our sisterhood? It may be a small gesture, like giving a small gift just because or reaching out to see how a sister is doing that you haven’t recently chatted with. This may look like reaching out to your home chapter with a ‘Thank you for being my sisters’ card or ‘Hi, I’m from your chapter and I want to tell you how great y’all are doing’ card. These are the little things that we do for each other that may go unnoticed by many, but to those involved can mean so much. Serving our sisters can mean a variety of things, but sometimes it is just making sure we hold close to our heart that we are sisters and give them the love, understanding and respect that we deserve. Our hearts first and foremost need to be service lead - for the Lord, our community and truly our sisters standing by our side.

Written By: Ariane Sanders