I had the privilege of going on a missions trip during my spring break with Rutgers Chi Alpha. We went to New York and partnered with Street Life Ministries to serve the homeless and lost people of Queens and Manhattan. If I could summarize what God did on this trip, I'd have to say that he definitely spoke and he definitely moved in the entire team's lives. Every morning we had individual quite times followed by worship, and a message after breakfast and even our car rides were filled with prayer and worship. We invited God into everything we did, and as a result, his presence was felt constantly.
One of the biggest lessons I learned on the trip was that we should look at everything we do as a way to worship God. This way we can do things that we don't necessarily like to do with joy because we do it as unto the Lord. But in order to do this, we have to allow God into every part of our lives. We have to allow him to take away the bad habits that we hold onto so tightly. A friend once told me that when we hold onto our own selfish desires so tightly our hands cannot be open to receive God's blessings.
"My mouth is filled with your praise, declaring your splendor all day long." — Psalm 71:8
According to this verse, we should always be praising God. But that doesn't mean that we need to be singing worship songs constantly. We can worship God and show him how much we love Him by doing our mundane tasks with joy. While I was on this trip everything that we did was service oriented. Whether we were serving each other or strangers we met on the street we were doing it as unto the Lord. Meaning that when I cleaned up after breakfast, I behaved as though I had just served Jesus breakfast and I was cleaning up His dishes. Jesus paid the ultimate price so that we could be forgiven of our sins and be able to enter heaven.
Cleaning up a bunch of dirty dishes is a very small way that we can show God our appreciation for all that he has done for us. Doing any task, whether we enjoy it or not, can be done in such a way that we bring glory to God. But don't mistake this for a way to earn your salvation because that is something that we can not do. Good works don't grant us salvation, only accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior can. However, we can worship Him dedicating our lives to bringing Him the glory.
