10 Ways Your Family Can Serve Others

The phone rings. The teacher emails. The dog needs food, and come to think of it, so do your kids. The calendar fills. The laundry piles, and that verse haunts you.

As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24:15b

I get what the verse means. It’s the living out the meaning that’s hard.

How does your household serve God in daily, practical, and yet, meaningful ways?

Not so long ago, my family stood paralyzed by the greatness of our inadequacies and the needs of the world.

Then, God started whispering, you know those soft whispers you hear in your head and feel in your veins. He told us that serving Him meant serving others. He told us to quit defining what service looked like and just start serving.

So, we did, and guess what? You can too. Need some ideas? I thought you might. Check out this list (and links because who has time to look for links?) of 10 practical ways your family can serve the Lord today.

• Write letters of encouragement to soldiers. Soldiers’ Angels assists you in flooding our country’s heroes with mail and thanks.

• Read about teens making a difference at Generation On.

• Color pictures for the lonely. Color a Smile encourages even the littlest servers to send some crayon, colored love through the mail.

• Find the courage to look at hard topics. What’s the fastest growing division of the porn industry? Child porn. Makes you sick, right? Good. Go see what the Sold Project is doing about it.

• Lend a microloan. Kiva changes lives by lending small loans (as low as $25.00) to an entrepreneur across the world. These entrepreneurs then use your money to buy livestock, start a store, purchase a bike, or provide them the opportunity to earn money. Then, through Kiva, these same entrepreneurs pay you back. 

• Invest in kids that are not your own. Maybe it’s the girl at Breanna’s House or maybe it’s the kid from the single-parent family home down the street.

• Love even when it’s not convenient and especially when it’s hard.

• Watch a video, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Need direction? Try this one, The Girl Effect.

• Read words penned by a world changer. Kisses from Katie will make your heart hurt and swell at the same time. 

• Pray always.

A totally unrelated to the post kind of question for you: Is it annoying when authors close the comments to a blog post? I like to close comments when I have a guest post, loads of links, or a video. Then a few days ago, I ran into a few blogs with closed comments, and I was a tad annoyed. Your thoughts?