“It is God himself who has made us what we are and given us new lives from Christ Jesus; and long ages ago he planned that we should spend these lives in helping others."
Ephesians 2:10
God calls you to a service far beyond anything you could ever imagine. You were put on Earth to make a contribution.
God designed you to make a difference with your life. You weren’t created just to consume resources—to eat, breathe, and take up space. You were created to add to life on Earth, not just to take from it. God wants you to give something back—to help other people.
The Bible says, “It is God himself who has made us what we are and given us new lives from Christ Jesus; and long ages ago he planned that we should spend these lives in helping others” (Ephesians 2:10).
Whenever you serve others in any way, you are actually serving God. As Colossians 3:23-24 says, “Do your work willingly, as though you were serving the Lord himself, and not just your earthly master. In fact, the Lord Christ is the one you are really serving, and you know he will reward you”.
In one of his parables, Jesus said, “The king will answer, ‘Whenever you did it for any of my people, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you did it for me’” (Matthew 25:40).
And the Paul shared the same message: “Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people” (Ephesians 6:7).
God said it this way to the prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament: “Before I made you in your mother’s womb, I chose you. Before you were born, I set you apart for a special work” (Jeremiah 1:5).
When most people think of this “special work,” they think of pastors, priests, and professional clergy. But God says that he expects every member of his family to minister. In the Bible, the words “servant” and “minister” are synonyms; “service” and “ministry” are synonyms too. If you are a Christian, you are a minister. And when you’re serving, you’re ministering.
You don’t have to earn God’s love or work your way into heaven.
The Bible says, “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Globalization and the attendant concerns about poverty and inequality have become a focus of discussion in a way that few other topics, except for international terrorism or global warming, have. Most people have a strong opinion on globalization, and all of them express an interest in the well-being of the world's poor. The financial press and influential international officials confidently assert that global free markets expand the horizons for the poor, whereas activist-protesters hold the opposite belief with equal intensity. Yet the strength of people's conviction is often in inverse proportion to the amount of robust factual evidence they have.As is common in contentious public debates, different people mean different things by the same word. Some interpret "globalization" to mean the global reach of communications technology and capital movements, some think of the outsourcing by domestic companies in rich countries, and others see globalization as a byword for...
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