06. Serving When You Need to Be Served with Jessica Mathisen
Today we’re chatting with Jessica Mathisen about serving in the seasons in which you feel like you need to be served. We pray this conversation encourages you not to become weary in doing good, knowing that at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. If you don’t know Jessica, she lives outside of Atlanta with her husband and three kids. As a writer, Bible teacher, podcaster, and coach, her passion is to communicate God's love to others through words and relationships. She has written several books, her latest of which is An Overwhelming Hope: How the Spirit Brings Peace to Our Storms. We hope Jessica’s story of God’s faithfulness to her through seasons of transition, change, and weakness reminds you of his faithfulness to you too.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Could you share an overview of what the Lord has done in your life and what he has you doing now?
Have you ever felt exhausted or weary in your service? If so, how has that shown itself in your life?
How did the gospel empower your service when you felt like you had nothing left to give?
Have you felt like you are an empty cup in and through your service and yet seen the Lord use you in your weakness?
What passages have encouraged and strengthened you as you are serving out of your weakness?
How do you discern when you need to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to an opportunity to serve when you are in a season in which you need to be served?
What has it looked like for you to transition to your new city, and what are some things that you have done to plug into a local body of believers and find community and a place where you can both serve and be served?
How do you rest when you are enduring feelings of weariness?
NOTES & QUOTES
“We really had no idea what to do, but just kept putting one foot forward and kept our eyes on Christ.”
“We want this recognition, and we want everyone to understand and see. But we don't need everyone to understand and see. We need him to see us. And that's the comfort that we have, that he sees us and he knows what's happening.”
"We need to be brought to the end of ourselves. Scripture says “My grace is sufficient for you because my power is made perfect in weakness.” But at the end of the day, what are we pouring out from? If we don't have the love of Christ within us, what are we giving? If we are pouring from an empty cup in the sense that we don't have any strength to give, that's a good thing because we're not trying to give out of the overflow of our pride or our own abilities and our own strength. But if we are in Christ, we need to be pouring out from an overflow of what he's given to us and what we've received from him."
“Lord, you have given us another day, so there’s something that you're doing in us. This [suffering] isn’t a waste of time. There’s something that you’re building in us, so we didn’t want to waste it by just saying ‘Woe is me.’”
Lauren: How do you drink deeply when you are feeling weary? What are the means that God has given us for refreshment in the gospel when we are at our end? We might sound like a broken record, but it really is the same things we always talk about here at Journeywomen. It’s those three big things we mention all the time from our mission statement: God’s Word. The local church. The gospel. It is these things that sustain us for a life of ministry, for the life of faith! It’s these things that enable us to be like the man the psalmist describes in Psalm 1: “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.” Digging deep into the Bible—the infallible Word of God. Leaning into the community of your local church—God’s people, and his means of spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth. Rehearsing the truths of the gospel—the glorious good news that God loved us (a sinful people) enough to send his Son to reconcile man with God. THIS is what fuels us for ministry. THIS is what makes us to be like a tree planted by streams of water, drinking deeply from eternal waters so that we do not wither. THIS, sisters, is how we endure amidst our weariness.
“I could look at my resume and say, ‘Look at all these things that I've done. These are all the reasons why I should be able to succeed in X, Y, and Z.’ But at the end of the day, that doesn't really matter. He is my sufficiency, and he is what brings me that peace.”
“This passage [Romans 8] is not just about the flesh and the spirit in that we need to go from this bad girl to the good girl. God makes us completely new and renews us, and that process is what gives us peace in the storms because we know that he's doing the work.”
“The Holy Spirit is not given to me to make me perfect in the sense of being able to make every right decision and never make a mistake. I'm always going to continue to need him. I'm never going to not need him. The Holy Spirit is to make me aware of my need for him and then to press into that instead of trying to run away from it or cover it up or muster up my own strength to make it look like I'm very strong even when I'm not.”
“Lord, just help us know and understand because we want to honor and be good stewards of what you have given us in this season. We want to make sure that we are not trying to overextend ourselves in the name of service, because it's very easy to take on that savior complex mentality where we’ve got to save them all and we’ve got to do more. We have to be obedient to what God's saying to our family for right now, and that's going to look different in different seasons.”
“Being a part of a body believers has honestly been the biggest plus of our transition, to have a body of believers that we loved and that we felt connected to was such a huge gift from the Lord because that's been the highlight and such a part of our days.”
Lauren: Have you experienced this kind of community at your church, where the people there truly feel like your family—your brothers and sisters? Maybe you’ve heard people talk about church that way, but it hasn’t been your experience? Maybe the relationships there feel forced, or you just don’t connect naturally yet with anyone in your church community? Finding community at your church might not always be easy. I know this from experience. I’ve moved over 15 times in my life. Every move has taken me to another place. Another state (sometimes another country). With each move, I’ve wondered how in the world I would begin to feel at home. But I want to tell you that with each move, in each place, the Lord was faithful to provide a community for me through the local church. You see, the amazing thing about the global church is that in every context you can find brothers and sisters in the faith. They might not look how you thought, they might be different than you, they might even have different beliefs than you (within orthodoxy), but they are family—connected by Christ, united under the truths of the gospel—family. Finding this family and getting to this level might take work, it might take time, relationships might not feel natural or easy at first, but it will happen. I’ve experienced firsthand the beauty that comes from continual, intentional, and vulnerable investment in peoples’ lives. You can start out as strangers, but as you speak the gospel to one another, uplift one another in seasons of difficulty, sit under God’s Word together, and pray together, you will experience the sweetest gift of family. Family who comes alongside you in your weariness and walks with you to the feet of Jesus. If you don’t have this type of church family, I’d encourage you to take a step towards it even this week. Maybe that step is visiting a church on Sunday. Maybe it’s joining a small group. Maybe it’s committing to share vulnerably about where you’re actually at with your sisters at church. Whatever it is, I hope you’ll take that step and experience the true beauty of the local church.
SCRIPTURE
“Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
the wormwood and the gall!
My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me…
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
“We don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
“My grace is sufficient for you because my power is made perfect in weakness.”
RESOURCES
An Overwhelming Hope: How the Spirit Brings Peace to Our Storms
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Have you ever felt exhausted or weary in your service of others? Write or share your experience.
How does the gospel empower you when you feel like you have nothing left to give?
What passages of Scripture encourage and strengthen you as you serve out of your weakness?
How have you experienced being served and cared for by your local church?
What might you do or implement in light of what you learned from this week’s episode?
IMPORTANT NOTE
Journeywomen interviews are intended to serve as a springboard for continued study in the context of your local church. While we carefully select guests each week, interviews do not imply Journeywomen's endorsement of all writings and positions of the interviewee or any other resources mentioned.
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