“Israel” means to struggle with God.

“Islam” means to submit to God.

So what does it mean to be a Christian? In a way it means a little bit of both. It means to serve God. It means that you believe that God loves us so much that God decided to get down to our level and understand things from our perspective. It means that we are to follow Jesus’s example and to allow God to work through us to bring healing to the world. It means we are to be obedient to the will of God and put our own desires and wants last. Not second.

Now God will never ask us to ignore our needs. And we aren’t meant to be zombies.

This all sounds a lot like the word “submit”, but I think “to serve” is more accurate. To be Christian is to intentionally, willingly, and (hopefully) joyfully serve God.

How do we serve God? The easy answer is to be a minister. The hard answer is just as you are. You can go to school and learn how to tend God’s sheep. Or you can take care of them right now. Mother Teresa taught us that we don’t have to help everybody all over the world. We just have to help one person at a time.

God made you the way He made you because He needs you that way. We aren’t all supposed to be the same. Your differences are your strengths. Consider a garden. A garden full of the same kind of flower is boring. God made us all different because we are more beautiful that way.