Beware of Service Blemished with Pride and Selfish Motives

After finishing the book of Malachi with Annette yesterday, what have I learned? The whole book resonated with the pain and heartache that God was going through because of His love for the people of Israel. The Israelites had given up on Him. They were disillusioned and thought that serving God had become a burden. They thought that God had abandoned them. They also accused God for being unjust. Even worse, the priests and Levites showed disrespect to God by sacrificing blemished and crippled animals to God.

What does it all mean for us today? Have we given up on God? Has our service to God been out of duty and have they become a burden for us? Do we serve God just because it is our duty or do we do it out of our love of God, who first loved us? Do we give God our best? Or are our gifts and service to God blemished and crippled? In a way, we are sometimes like the Israelites, and Annette instructed us to write down our thoughts on the book of Malachi on a sheet of paper. I wrote this down: Beware of service blemished with pride and selfish motives.