When we returned to Hawaii in the Spring of 2013, I wasn’t staffing the SBS anymore, so I didn’t have to lead the homeless outreach to Waikiki like I did previously.

At the end of 2013, God was working on me to schedule time to serve.   I don’t think serving comes natural to anyone.  And that’s why you have to schedule it, so that you can faithfully show up and die to yourself.  That’s the point of disciplines anyway right?  Scheduling something… and making it a discipline, putting in consistent hard work, so that one day it will be natural.

So God was working on me to get back out there… and I was fighting it… let’s be honest, it’s much nicer to sit in my home every Tuesday nights than serve the homeless.  But it just so happened that they needed someone to lead the DTS team to Waikiki.  So every Tuesday evening I’m hitting the strip with some DTS students in tow, and we’re inviting the homeless to come eat pizza.  We spend time talking to them, handshaking, hugging, and praying for them.  It’s super sobering when they remember your name, and you don’t remember theirs.

Two weeks ago, some of the students went up a street they never went on.  And then they wheeled a guy in an office chair to get pizza.  To my surprise it was Jim!  I hadn’t seen Jim for probably a year.  (You can read here about one of my run ins with Jim –> Blistering Sunburn, An Ambulance and a Drunk Preacher pt 1) He was in a home for a while, but is now back on the streets.  It was great to reconnect with him.

Engage:  Do you schedule time to serve others?  Let us know in the comments.