Monthly Habit #4: Serve

God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another.

1 Peter 4:10

The fourth habit of serving others is one that takes a bit of intentionality, but it also has the potential to be one of the most memorable of all the habits because it requires a sacrifice of time or resources.

My family has incorporated serving others into our daily acts of kindness by shoveling a neighbor’s driveway in the winter or taking care of someone’s house while they’re gone on vacation. Throughout the year we try to find activities, either through church or a nonprofit organization in our community, that we can partner with in service to others. We’ve volunteered at homeless shelters, cleaned up local parks, painted community centers and schools, and washed windows at a local nursing home.

There are so many creative ways you can serve others. It can be done formally, like volunteering at a shelter, or informally, like helping out a neighbor. Along with being genuinely kind, serving others reminds us to consider putting someone else’s needs before our own. It increases our desire to do something to help others out.

Serving is the action of kindness, the outward expression of linking ourselves to others, allowing us to use the gifts God has given us. Once we begin to notice needs in our neighborhoods or communities, it’s hard to stop noticing—and even harder not to do anything about them. The habit of serving is one that becomes ingrained in us the more we do it.

These four monthly habits described in the last few devotions can be done as daily acts of kindness or in addition to what you are already doing. The point is that we want to establish these four habits firmly in our lives and not get stuck doing only familiar things. Kindness habits help us to make kindness a daily practice rather than one-off, occasional gestures.

—Kendra

— Today’s Act of Kindness —

Find a simple way to serve someone in your life, or take a small step toward a larger project you’d like to accomplish in your community.

From the book