Written By Abel Walters
This summer, I had to make a choice.
I could spend the last week of summer at home with my friends. I could be there for Student Takeover weekend at church, watching our youth lead worship and take part in the service. I could be in the room for something exciting, meaningful, and honestly, pretty visible.
Instead, I was in Togo.
I knew going into the trip that I would miss things. I knew there would be moments when I wished I were home. And there were.I missed the last week of summer. I was genuinely sad that I wouldn't be there to watch Student Takeover. Seeing some of my best friends use their gifts to serve God in front of our church is something I would have loved.
And yet, being in Togo taught me something about service that I don't think I could have learned in the same way from the front of a church.
Because there is a kind of service that everyone sees and there is a kind that almost no one does.
Student Takeover is a beautiful picture of service. There is worship, there is a congregation watching, there are people leading from the stage, and there is something visible about giving your time and gifts to God.
But in Togo, much of what I was asked to do was the opposite.
There were no crowds watching.
There wasn't always someone thanking you.
Sometimes there wasn't even anyone who knew you were uncomfortable.
There were long, hot days. There was exhaustion. There were stomach aches. There were moments when I was tired and would have much rather been somewhere comfortable. There were ordinary, repetitive tasks that didn't feel particularly important at the moment.
And every day, I had to choose to keep serving.
That was one of the hardest parts of the trip, not because the work was necessarily difficult, but because it forced me to ask myself why I was serving in the first place.Was I serving because it felt good? Because people noticed? Because I wanted to be part of something exciting? Because I wanted to be seen doing something meaningful?
Or was I willing to serve simply because God had called me to be faithful?
Jesus talks about this kind of faithfulness in Matthew 6, when He tells us not to practice our righteousness simply to be seen by others. He points us toward the Father who sees what is done in secret.
I think I understood that differently in Togo. God sees the things that no one else sees. He sees the moment you keep going when you're exhausted. He sees the discomfort you don't complain about. He sees the small act of obedience that will never make it into a picture or a social media post. He sees the choice to love someone when there is no applause.
And somehow, those hidden moments can become some of the most significant moments of our lives.
I went to Togo thinking I would be serving other people. And I did. But I also found that God was doing something in me. He was teaching me that sacrifice isn't always dramatic. Sometimes sacrifice looks like missing something you really wanted to be part of. Sometimes it looks like giving up comfort. Sometimes it looks like doing the same small thing faithfully, day after day, even when nobody is watching. And sometimes the most important ministry happens in places where there is no stage at all.
I still wish I could have been at Student Takeover. I wish I could have watched my friends lead worship. I wish I could have experienced that weekend with them.
But I don't think God was asking me to choose between "good service" and "bad service."
He was teaching me that service isn't measured by how many people see it.
It is measured by faithfulness.
The people we served in Togo may never know every sacrifice that was made to get us there. They may never know the moments we were exhausted or uncomfortable. And that's okay. Because ultimately, I wasn't serving for them to see me. I was serving because God had given me an opportunity to love, to give, and to be faithful.
And in those hidden places in the heat, in the exhaustion, in the ordinary moments, and even in the things nobody recognized; I saw God in a way that I will never forget.Maybe that's the strange beauty of sacrifice. When no one else is watching, you discover that God is. And sometimes, the places where we are least seen by people are the places where we see Him most clearly.
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