Full-serve or Self-serve

I was recently at a conference, and on the closing night, John Dawson, the guest speaker, was giving a message out of the book of Jonah. While I was reading along, there was a passage that stuck out to me. It was verse 2 of chapter 4. Jonah was ranting about how he knew how God was merciful, and compassionate, and forgiving, etc, but his attitude was one of self-pity, and pride. What caught my attention was that it reminded me of the servant, in Matthew 25, that buried his talent instead of multiplying it. Now the thing that I observed in these passages is two guys who think they have their masters all figured out, don’t necessarily agree with their masters, and act/speak out of their prepackaged assumptions. I see a lot of pride in both these guys, thinking that their own ideas/ways of doing things were better. They both did the bare minimum that they were asked. There was no joy in serving, and therefore no joy in the final results. If they had better understood their master’s characters, they would have done their best with the tasks they were given. What would Jonah’s reaction have been if he had gone straight to Ninevah, and from his heart pleaded with the people to change their ways? Would he not have been overjoyed, with the people, in the light of God’s forgiveness?
So where am I getting with all this? To sum up, when God gives us a job to do, and the resources/talents to do it, we should go at it with our whole hearts, and seek to multiply was has been given to us. That way, when we see God move, forgive, heal, or whatever it was He wanted to do, we can rejoice in His work instead of wallowing in self-pity and pride.
In closing, where else do we see people, in the Bible or in our own lives, robbed of their joy because they served grudgingly, or were satisfied with doing the bare minimum? Think about it.