The Heart Of A Servant

Jesus is our Exemplar and we should learn to emulate His lifestyle and follow in His steps.  "Jesus came not to be served, but to serve and give His life a ransom for all" (cf. Mark 10:45).  We are no better than Him and are obliged to do no less.  He raised the bar on ethics by His example and incentive.  When asked who would be the greatest, He said the one who is the servant of all and humbles himself like a child (cf. Matt. 18:3).  To be child-like in faith, not childish, that is.

Therefore, we are all called into the ministry in a sense because He used the word diakonos, deacon or servant in Koine. We have the ministry of reconciliation as Paul put it. This is a dog-eat-dog world where only the strong seem to survive but we are called to minister to the down and out and reach out to the untouchables, riff-raff, and so-called scum for the Lord's sake. The trouble with this world according to Lily Tomlin is that even if you win the rat-race, you're still a rat!

But we don't want a world of the survival of the fittest or the law of the jungle with no mercy or relief organizations to aid those in need  If only the strong survive, how did they arrive? We must recognize that Christianity is counter-cultural and we stand opposed to the world's way of reckoning, even success has a new meaning.  In God's economy, we're all weak and we are to bear one another's burdens and to comfort those in need.   No one is a rock in need of no one; we're all products of God, our DNA, our nurture, and nature which is sinful.

When George Whitefield saw a condemned man go to the gallows, he said, "There but for the grace of God, go I."   Paul reiterated this by saying, "I am what I am by the grace of God (cf. 1 Cor. 15:10).  We are to have the same humility and not see ourselves as an elite in this world but as the recipients of grace that we don't deserve.  God shed His grace on us!  When we've been touched by grace and it's changed our lives, we want to pass it on and spread the word because this is what makes our faith and God unique from all other religions.

Our success is not how many servants we have, but how many we serve!  We serve by virtue of having a spiritual gift and venturing out of our comfort zone to serve (and this is how we discover it) We need to make an impact and not just an impression.  (Our righteousness is God's gift to us! per Isaiah 45:24; Hosea 14:8; Rom. 15:18)  That is, it's not so easy to make a difference for Christ.  And the only happy people are those who've learned to serve, according to Albert Schweitzer, and this is the right mindset for us as well.  As Bob Dylan said, "You've gotta serve somebody."

The servant is in a win-win situation with God because the reward is not only in the doing itself, having its own reward, but in the receiving of a great and precious reward that won't fade away.  We're in a no-lose situation!  The emphasis is on our deeds, not our confession, because there are many nominal Christians or ones who are believers in name only paying lip service, and we are to live out our faith by giving it away and showing it to the world via our deeds, letting our light shine.

We must recognize Jesus being humble enough to become one of us, getting down and dirty with us, to identify with our issues and problems, even experiencing the O.J.T. of real life, Reality 101. Jesus feels our pain and relates to us, having been "tempted in all ways like us, yet without sin" (cf. Heb. 4:15).  Jesus has been there and done that, thank God!   So John the Baptist summed it up very well: "He must increase, but I must decrease" (cf. John 1:29).  We see this interpreted as being that the way up is down in God's economy!   Soli Deo Gloria!