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If you want to be Great, be a Servantby anonhttp://www.peterhead-methodist.org.uk/nes/aberdeen If you want to be Great, be a Servant If you want to be great, be a servant dispensing good to other people. We need to be dispensaries of blessings. (Phil 2 : 4-10) When you wake up in the morning, ask God how you can be a special blessing to: * your family * husband * children * others We should not be wounding people all day long. We need to have an attitude (I am going to be a blessing everywhere I go) and we need to have a purpose (I want to be a servant to God) - a wash your feet attitude If you want to be great, be a servant dispensing good to other people. We need to be dispensaries of blessings. (Phil 2 : 4-10) Let us see an example in humility Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself and became obedient to death -- even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phillippians 2:3ff) Phil 2 : 6 He knew who He was ........ but He was willing to ............. become like man and be born a human being. Let us do little things for each other : * can I baby-sit for an hour whilst you go shopping? * can I help you carry that? * can I get the door for you? etc. Phil 2 : 8 Servant hood : obedience, you cannot be a servant without being obedient. Jesus was extremely obedient, to the point maximum degree, even to death on the cross. WE DON\\\'T GET ON THE CROSS AND GIVE UP OUR PHYSICAL LIFE We die to our ATTITUDE We die to our ANGER We die to our BITTERNESS We give it up - we die to it. Jesus gave up His life. We cannot be a servant if we don\\\'t regularly give things up. We lay aside * our own interests * ourselves * our wants * our desires * our attitude * and we obey God You\\\'ll find that the largest part of what God is going to ask you to do is going to have something to do with somebody else. The obedience to apologise when God tells you to. How hard it is for us to go to someone and look them in the eye and say \\\'I\\\'m sorry. Will you forgive me? Jesus Christ laid aside His rights and His privileges. We should be able to lay aside our anger. Man\\\'s anger does not promote righteousness. Every time you forgive someone, you\\\'re giving them a gift. A lot of people come to church mad at somebody. - they\\\'re offended - they\\\'re hurt. One of the major ways we can serve other people is just by forgiving them. In effect you are saying: * Let me remove the offence, you don\\\'t owe me a thing! * Your debt is cancelled * Let it be as if nothing happened * I give you my love as a gift * I give you mercy * God gives us gifts all the time * His forgiveness, His grace, His mercy, His love, His kindness .... but, as soon as someone makes us mad and offends us, we put a wall up. God wants to be your wall of protection. He doesn\\\'t want you protecting yourself. Get those walls down! We say \\\'I\\\'m not letting you near me ever again.\\\' \\\'That\\\'s it - you\\\'ve no part in my life any more.\\\' God wants those walls torn down now. He wants to be your wall of protection. He wants you to trust Him to see you through. Love covers a multitude of sins. It disregards offences and let\\\'s it go. The quicker you forgive someone, the easier it is to do it. The longer you hold it, the deeper the roots get. In order to forgive someone you should not be talking about it with other people. The more you talk about it, the bigger it gets and the less likely you are to forget it. Talk to God about it once and say \\\'I\\\'m giving it to You\\\'. The Bible says \\\'Vengeance is mine\\\' saith the Lord. Give it into the hands of the Living God. Why should you spend your life hating someone who doesn\\\'t care - you are only being spiteful to yourself. God watches how we treat people - strife - bitterness - arguing with each other. If you are going to get along with people, you are going to have to give them a lot of grace, a lot of space. Be generous in forgiveness. Be willing to let go of offences. You\\\'re not going to get very much out of church if you\\\'re going to go in mad and leave mad. To take up our cross and follow Jesus\\\' example * we have to die to our own interests * we have to die to ourselves, our wants, our desires, our attitude * and we have to obey God God looks at our hearts and says \\\'Who are YOU helping? Do it unto the Lord and do it with joy. Jesus humbled Himself and took on the attitude of a servant. Whatever your gift, you get it by the grace of God When you are proud, you think you deserve things when you don\\\'t. Instead of judging people, we ought to pray for them * we have to care * we have to endure * we have to bear one another\\\'s burdens and the things in our personality that irritate one another. As long as we are being a blessing to others, God will bless us. We need to cultivate a willingness to serve one another for, if we are a servant, God will bless us too. Take up your cross and sort things out in your life. Give all your problems to God. He can do a much better job of it than we can. We need to die to self-will. We need to: * lay aside wanting revenge * lay aside anger * lay aside self-pity * lay aside selfishness We get mistaken ideas that this cross that we have to carry is a lot of poverty, disease and disaster. NOT TRUE! Jesus came to deliver us and save us. He wants to heal us. He wants us to be blessed. But - there is a cross we have to carry. It is not impossible for anyone to be a servant of God and, at the same time, be selfish and self-centred. But God, literally, sees the attitude of our hearts. He doesn\\\'t just see what we do and the outward show we put on, but He sees the attitude we do it in. We must start doing things for other people, as unto the Lord. Jesus said \\\'What I have done for you, you do it for others.\\\' We have to do it with the right attitude. I\\\'m grateful, I\\\'m thankful, I want to be a blessing. I want to help somebody. I\\\'m no better than anyone else. Whatever I do I can do it only because God put it in me to do it. - I want to be kind to people. - I want to be patient with people - I don\\\'t want to put people down - I don\\\'t want to make people feel stupid People with a strong personality have to learn to work in gentleness - tenderness - humility - patience. Every day of our life we ought to do something for somebody. And as we reach out to other people, God will meet our needs for we only reap what we sow. God wants each of us to take up our cross and follow Him by being: Servants of God Servants of Christ and Servants, one to another. If you are a teacher, give yourself wholeheartedly to that and be the best teacher you can be. If you\\\'re a mum, give yourself wholeheartedly to that and be the best mum you can be. If you\\\'re a boss, give yourself wholeheartedly to that and be the best boss you can be. And wherever we are in our lives at the moment, God wants us to do that to the best of our abilities - and with joy. If this is where God wants you to be at this time and you are being obedient to Him, do whatever you do to the best of your ability and for God\\\'s honour and glory and not for any glory for yourself. As soon as we hear of a need, let\\\'s meet it. \\\"Take up thy cross and follow me\\\", I hear the blessed Saviour say. How can I make a lesser sacrifice When Jesus gave His all. Beautiful words - words we need to take to our hearts. We need to look at our motives and our attitudes and sift out all the ones which are not worthy. We need to forgive our brothers and sisters. We need to lay down old quarrels and set aside old hurts and give them all to God. We need to cultivate a childlikeness, not a churlishness and childishness. We need to take up our cross and follow the ways of Jesus. We need to take His example for ourselves. Leave a Reply |
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