Welcome to God Today with myself, Nathan, and Lydia Morrow. It’s a joy to be with you today and I want to share with you about serving today. You know, during my time in ministry, I’ve been a worship pastor. I’ve been in youth ministry, been with an evangelistic organization for quite a while now and whatever capacity I find myself in, the important thing is the word serving.
It’s not in what you do. Your identity should never be in what you’re doing. It should be the heart behind what you’re doing. I think that’s why it’s such an important thing to talk about; an important thing to discuss. As we travel around America and the nations of the world, the most common thing we see is people getting saved quickly and then straight away they’re looking for the microphone or the platform. But the most important thing is to be a servant.
In Mark 10:43 it says this, “Yet it shall be among you, but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant.” I think that’s such an important thing that we have to position ourselves to understand that it doesn’t matter what we do. It’s always about how we do it and the heart behind it. I think that’s often what I look for in people that are going to serve with us. It has to be the heart in them, not what they’re doing.
You know, one of my favorite Scriptures in the whole Word of God is Philippians chapter two, because it talks about, Paul said, “Have the same mind in you, which also was in Christ Jesus.” That means he wants us to have exactly the same heart attitude and exactly the same heart posture.
Well, the posture that Paul is referencing is when Jesus, in John chapter 13, took off the robes of authority and grabbed the towel of a servant and washed some stinky nasty feet. It was the lowest form of servanthood available.
The Bible says in Philippians 2, “He lowered Himself to the point of death on a cross.” If you do any research at all, you’ll find that the death of crucifixion is the death of the worst criminals and insurrectionists. He was publicly completely humiliated, crucified naked in front of the city and because He was willing to humble Himself to that extent – then comes the passage we all love the quote…“Therefore God has highly exalted Him and given Him the name that is above every other name.”
The danger in having, what I like to call…well, you talked about it. It’s what I like to call “pulpit lust” – people want the platform. They want it so quickly. There’s they’re not mature enough for it. You can have a gift, you can have the anointing, but you may not have the character that can keep you planted.
Character will keep you humble so that you can serve and not be blown up by a platform. The posture of a servant is if Jesus wants me in a pulpit today, then that’s where I’ll serve, but Jesus wants me to clean a toilet tomorrow that’s where I’ll serve. It makes no difference because that’s not where I get my identity. This is the posture of a servant. It’s always looking to what can I do for other people, not for me, because I want to enrich others’ lives for the Kingdom.
So listen, we’re going to pray in a second. I just want to encourage you, servanthood starts in your house as well. You are called to reach your family before anybody else! I just want to encourage you in that. Father, we just pray right now that we would look for opportunities to serve people around us. I pray that the people watching would be going to their pastors and saying, “How can I serve you? How can I serve this church? How can I serve this house?” Even going around to your neighbor saying, “Hey, what can I do for you?”
The Bible says we should love our neighbor. That means you have to activate that and actually do something. I want to encourage you, in Jesus name. Give us the opportunities that we need to serve You and to serve You well. Put it in our hearts, what you would have us do Father? We love You. We can’t wait to serve You in Jesus name. Amen.