Spiritual Discipline of Serving
The sermon I gave to the Western Hills Baptist Church congregation 8/14/16
When I was 10 years old, my grandpa had to get hip replacement surgery. I remember before the surgery a few friends of theirs came to visit at the hospital-their pastor came to pray for my grandpa before the surgery took place. People were very kind. Even after the surgery, people came to the house to visit. My 8-year-old sister took it upon herself to inform people who came to visit that we were very fond of tater tot casserole and we did not eat anything with onions in it. More people than I realized existed came through my grandparents house. People came from their church to encourage grandpa, someone brought their walker they weren’t using, and we got a LOT of tater tot casserole. :) But as the immediate emergency excitement died down, there was one guy that kept coming around. This man, Mr. Ben would come over nearly everyday to just do what he could to help out. He mowed the grass, he weeded grandma’s flower beds, he added an extra 5 inches height to the bottom of my grandpa’s recliner so it’d be easier for him to get in and out of it.
Growing up in the church, I’ve witnessed many events like this-in the lady’s bible study on Joy this summer I heard even more stories like that.
We as a church have been working through a series on Spiritual Disciplines. Pastor Chris has introduced his passion for spiritual growth and development and has been challenging us to consciously, deliberately submit--or RE-submit as the case may be--different areas of our lives back to God. Pastor Chris has already covered some really good disciplines like celebration, prayer, and giving. Today, you might have guessed from my first story, we are talking about “SERVING.”
I will say when I first heard I’d be speaking on the discipline of service, I was very tempted to use this as a way to hit you all with a bible to guilt all of you into volunteering in the children’s department...but I’m not going to do that. Not today anyways. We are not talking about service in general, but specifically we are looking at it as a spiritual discipline. Now just to be clear, there is service that is not part of developing your discipline. The occasional serving every now and then when someone asks you to help out, that’s just being part of a church family. What we want to explore is this idea of intentionally serving in order that we mature as believers and grow closer to God.
I have been reading a book by Donald Whitney called the “Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.” It is one of those weird books where you kind of love everything he says but cringe at his bluntness. One of his first observations about service was that the discipline of service is in exact opposition to two of the strongest human faults-pride and laziness. Service requires us to humble ourselves and serve others with no expectation that we will get anything in return or appreciation for it. I loved that observation. I don’t know if this resonates with you, but to be honest I think for a long time I associated service with a sense of obligation. Serve one another -- you HAVE to--serve one another --GOOD christians LIKE to serve-- serve one another--because people will get mad if you don’t.
This burn-out, grudging bitter service IS not what Paul was talking about in Ephesians 2:8-10 where he said:
Go ahead and open your bibles to Isaiah 6, verse one. For my students, Isaiah is in the Old Testament; it’s past Psalms in between Song of Songs and Jeremiah. I think this will be a good place to start.
And at this point in my Sunday School class I would say “okay what just happened?” What just happened is we read probably one of my favorite Worship services in the Bible outside of Revelation. Isaiah met God. He saw Him and worship Him and was overwhelmed by Him. Then Isaiah repented of his sins. Woe is me! He said. Then the Lord forgave him, cleansed him of his sin and Isaiah’s immediate and I’d say joyful reaction to God asking for someone to do some work was “ME, SEND ME!”
Now, I know it’s been a few weeks, but hopefully you guys still remember this diagram pastor Chris drew for us “WORSHIP” “CONNECT” “SERVE.” Not only are these the things, put simply, that facilitate spiritual growth as stand alone ideas, they should overlap.
This story captures exactly what happens in the between of Worship and Serve. This is the place we need to start. True service has to come from a heart of worship. If you have not met with God-do not pass go, do not collect your 200 dollars.
Moving on, the next thing we should probably talk about is that developing a servant heart is rarely an accident. Even as an outpouring of worship, we need to plan and be deliberate. Take a look at Joshua 24:15.
Joshua is giving his retirement speech and is giving a charge to the country he had been working with his entire life.
Serving God is always a CHOICE. There are plenty of other things you could be doing, and it is ridiculously easy to stop serving. It does not matter how old you are or how long you have been a child of God, you can slip out of the habit. Over and over again God says to His people, “hey, what’s your plan? What are you doing? You can not be passive about this, you need to make a choice.” Throughout the Bible there is a sense that you make a commitment to serve God, you’re probably going to do a vow renewal to Him at some point.
So why do we serve? Are we serving God to get forgiven? No, we saw God forgive Isaiah before anyone even started talking about service. Are we serving because we want other people to help us when we need them? I sure hope not.
To consider our motivation for serving, let’s read John 13, verses 12-17:
If you have not heard this story in a while, I encourage you this afternoon to re-read the whole thing. Jesus had just a few hours to sort of wrap up all His teachings to the disciples before He was arrested and crucified. One of the MOST important things he needed to share with them was this picture of service. Serving, like every other spiritual discipline we should consider ultimately brings us back to Christ. Not only did Christ model this for us-he flat out told us this is what he wants us to do. Then he kept going and humbled himself even to death for us on the cross.
Ephesians 5, verse 1 and 2 say this:
As we draw closer to God, it is very clear that our goal as believers is to look more and more like Jesus. One of the titles given to Jesus from that prophet Isaiah is the Suffering Servant. Be imitators of Christ. We can speculate a little bit on why that is important to God. I mean Lucifer fell because he wanted to be glorified higher than God and was kicked out of heaven. He is now prince of this world and his world definitely celebrates arrogance and belittling those beneath them. Last Sunday my mom’s pastor Randy Frazee at Oak Hills Church said “If you’re disappointed in what the elephant and the donkey have to offer this year-try the lamb.” The world NEEDS something else. The world NEEDS more Christians that look like Jesus. There is nothing more counter-cultural than being a humble servant by choice.
But even if that does not resonate with you, ultimately it doesn’t matter WHY God expects us to serve. If someone saves you and loves you so completely that he died for you, if he left a letter behind asking you to take up underwater basket weaving in his honor-you would! Just as a tribute to the guy who rescued you.
Paul says it this way in Romans 12:1-2:
There are plenty of other ideas about service that I just don’t have time to thoroughly share with you today, but I’ll give you a couple highlights really quick.
If you want to start serving, out of a worshipful heart, just START somewhere. The most obvious place would be here at church. Western Hills is a good place to overlap CONNECT and SERVE. Obviously I’d love to have you in the children’s department but there are a LOT of little jobs that need doing and there is enough to do that even if you’re only here once a year-there’s something you could sign up to do. That is a good way to systematically add service to your life as a discipline.
Beyond the church doors ask the Holy Spirit to show you one thing a week you can do for someone to grow your humility. Back the the story of my Grandpa’s surgery. People from every walk of life helped in the best ways they could. Remember that guy Mr. Ben? Did I mention he was in his 70′s when I met him? NO ONE has an excuse. Literally anyone and everyone can find something they can do to serve -can you babysit someone’s kids? Can you mow someone’s lawn while they are sick? Is there someone you can make tater tot casserole for? Can you open the door for someone as you’re walking into a restaurant? Can you use your skills to make things to be distributed to the needy? If you haven’t found an opportunity to serve, please come talk to me.
As you are growing into your spiritual discipline of service-pray that God will guide you in your spiritual gifts. Service most of the time does not require any particular gifting, but I have found it will get a lot easier if you can find something that makes your spirit sing. This is a topic for a whole other sermon, but I wanted to mention it. I have listed a couple scriptures you can look up later if you are interested in that aspect of serving.
Always bring service back to God. Do not neglect prayer, worship and bible reading as you serve. Service is a wonderful discipline- ONLY if God is your source and your inspiration.
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