Serving Out of a Gospel Identity

Today, I am sharing some thoughts that my girlfriend, Stacey, recently wrote on the topic of why it's important for every Christian to step up and serve the church body in some way, and what should drive the motivation to do so. I hope you are encouraged and challenged by what she's written!

-Michael

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“As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” -1 Peter 4:10 (NKJV)

I was thinking about serving this morning – more specifically about serving the Lord. Why do we do it? What’s the purpose behind it? Is it really necessary? If it’s so important, why don’t more people in the church do it? Why is it that in every church I’ve attended or visited, they always seem to be asking for people to step up to “serve” or “volunteer” or whatever other name they want to put to it? Shouldn’t this be something that God’s people do without prompting? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with churches announcing when they have a need. It just makes me sad when I hear the same announcement week after week without people stepping up to meet the need. Maybe I’m just idealizing here, but these are my thoughts…

In more than one place, the writers of the New Testament identified themselves as servants of Christ. Now really the word so often translated “servant” should more accurately be translated “bondservant” or “slave.” There’s a difference there: a servant voluntarily serves for compensation and can leave his or her employment at any time. A bondservant or slave has at one point come under the authority and ownership of someone else. They do whatever their master tells them, and there is no leaving. They serve their master for life. For those of us who have been around the church and church vernacular for awhile, we might understand the difference and know what is being said when we read the word “servant.” But then again, maybe some of us really don’t-- otherwise, I think we would be willing to serve a lot more.

When we accepted Christ as our Savior, it wasn’t just “fire insurance” that we were “buying into”. What happened when we were saved was essentially a transaction where our identity was removed and we were instead given Christ’s identity because we realized that our identity, our righteousness, was worthless but Christ’s identity is holy and priceless. In essence, we were saying “Lord Jesus, I belong to You now. I give up my rights, my ideas, my everything for You. Where You go, I will go. What You say, I will do. I give up my rights to follow You because I see that You are Truth and Light and are indeed a good Master.”

Does that seem a little radical? Well, it is. But you see, nowhere in Christ’s teaching do I see Him calling people to follow in moderation. It’s kind of an “all or nothing” deal. This idea that we can have Jesus and still have the world is completely wrong. As a matter of fact, Jesus had something to say about that in Matthew 6:24 & Luke 16:13:

“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon [money].” (NKJV)

You see, no matter what, we will serve a master in this life – whether it’s money or power or the flesh or ourselves or another person or GOD Himself. And there’s no room for trying to serve more than one master. We may fool ourselves into thinking that we can balance it, having two masters, but in the end if we try to serve God AND anything else, we’re going to be pulled apart as we’re led in opposing directions. The question is – which Master do you want to serve?

My Master is good, kind, holy, righteous, fair, and powerful. And I SO desperately desire for each and every person who reads this to know Him and want to come under His authority!
Now, I’m not saying I have this down. Anyone that knows me can testify to that. I struggle every day in choosing to serve God rather than this world or my flesh, and it’s only by God’s grace when I do choose to serve Him. My heart’s desire, though, is to see my life reflecting service to Him as my Master more and more each day. I’m sure that all you believers reading this have that same longing in your hearts, and I pray that it is fulfilled through the Holy Spirit working in us. :-)

But in getting back to my original thought on serving… as a slave of my Lord, He has called His people to serve Him. As the verse at the beginning of this note in 1 Peter shows, He has given each one of us a gift to use; and He commands for us to use it to minister to one another. We are called good stewards if we do, and that would mean we are bad stewards if we don’t. So I go back to my initial questions – Why don’t we serve? Why do we have to be coerced and sometimes even cornered to serve and use these gifts that we’ve been given? What’s holding us back?

Please don’t think I’m asking those questions so that people will answer me. I only bring them up so that you may search the Scriptures and bring this before God yourself. See where He would lead you, where He would have you go or what He would have you do. Remember, serving the Lord doesn’t just mean serving at your church (though that is wonderful); it’s a heart attitude for wherever the Lord would guide us to be. As Colossians 3:17 says “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” (NKJV) That’s really all that we can do – in faith look to Jesus, our Master and Redeemer, and follow Him.

-Stacey