1 Peter 4
3 For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do
8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.
11 If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
Just a few goodies from 1 Peter 4. I couldn’t pass them up while researching the topic of Servanthood. The main verse I want to focus on is verse 11.
Oh to be a servant of Jesus. When we all first make that commitment to Jesus our hearts cant help but yearn to be a servant. You just had this amazing heart felt REAL experience with Jesus and now you would do anything, I mean ANYTHING for Jesus! The problem I have is keeping the zeal of that first moment of salvation. Where in that moment we would say anything, do anything, to anybody if it meant glorifying Jesus. I yearn for that in my life. (sorry I got caught up in the moment and the tears for a moment)
I remember wanting to be a servant for Jesus at a young age, even before I had a personal experience with Jesus. I think it was just how I was raised and the church I was raised in. I was taught to serve. And then when I had a REAL experience with Jesus I wanted to submit every second to Jesus.
I was prophesied when I was in college by a Godly man named Derek Loux who himself was an amazing example of a servant. He gave his life to serve God in amazing ways. During one of our services when he was the guest speaker I brought the singers some water and he prophesied over me saying that just as I brought water to these singers I have brought water to Jesus. When I serve others I am ultimately serving Jesus.
This is Derek Loux. He literally gave his life to serve the Lord. Check out his story.
I have always remembered this. I may or may not have always lived by it, but I have always remembered it. There are moments in my life that I have complained and grumbled about serving others. People are messy and complicated, but so am I and Jesus served me by giving me life.
Sometimes we think in order to be a good servant everything has to be perfect. We may invite somebody over, or maybe we are helping someone do something, or preparing to minister to someone. I find that sometimes we get so caught up in the details of serving that we don’t actually serve the people we are called to serve. We get so caught up in the expectation of the outcome and we miss the point: loving people. Just pure servanthood changes people not because of the perfection but because God’s love is powerful and when you truly serve you show Gods love.
I don’t want to just serve blindly I want to do what God wants done. I want to hear his voice. I want to go Lord Send Me. I love this verse. I love how Isaiah just overheard God and then his immediate response is “Send Me I will go!!”
That verse is very important especially when you are talking about servant hood but there is a more important verse than that especially when you are talking about servant hood (well they are all important, but you know what I mean) Its this verse(s)
I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
4At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
5“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
6Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
I mean WOW. That right there is what caused him to be a servant. That’s why he wanted to go. Like I said earlier I want to always live in that first moment of my salvation. In that place where I see God’s beauty and wonder and majesty and awesomeness and and and….. I could go on forever. I don’t want perfection or my own plans or ideas to get in the way of pure servant hood. Pure servant hood is living in that moment where you experience God’s true majesty and then your next move is to say “Send me I will go” and then the fact that this verse causes us to walk in freedom from guilt and sin it is because of that our motive will always be to love God and love others.
