The Son of Man did not come
to be served, but to serve… —Matthew 20:28
{CHAMBERS} “Jesus also said, “Yet I am among you as the One who
serves” (Luke 22:27). Paul’s idea of service was the same as our Lord’s—
“…ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). […] Paul’s
idea of service was to pour his life out to the last drop for others. And
whether he received praise or blame made no difference. As long as there was
one human being who did not know Jesus, Paul felt a debt of service to that
person until he did come to know Him. But the chief motivation behind Paul’s
service was not love for others but love for his Lord. If our devotion is to
the cause of humanity, we will be quickly defeated and broken-hearted, since we
will often be confronted with a great deal of ingratitude from other people.
But if we are motivated by our love for God, no amount of ingratitude will be
able to hinder us from serving one another. […] Once we realize that Jesus has
served us even to the depths of our meagerness, our selfishness, and our sin,
nothing we encounter from others will be able to exhaust our determination to
serve others for His sake.”
{ELGIN} Are you familiar with
the term “ingrate”? You don’t hear it
much anymore. It describes a person who
is ungrateful. Perhaps you have met
someone like that. Perhaps you have been
someone like that. To my chagrin, I have
been known to say “there is nothing that bothers me more than ingratitude!” That is right before I recognize the pride
that is welling up in my heart. The Spirit
reminds me of what it means to offer my life as a sacrifice. By serving others, I am serving the Lord. (Matthew 25). Jesus asked the one leper who came back to
thank him for his healing, “Where are the other 9?” (Luke 17:11-19) If we were to
use that as a principle, we might say that we can expect only 10% of the people
we serve to appreciate what was done. Why
is that? It might be because people are
so focused on their personal plight and survival that all they want is relief and once they
have it, they move on, glad they escaped and not caring where the relief came from.
But what about my sacrifice
you might ask. Don’t they know what I
had to give up to help them? Don’t they
care what a great act of kindness I just performed? Going back to Jesus and the lepers, it could
be that they don’t care. My point? What we do for others should be motivated by
our love and devotion to the Lord. Not
by our desire to be praised by men and held in high esteem by them. It is for that reason that I shun praise from
others for what we do on the mission field.
Listen … God has given each of us a purpose, the gifts to fulfill that
purpose, and the power to accomplish it.
It’s all Him! If anything bothers us it should be that people don’t
acknowledge God in their “healing” from whatever their dilemma might be. Don’t let ingratitude be the reason you don’t
do something or regret doing something.
What you do in service should be motivated by the Spirit and not your
need for affirmation from or appreciation by men. Jesus cautioned the disciples about this …
right before He taught them to pray.
(Matthew 6:1-6) “Be careful
not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If
you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. “So when you give
to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the
synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they
have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your
left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in
secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. “And
when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in
the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell
you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your
room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.”
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