Saturday, January 2, 2010

Who do you serve?

"James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,"
James 1:1a

Servant is the first word that hit me when I opened the book of James and started reading. If you've attended FOTH for any length of time you have probably heard me mention how the word "meditating" means to chew on something, like a dog chewing on a bone, to savor it. Well that's what happened with the word "servant" for me.

I kept thinking who do I serve? Really, who?

Can I truly say "I'm a servant of Christ"? I'm I truly committed to saying "yes and Amen" to anything he ask?

So many times our "service" is really a form of self love, usually in a pursuit of personal significance through something like praise, power, or status.

Sound, familiar? There it is the 'pride of life" again. It is so subtle, it creeps into our lives.

I don't know about you, but in my life I can get so wrapped up in "doing" that I don't slow down enough to be still and check my motives. I can be engaged in all kinds of service while actually serving my own neurotic needs—acceptance from others, feelings of significance, control, praise, position, power, and prestige. I can serve to feel important rather than because I love Him who first loved me.

Read through Romans 12:1-8, it is all about being a servant, but at the end we are warned "Let love be without hypocrisy".

Is your service, your love without hypocrisy?

"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45)


 

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