Serve


We have been focusing on God’s call this past month. We’ve talked about Call, Fruit, and Gift. Today we arrive at perhaps the most important aspect of call – the doing of call. We usually call this, serve. We are called to be servants for God in our world.

The image of a servant is not a popular one these days. The image evokes poor people dressed in bad clothing doing messy, menial things. Not many of us our attracted to that picture.

Serving is unattractive to us, in part, because it is opposed to the image that we have been conditioned to accept about ourselves, that is, our core identity of consumer.

We are consumers in our world. And the problem is not just that we are consumers of a lot of what we don’t need. The fundamental problem is that “consumer” has come to identify our meaning and purpose in life.

Our culture of consumption has created needs where they didn’t exist before. Listerine is a classic example. Did you know before there was Listerine there was no mention in popular literature of bad breath? Yes, people had diseases of the mouth, rotting teeth, open sores. To us they would have stunk. To them they didn’t. People invest billions of dollars into products and advertising to tell us we need things that wouldn’t have occurred to us naturally. We have learned to smell bad breath.

Why do we celebrate Valentine’s Day? Because a card company told us to.

Our consumer identity has permeated every aspect of our lives, even the spiritual. Listen to what James Twitchell, author of the book, Shopping For God, writes:

“The implications for this kind of relationship-marketing are profound. Citizens have rights and responsibilities, but consumers have only rights, with virtually no responsibilities. Gimme. Feed me. Save me. . .Our Lady of Perpetual Sacrifice has been replaced by Our Lady of Sales.”

We view church as another product where we pick our favorite and hope we get good value for the choice. The best expression of the spiritual for a consumer of church is, “I got a lot out of that service today.” That’s the best that can be said.

But the Gospel bids us come and die. The Cross is not an advertisement. It’s a sign to come and serve.

When the disciples cried out to Jesus, “Give us more faith!” he answered with this:

“When the servant comes in from the fields, will the master say come sit and eat first? No, the master will tell the servant to prepare the dinner and serve him first before the servant can himself eat. And the servant knows this.”

When we are looking for a spiritual experience and crying out, “Give us more!”
Jesus says, “Serve.” True servants know this is their duty.


We won’t serve until we give up some of our consumer priorities and make our commitments actually match the convictions we say we have.

John Ortberg writes about binding commitments. Binding commitments are actions or choices made in the past that tie us to a future course of action. Some are dramatic, like choosing college, getting married, buying a home. If you buy a home that you can only afford by working two and three jobs at a time, then you have bound yourself to a certain future with hidden costs to your life.

Some binding commitments are more routine but they also shape our lives powerfully. Anyone with a kid in soccer knows this. “There are cults that place fewer demands on a person’s time than soccer leagues do,” Ortberg writes.

Some commitments are unspoken. Our primary unspoken commitment is watching television. Adults in America average four hours per day. Parents spend that average watching tv, one hour a day shopping, and guess what, six minutes a day playing with their kids.

Routine and unspoken commitments look small, but they are daily and they drive our lives. We do not sense the gap that begins to grow between what we say matters most to us and what we are actually doing with our lives.

We have to make room for our convictions. If you find yourself saying, “We just haven’t had time to come to church,” or “I don’t have time to help out with that ministry,” chances are there is probably a growing gap between your convictions and your actions.

The Gospel has a sense of urgency to it. There are windows of opportunity in our lives and the lives of those we hope to reach. Those windows aren’t open forever.

Look at Charlie Bucket. Charlie Bucket is a good boy but his family is very poor. There is the scene in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where the boy gets, as his only birthday present, a chocolate bar. He decides to share it with his whole family. His parents object, “Oh no, Charlie, not your birthday present.” But Charlie insists. He breaks the candy bar into pieces and passes it out to his family members like he is administering the Body of Christ. Maybe he is. It’s a holy moment.

Well, it happens that Charlie receives one of the elusive golden tickets to go to Willy Wonka’s fabled factory. But he has a dilemma. He can sell the ticket for a lot money, money that his poor family desperately needs. Charlie announces that nobody is going to the factory for the contest. His family sits in stunned silence. But then his grandfather, the crusty, biting one, calls him over.

“Boy, there’s plenty of money out there. They print more every day. But these tickets, there's only five of them in the whole world. And that’s all there’s ever going to be. You’d have to be a dummy to give this ticket away for something as common as money. Are you a dummy?”

Charlie’s eyes light up as he says, “No, I’m not.” He enters the contest.

Don’t you be a dummy. Don’t sacrifice the opportunities of your life for something as common as money, or shopping, or television.. Listen to this. . .

“We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which He prepared in advance for us to do” Ephesians 2.10

God creates these opportunities for a faithful people. As it says in Romans 4 “It depends on faith. . .in the presence of God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”

Your faith will increase as you serve. No more excuses! Stop delaying. Get involved. This is worth giving your life to.

Gift

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12.1-13; Matthew 4.1-11


I saw the dentist the other day. I only mention this because, well, let’s say it has been awhile. I don’t have an exact date, but I recall the young people at the time getting excited about a new band called Nirvana fronted by a guy named Kurt Cobain. So yeah, it was probably time to seek out a dentist again. You know, get my once every ten or fifteen year checkup.

Our own Deb Simpson saw me and cleaned my teeth. We discussed this nugget - that dentists have the highest suicide rate among the professions. I had heard this before I think. It falls under category of those things “that everyone knows.” I wanted to know if it was true. I came across this statistic:

Suicide rates among dentists are 7% higher than the average working age population according to researcher Steve Stack. He says that the factors contributing to that are relatively low status of dentists in the medical field; their strained relationships with many of their clients; and that “few people enjoy going to the dentist.”

Let all the people say Amen.

There are other professions that have higher rates of suicide than dentists – sheepherders and woolworkers are a couple. Apparently those sheep aren’t so easy to work with. All that talk about being “sheepish” is a crock. Those sheep have the wool pulled over our eyes, if you ask me. . .But I don’t want to just bleat on about this.. The profession with the highest rate of suicide? Psychiatry. That’s a whole nuther subject.

In general, though, researchers find suicide rates very unpredictable and unmeasurable. Occupation doesn’t seem to be a reliable predictor or a very good explanation of why someone might commit suicide.

I decided then, to ask another question.

Which jobs make for the happiest people?

They did a study recently in the UK asking this very question. Here is what they found:

Happiest Professions

Hairdressers 40%
Clergy 24%
Chefs/cooks 20%
Plumbers 20%

This makes sense. Hairdressers and plumbers can see immediate results from their work. The pipe either leaks or doesn’t leak anymore – no grey areas there. There’s good money in leaky pipes. And as far as hairdressers go, my hairdresser is always happy to see me. There are no real surprises for her when she cuts my hair. I’m easy money.


Christians believe that personal happiness is only one ingredient in living a meaningful life. We believe that God bids us to come and make his kingdom business more important than our personal business. In fact, the Kingdom is our business. Our vocation, the Latin here is vocation which means calling, is to do “everything as unto the Lord.” Everything we do, in the relational world, business world, academia, you name it, is to directly or indirectly bring honor to the Creator.

Frederick Buechner writes that the kind of work God calls you to is work that

(a) you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b).
On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if you’re bored and depressed by it, chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your patients much either. Niether the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.


“where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” This is poetic truth. But in reality, it’s also sometimes difficult to find. Left on our own we may never get to that place of true vocation. But God doesn’t leave us on our own. He comes along with us. In fact, he’s probably also ahead us, waiting on us.

“I tell you about new things before they even happen.” Isaiah 42.9


Vocation not only expresses a “job” but really is the whole picture of what we spend our lives in. We are familiar with people working more than one job. Well think of vocation as all the things you do to bring glory to the Kingdom. It may be that you are a dental hygienist by day and a children’s ministry leader by night and weekend. It may be that you area student by day and a youth ministry worker all other times. You may crunch numbers where you make your money, but it might be the Bible study you lead that gets you fired up every week. The key is, we’re doing our whole day and whole week with God.

“All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit who apportions each individually as he wills.” 1 Corinthians 12.11


God gives us the gift of his presence as we are trying to figure out our vocation and calling. Paul emphasizes the variety of callings but the singular way to live in the will of God, and that is by the gift and power of the Holy Spirit.

Don’t seek to know what your gift is before you are intentionally seeking relationship with God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, you deceive yourself. You can try to do all kinds of good stuff, but if it’s not God-fueled, you will flame out, or fizzle out. Either way, you’re out.

God wants you in – in the game, in the business of Kingdom coming. Jesus had every earthly reason to go ahead and make things happen his way. Grab the bull by the horns, build up his own kingdom. But to that temptation he said, “I will wait for the word that comes from the mouth of God.”

If you have trouble picturing your call of God, consider the story of Esther. Esther was a young Jewish girl called to be queen in the court of King Xerxes, king of Persia. She got to be queen, essentially, by winning a beauty contest. The King held sort of like a Miss Persia contest with 127 contestants. Esther won. She was “lovely in form and features.” She was a trophy wife. She had no power in the kingdom. She was there because the King had killed the former queen when she failed to please him. She was there to look pretty. And that could have been pretty much her life.

Except that events were in motion concerning the people of Israel who were subject to this King. The king’s chief of staff, Haman, had been offended by a leading Jew named Mordecai. In anger, Haman conspired to have the King slaughter all the Jews in revenge. Mordecai gets word of this plan and goes to an unlikely person for help. He goes to the beauty queen.

Mordecai tells Esther she must go to the king and intercede on behalf of her people. But Esther was not trained for this moment. It was against the law for her to approach the king without being first summoned. Esther knew what happened to her predecessor. The king didn’t love her; she was just a part of the harem.

But then Mordecai spoke these words that echoed in her heart, “Who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”

Esther requested to pray and fast for three days before she approached the king. “And when this is done, I will go to the king, even thought it is against the law.

And then she spoke these words of courage and magnificence – “And if I perish, I perish.”

There were depths in Esther that even she did not suspect – as perhaps there are in you. There is only one way to find out. Receive the gift. Use the gift. Follow the call.

Fruit

Jesus took his three closest friends and went up on a mountain. There he changed appearance before their eyes. His face, body, and clothing became dazzlingly bright. He was “transfigured.” It’s pretty clear that this is what Jesus was really like. On the inside, he was a figure of immense power and purity that was only temporarily covered up with dingy robes and ordinary Galilean appearance. In the words of Michael Card, his hard life of suffering was “a distressing disguise.” Of course, Christians believe that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. He wasn’t acting either part. But it must have been a shock even to those who thought they knew him best when a voice from the heavens declared who Jesus really was – “This is my Son, my Beloved. . .listen to Him!”

Who are we Christians, really? What is the disguise and what is the reality? The Apostle Paul would say we are Free People. We have been set free from sin and from religious legalism.

“Life did not mean a constant endeavor to acquire merit before God. Rather, becoming a Christian meant entering a life of freedom, a life in which sin had been dealt with by Christ’s death, a life in which the believer now experienced the indwelling of the Holy Spirit,” writes Leon Morris.

Two things grieved Paul: believers lapsing into religious legalism; and believers falling back into sin. We are free from both traps, Paul declares to the Galatians, by the sacrifice of Christ’s death and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Our freedom to live should be shown in love, not in selfishness.

“You were called to freedom. . .(but not) as an opportunity for self-indulgence.”

Too often we Christians don’t give the impression of being free from either of the aforementioned traps. People look at us and don’t think “free”; “tight” maybe, or “limited” or even “unpleasant” but not “free.” People tend to categorize us for the things we do not do rather than for the loving deeds we accomplish. We are not seen to be free at all or particularly loving. This requires a change in teaching for sure, but much more a change in living.

Nothing can really define itself simply by what it is not. If you had never seen a whale before and I tried to describe one to you, it wouldn’t help you a whole lot for me to begin by saying, “a whale is not a dog.”
Likewise, it’s probably an unhelpful waste of time to say, “a Christian doesn’t drink, smoke, or vote for candidate x,y, or z.”

What is a Christian really like?
What, by God’s grace, have we been set free for?

“Live by the Spirit and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. . .the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

Notice the word “fruit” is singular. It is not “fruits” that might be scattered throughout a group of people – e.g. here is the “loving person”, here is the “generous person”, here is the “patient one.” No, fruit is a cluster and so these qualities should show up in the life of every believer. Love, joy, peace, patience, generosity – these should show up in each one of us on a regular basis. This is the reliable measure that we belong to Jesus.

“You will know them by their fruit.” Matthew 7.16

Sometimes I get asked the question – “How do I know what my calling is? How do I know how God wants to use me.”

Your mission begins where you are, not where you think you should be.

Blossom where you’re planted. Let the fruit fall where it may.

One day a husband came home from work. The house was a disaster. The baby was crying, dirty dishes were all over the counters, dirty laundry was hanging from doorknobs, the TV was blaring, beds were unmade, carpets were unvacuumed, dust was undisturbed, and dinner was uncooked. When he wanted to know what happened, his wife told him, “You know how you always ask me what I’ve been doing all day? Well, today I didn’t do it.”

Our mission from God, our call to freedom, always starts right where we are or it doesn’t start at all. But once we start following the call, we bear fruit and that fruit becomes a blessing to everybody. Jesus idea was that when someone began to follow him, that person would become good news to everybody in the neighborhood, at the office, at school. His idea is that the gospel is good news for everybody – even people who don’t believe it. Rob Bell says, “If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody.”

I am a Christian today because of a couple people who were literally good news to me. They didn’t just talk about loving God, they showed me what it was like. They didn’t just talk about being bananas for Jesus, they were bananas for Jesus.

A cynic might say, yeah, well maybe they were pretty convincing to a young kid on Sunday morning but you didn’t see their faults. Oh, yes I did. The people who brought me fruit and good news were people that I grew to know fairly well. I’ve talked about a few of those people with you. I saw them in moments that they were less than their best. But here’s the thing: I remember those times because they were so few and far between. They were not times where I said, “Aha, so this is what they’re really like!” What I thought was, this is so unlike them. This is out of character. It simply highlighted how good they usually were.

The Apostle Paul says, “Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

That stuff that I used to indulge in, it’s been crucified. I don’t expect to see it in my life much anymore. A believer expects good things, good fruit. It’s the sin, not the good character or deed, that’s the aberration.

This is because of the living Spirit of God that lives in every believer.

“If we live by the Spirit, let us then walk by the Spirit.”

Things produce the fruit they are meant to produce. I don’t coax my tomato plants to produce cucumbers. I do what I can to encourage better tomatoes.

I don’t have to preach to an apple tree to produce apples. And I don’t have to preach to someone living by the Spirit of Jesus to bear good fruit. It’s who you are. It’s what you do.

So, who are you really? What does the fruit of your life tell you?