Going after God (4) Through Service
- Rev Norman Cameron

It is widely acknowledged that the key verse, and the key theme, of the gospel of Mark is Mk.10:45 “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” We follow a servant king, we worship one who wrapped a towel around his waist and washed his disciples’ feet. One who taught us what true humility was, who, as Philippians 2 tells us, was in very nature God yet who made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant.

If we are to go after God then we need to pay attention to the one who walked amongst us and who exemplified godliness. We need to closely observe the life of the one who delighted the Father’s heart by how he lived and how he died. At the core, at the heart, of Jesus was a servant mindset. And if we are to be serious about going after God then we will come to realize that it is a very practical thing, a down to earth thing. We do not read too far into the gospels before we discover a profound truth – that the way up to God is the way down.

Jesus said “he who seeks to exalt themselves will be humbled, he who humbles himself will be exalted”. Jesus proclaimed the upside down kingdom, a kingdom that is completely counter-cultural. Our world is obsessed with power and status and recognition, and rising to the top. God’s kingdom is about service, and weakness, and love, and humility. But in these things we see the power and the glory of God. Jesus took a towel and redefined greatness. “Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” We hear these words in church, but do we really understand them and their radical nature.

As we have explored this topic of going after God there is a flow or a movement that has taken place. After seeing that we have an inbuilt thirst for God we have seen that we must feed ourselves with the truth of the word of God. The emphasis there is on our heads, our minds. Then we saw that going after God is a matter of the heart, a love affair. If feelings for God are dead it is hard to go after him. And now we move from head to heart to hand as we look at going after God through service.

Here is where we see if the head really understands and the heart is in love – for now it leads to real, practical, down to earth action. The closer we draw to God the more practical our faith is. Sometimes people are accused of being so earthly minded they are of no heavenly use. I find that amongst our churches there are too many people who are so heavenly minded they are of no earthly use and that is not a Christlike quality.

If we are to go after God and draw nearer to God then we need to understand what it means to have a servant heart – if you want to go up, you need to learn how to go down. Jesus disciples’ needed to learn this and we need to learn this as well.

1.We are saved to serve

I am sure you can quote Ephesians 2:8 -9 off by heart. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – not by works so that no-one can boast…”, but do we know verse 10 “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works…” We are saved to serve, to do good works.

Ephesians 4:12 says that “God gave some to be pastors and teachers to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up”. This service of course is broader than serving within church activities and organizations, we are called to serve others, to serve people – it is as broad as that, but it certainly is about serving our brothers and sisters. This is how the local church is built up. This is part of the point of church – it is to train us how to serve.

We do need to be trained how to serve because it is something that goes against the grain. We can serve out of duty, we can serve in a self righteous way, or we can serve because it is in our own best interests to serve, but true service does not have these features. True service genuinely seeks the well being of the other person; true service is also often hidden. Richard Foster in his book Celebration of Discipline says “The flesh whines against service but screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for recognition. It will devise subtle, religiously acceptable means to call attention to the service rendered.”

True service draws us near to God. True service is not always hidden, but the point is that when it is hidden we should be as happy to do it as when the service is more observable. Also true service may involve a large task, but it can draw us even closer to God because it is a small act. Sometimes the small, trivial acts enable us to see God – the giving of a cup of water, the writing of a card or a letter, the stopping to let an elderly person cross the road. As we do these things we become more human and as we become more human we become more like God for we have been made in his image.

As we see God more clearly we see people more clearly as being made by God and having a special dignity. God works through people and as we serve people we find that we are going after God. As someone on an overseas project said - in a strange way as they were in a hole in the ground digging out a latrine they felt most like a Christian and the closest to God. I understand that exactly. We have been saved to serve and the more we have a servant heart the more we get close to the heart of Jesus Christ.

2. We are drawn closer to God as we meet each other’s needs.

We live in a world where everyone seeks to have their needs met, more than that, many seek to have their wants met thinking that their wants are their needs. We live in a demanding society. The culture of consumerism has infected the church and people will taste different churches much as they will try different supermarkets to see if they will get what they want, or need.

Now we have spiritual needs and it is important I believe that a church seeks to meet those needs – the need for good teaching, the need for relevant worship, for warm fellowship, for good youth programmes and we hope that High Kirk provides this. But as we seek to satisfy our needs I hope that individual Christians see their local church also as the place in which they can best serve other people. We are here not just to have our needs met but to be need meeters.

We can have the attitude of expecting the minister, the Kirk Session, the youth organisation, the choir, the musicians, the BB and GB to provide us with good services and programmes and pastoral care but we ourselves are not going to do anything to help meet those needs. We can focus on our needs being met, but not see ourselves as being the need meters, as being part of the solution. No, that is someone else’s job. As the words of the hymn has it – “so let us learn how to serve, each other’s needs to prefer…”.

Phil.2:3 says “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others.” Notice Paul acknowledges that we have our own interests (“Look not only to your own interests”), we have our own needs to be looked after, but that is balanced by looking after other’s needs (“Look out also for the interests of others”). But why should we look after other’s interests? Why bother meeting other people’s needs?

As I have thought about this and as I have grown in understanding of God and how he works I see that he works through people and we go after God and draw closer to God and become more like God as we serve people. Too often we can see people as a distraction. This job would be great we often say if it wasn’t for people. People get in the way. People are a distraction, people are annoying, people are awkward, people are stupid. But it is as we serve people that we serve God better, as we learn to love people we learn to love God better and the more we do that the more we see people as God sees them and values them, and the more we feel valued as well.

Church is not just about God, it is about people. If you take the people away you might as well take God away. The more you serve people the closer you will get to God. It is exhausting investing yourself in people - ministry/service is tiring, it is draining. Jesus knew that. Every servant of God knows that – but it is also intensely rewarding. (See Bill Hybel’s Volunteering book p.19). We ought to have people clamouring to serve because it is rewarding, it is fulfilling, it is joy bringing – this is the way we have been made. As we come to church, as we attend our small groups one of the main reasons is to serve, to be need meters. God has given us gifts to be used to build up the church. Bill Hybels says, and I agree, that God intended the church to be mainly a voluntary organization. The paid staff are there to equip and facilitate the people to find and use their gifts. Our service is to help you serve.

We are saved to serve, we go after God as we meet other people’s needs.

These are my two main points but before we close I want to make one last point that will help as a corrective in this area of serving for sometimes some errors can creep in that cause problems.

3. We are here, not to serve God’s needs but his purposes.

Just as we get used to the idea that we are saved to serve, and we serve God through serving people why do I now say God does not need us. I say this because it is what the Bible says and it acts as a healthy corrective to us serving with the wrong mindset.

In Acts 17:25 Paul says “And God is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.” God is self sufficient, he is content in and of Himself. He did not need to create us. This means that when we serve we do not get an overblown idea of our importance. It prevents us from having an attitude that says I am the lynchpin of this whole church and without me everything would fall apart. No, it won’t – it will keep on going because the church and God is bigger than any one person.

If we think that God needs us it reduces God to our level. It makes God dependent on us, but we are dependent upon God. If we believe that God needs us it is a small step to seeing ourselves as indispensable, and then pride kicks in and we forget that service is actually about humility.

There is a balance here for us isn’t there. We are saved to serve, but although God wants to use us he does not need us – he could use someone else just as easily. This might help us to hold our roles and jobs a little more lightly than we tend to do. It means that we become less possessive, we can share our jobs, we can delight in other people’s gifting, it means we can train others to succeed us.

You see there is always a fine line between service mode and power mode. We can start off in service mode and then it can end up in power mode. James and John strayed into power and glory mode. Someone can start off humbly serving others and end up in a position where it is more about serving themselves and their own needs. Someone was once asked how he would know when he had a servant-like attitude, and the answer came back “By how you react when you are treated like one.”

It is better to say as Paul said of David “David served God’s purposes in his own generation….”(Acts 13:36) God has no needs but we can serve his purposes for this generation. You can only serve this generation, this is your opportunity to serve others, to bless others, to go after God through ministering to people. Ministry or service can be hard, it can be frustrating, it can be tiring, but it is a privilege and it is fulfilling and joy bringing. For as you serve people more and more you see God in people. And surely that is our ambition – to see God.

A child’s prayer – “Lord do not make us like porridge, which is difficult to stir and slow to serve. But make us like cornflakes – crisp, fresh and ready to serve. Amen.”