Serving is hard. Posted on May 14, 2019 by Brendon
In life you hear a lot about serving. Serving here, serving there, serve when, serve now. Not a bad thing at all. But there is a larger aspect of this idea of serving that has come to light in recent days over conversation with friends and family. The larger question that we have to ask ourselves is: Why are we serving, or better yet, how do we serve for not just ourselves?
It is an interesting distinction when you begin to think about those two questions. Because on the one hand, we could all give the correct sunday school lesson answers that we gave when we were 6. But why does it seem to get harder and harder to serve when we grow up? Ok maybe some of us haven’t ‘grown up’ but our age in number has gone up.
Over the past few days, through some conversation and study there are few things that lead me to these questions:
To be frank, serving was never something that I got when I was growing up. When serving opportunities came around, I joined not really caring about the serving but because all of my friends were going and I wanted to be with them and have a good time with them. The serving was the backside of the reason for serving. However as I have grown and have begun to understand what it was that Jesus meant when he states in John 13:15, that his example is there for us to follow. It still seems blurry at times of WHY serving is so important.
John 13 is a passage that everyone has probably heard whether in story or in a sermon somewhere. But John 13 is one passage that can outline and shape the way we look at serving:
John 13:1-17 is the story of Jesus, in his last week of life coming to a table with his disciples as they are about to partake in the holy supper for the Passover feast. At the beginning of the night, before anything even happened, Jesus noticed that the room was prepared but there was nothing or no one to wash the feet of those reclining at the table. So Jesus, the Son of God gets up, takes off his outer garments (because cleaning feet is not clean or neat – it’s messy) and grabs a towel and a basin and begins to wash each and every one of his disciples feet. To the amazement of the disciples as they watched this happen, they really didn’t know what to say or do. Jesus at the end of this even states – ” You don’t understand now what I am doing, but someday you will.” It was a perplexing moment in time that left people speechless and even the ones that did speak just spoke, with no thought.
A few moments later, after he calls out the disciple that is going to betray him, Jesus takes to the stage again for a swan song lesson and a command to his disciples and anyone else that was there with them.
John 13: 33-35 – Dear children, I will be with you only a little longer. And as I told the Jewish leaders, you will search for me, but you can’t come where I am going. So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
A new command I give to you – to love one another.
So if we are going to be disciples of Jesus and if we are going to say that we follow Jesus – then we ought to love one another the way that Jesus loves us.
Peter was one of the ones that were in the room with Jesus when this timeless situation took place. He was actually one that really just didn’t know what to say and just started talking. He was always like that, Peter even took off a guards ear because he was zealous to protect Jesus.
Peter went on to lead the church from the beginning in the book of Acts and he continued to raise up disciples and became an elder in the church. Peter also wrote letters that are in the scriptures. One of those passages take this a little idea of serving and the questions of why do we serve and how do we serve without worrying about us a step further.
1 Peter 5:5 – ……And all of you, serve each other in humility for ” God opposes the proud but favors the humble.”
So why do we serve? Because Jesus told us to serve others the way he served us.
How did Jesus serve us? We see in John 13 that taking on the role of a slave or house keeper, that he humbled himself before everyone else and washed their feet.
How do we serve not just for our own needs? We humble ourselves like Jesus and put others before us.
The outcome – we become disciples of Jesus that listen and follow the new command that Jesus gave to his disciples in the upper room.
When we gather together to serve, when we serve each other in our homes, when we serve our kids, when we serve our wives, when we serve our neighbors, when we serve our parents, when we serve the annoying neighbor or grouchy lady in the grocery store…….
We will be loving others the way Jesus loved us by humbling ourselves and serving everyone out of the love that we have from Jesus in our lives.
Humility leads us to love one another. Loving one another leads us to serving those all around us.