Daily Reading for Monday, February 4: Serving

Core Value:
Serving

Greatness in life comes through serving and loving others.

We know life is about serving others, not ourselves. God has shaped each of us in specific ways with natural and supernatural gifts to serve Him and expand His kingdom. We shall strive to be a community of servants who, like Jesus, did not come to be served but to serve. For a person to truly be great, he must be a servant of God and others. We find personal significance through being released to focus on the needs and interests of others. We believe that the desire to serve God and people is God's intention for everyone.

Introduction

This week we explore the core value of service. As Jesus said, “The greatest among you shall be your servant.” If, out of all of our times of prayer, our passion for Christ, and the changing process He takes us on, we cannot develop a servant’s heart toward one another or to the lost, we have acted in vain. For we cannot effectively minister to one another or to our neighbors if we cannot serve them. Let’s explore what it means to serve, how to serve, and the love that God pours out on those He calls His servants.

Daily Reading for Monday, February 4
“5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.” Ephesians 6:5-8 NIV

When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he replied, “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” We’ve already explored how these verses describe the passion a believer possesses and expresses for Jesus. Perhaps the greatest expression of passion is service, for it is service that differentiates between true passion and emotionalism. Emotionalism quickly gets dried up in service; passion gets fired up. Emotionalism’s fervor wanes in service; passion’s fervor is stoked higher. That is because, when we serve according to the passion God has placed inside us, that passion is fed. And, using the campfire analogy, the glowing embers are fanned into flame as passion is acted upon through service.

You may be thinking to yourself, “Yeah, right. I serve and I don’t feel very passionate. Or you may be saying to yourself, “I don’t have a passion, how can I serve?” Let me challenge you with this thought: for the Christian, all passion can only come from love of Jesus Christ. No matter what we may feel passionate towards, that passion must be for Christ first and foremost. If you feel that you don’t have a passion, check your love level. Is Jesus first and foremost in your life? We can only serve wholeheartedly when the Lord has our whole heart; from that service springs the abundance of passion-fueling love that will propel you into all kinds of ministry.