July 10, 2016 - Core Values 5 - Enthusiastic Service

Good Morning. As we pray, there’s a lot going on in our country especially with some of the shootings and then also the situation in Dallas. Maybe we could just take a moment together as a church. We are living in a very desperate time. In a very significant and serious time in the world, but here also. Let’s take a moment just to pray together for that.

Heavenly Father, we recognize that we live in a very violent society, and Lord we have many needs. This nation that we live in has many, many needs Lord. There are things that must be changed Lord. Too often we are looking to ourselves and we don’t look to You. To Your ways. We look to our ways, but Lord it is Your ways that are the only ways that can bring about peace. You are the Prince of Peace. You are the author of peace. As long as we go with our ways, we will always have conflict whatever area, arena that is in.
I ask Lord, especially with racial relationships in this country, that Lord you would take a great divide, and you would begin to heal racial relationships. I pray that you would give the church the ability to lead the rest of society by demonstrating unity, by demonstrating forgiveness, by demonstrating love and by demonstrating understanding. Lord it is at a time like this that we the people of God are to make a difference. I ask that in each of our hearts there would be a willingness to understand and make a difference. Maybe in very small ways, but those ways are significant if they are under Your love, and if they’re in following You and Your direction in all of this.
We ask for peace, and we ask for wisdom especially amongst the leaders of our nation. We thank you for the police who protect us, and we ask for their protection. Lord, we ask that humility would reign. We would learn to honor one another. In your name we pray, Amen.
We are now doing our fifth and final value that we’ve been looking at for our church. There are many, many values that our church has. These are just five of the primary, and you can stick many of the other ones underneath that. These aren’t the only five in the Bible. It is just five that we tend to emphasize. Today what we’re going to look at is enthusiastic service and the statement goes; being observant and willing to generously meet the needs of others.
We have, in our church, many examples of servants. We have a lot of people who give themselves in service to the church, to others and to the Lord’s kingdom and His work. A little bit later, we’ll be hearing from two of those. We could hear from many, many of those, but then it would take all day and it’s a beautiful day and everybody wants to get to their garden or something at this point. What I am going to do is look at a couple of passages that give a brief biblical foundation for the area of serving. Primarily, I am going to focus on, in my own experience, practical helps in relationship to what it means to be a servant, and how to serve one another.
Beginning with John 13 it says this. “ 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God, 4 *got up from supper, and *laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself.5 Then He *poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. 6 So He *came to Simon Peter. He *said to Him, “Lord, do You wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered and said to him, “What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter.” 8 Peter *said to Him, “Never shall You
wash my feet!” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” 9 Simon Peter *said to Him, “Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.” 10 Jesus *said to him, “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.” … 12 So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? 13 You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. 14 If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.”
In this story, there are many theological and spiritual lessons. We’re not going to look at those today, but I just want to say I know there are many, many things relating to Jesus and our salvation. Today, we’re just going to focus on the practical aspects of the story and what has taken place. Jesus has set an example for serving for all of us. We’re primarily looking at verse 15 “For I gave you an example…” What was that example and how do we go and do it ourselves? There are four things in this passage that we see about Jesus’ example that we can get our hands on.
The first one is this. He recognized the need. A servant recognizes needs. A servant is aware of what is going on. This was towards the very end, their last supper together, and so it was kind of rush put together. In their culture, when you went into someone’s house and you were going to have dinner there would be a servant or slave there to wash your feet, because everybody’s walking around and their feel are all dirty, so they would get their feet washed. It was a way of showing hospitality. It was just common custom, common courtesy for them. That was missed somehow in the preparation. Jesus recognizes it. He’s aware of what’s going on.
Then what He does, the second thing, He takes initiative. He recognizes the need and then He initiates to meet the need. He doesn’t look around and say how come no one did this? Who messed up this time? That’s what we tend to do, but He just meets the need. He gets up and He acts. That’s the second thing a servant does when they see a need if they are able to. Sometimes we’re not always able to meet the need right? That’s a reality. There are some needs that we don’t have the power, the resources to meet and that’s okay. But if you’re able to meet the need then just initiate and meet the need.
The third thing, and I mentioned this last week, is Jesus does the dirty jobs. The servant does the dirty jobs like the television show. The things that nobody else really wants to do. Sometimes we’ll serve, but we’re really careful of how we serve. That’s okay but that’s not a servant heart. Someone with a servant heart is not careful about how and where they serve. In one sense you could almost say, they’re kind of careless in their serving. Not in a bad way but in a good way.
The fourth thing, to have a servant’s heart and follow Jesus’ example requires humility. We look and think wow, He was really cool and He really showed everybody what a servant was, so it’s a very positive thing for us. To do this was for the lower class. It was for those who weren’t really of any value to do. A servant is willing to view themselves in that way in their service to others. I don’t mean we view ourselves oh, I’m a lousy person and woe is me. It’s in relationship to others. I am willing to take this position of lowering myself below them in order to serve them, and that again is the heart of the servant.
The second passage Philippians 2:3, this is Paul speaking about it directly to us. “3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” Paul is speaking of being a servant, and one of the things he mentions is we need to be observant. Don’t look out for our own interests only but look out, be aware of others’ needs. Learn how to be aware of other people’s needs around us. He tells us in verse three, a requirement for really being good at that is having a mind that regards others as more important than ourselves, and that’s a really hard thing to do. Naturally our tendency is to protect us, care for us, take care of us. I think that’s a lot of the problem in our country on all sides. It’s all about us, my needs.
What we see in here is a servant’s heart is an unselfish and humble heart, but also in this verse there are some pitfalls if we look at it backwards in one sense. If it requires unselfishness and humility to be a servant, what can also happen as we serve is we can allow ourselves to fall into the pitfall of serving out of pride and that’s a no-no also. Doing our service so that we can say I’m a servant. Now, they wouldn’t have done that in their culture. We could say look at me, look what I have done and that’s just as bad. The other thing is having selfish or ulterior motives when we serve. Doing it so then we get something in return. Jesus talked about that. He said don’t give expecting in return. Don’t just go help those who then will come and honor you and help you. I think one simple key to this is learning to do things quietly and secretively. You can’t always be secretive obviously, but you can do it with that kind of attitude always. When we have our picnic, if you’re on the clean-up crew, people are going to see you cleaning up. Can’t hide the dishes under your shirt and try to wash ’em and act like you’re not, but you can do it with a heart that is not interested in anybody seeing. Also, you can do things secretly. You can just do things when nobody knows about it and that’s an important way to guard our hearts.
He goes on in Philippians. He says “ 5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” It goes on and he talks about Him giving Himself on the cross. What we see here is that being a servant is a mindset. It’s an attitude. You tell your kids man, you got an attitude son. Well, God wants us to have an attitude and that attitude is an attitude of a servant. An attitude that views others as more important. That’s what Jesus did. Jesus was at the highest, but his attitude was to go to the lowest in service to others. He’s calling us to do the very same thing.
Finally, last passage and then we’ll just hit the practical stuff. Ephesians 4:11 says “11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” What we see here is that when we think of service, we must not only think of physical service. That is one very important way that all of us must be serving. We must all be serving in physical tasks, meeting practical needs. That is critical for everyone, but also we must see that there is, and I want to be careful of this, there is spiritual service. However, we must never divide physical and spiritual service. All service is spiritual. When you’re downstairs in the nursery with babies you are doing spiritual service. When you come for a cleaning day at church you are doing spiritual service. Like it says here, when you’re building others to help them become mature people in Christ you are also serving, and we must be doing both kinds of serving. It is crucial.
Jesus makes it really clear that we don’t say well, I do the spiritual service and you do the physical service, because Jesus did the physical service. He was always doing physical service wasn’t He? His physical service is always really spiritual. When He washed the disciples’ feet how spiritual is that? We didn’t go into that part but boy, there’s a lot of spiritual stuff going on in the washing of the disciples’ feet, but it is downright practical in every way. When He fed the 5,000 that is so practical we can’t believe it, but it is so spiritual we can’t imagine it and our service must be both.
Those are some basic biblical principles you can think about. Now, here’s some practical stuff and some of this I hope is helpful and stuff that I’ve tried to learn myself, and am still trying to learn. We serve both individuals and we serve corporately like we serve the church or we serve an organization in the community.
First individually; here’s some helpful things so that you can become more of a servant and these aren’t in any kind of priority order. First one is this; learn to discern a person’s countenance. To serve other people we need to learn how to discern, learn how to read other people’s countenance, other people’s faces. To do that requires concern for the person, being observant and the Holy Spirit. You know what it’s like. You’re around somebody and it seems like something’s not right. You’ve felt that before. Do you know what you do when that happens? What a servant does is they ask is something not right or are you okay? A servant doesn’t badger. A servant asks. If the person says yeah, I’m fine and they shut it down, okay. We need to learn to do this. Learn how to read the people that we have relationships with and we’re around to see what is going on. Some are much more gifted at this than others. It could be a tendency to think if you have a problem then say something. I’m not a mind reader and that’s true. Nobody’s a mind reader. Absolutely no one’s a mind reader, but we do need to be face readers. We need to learn how to be face readers.
The third thing is listen behind the words of a person. I have found that women tend to be much better at this than men. I don’t know why that’s the case. I think it’s just the way God created us, so you’ve got to forgive men for that, but there is a sense of trying to listen behind what is being said. Learning to do that as a skill. That is a skill. The Bible calls it wisdom. It is a way of being wise. A wise person can see behind words to truth. A wise person is able to draw knowledge out, pull truth out of an individual. I will say this, and this is kind of a caution, sometimes words are words and nothing more. There are the people who are just the facts ma’am kind of people. That’s something that sometimes just needs to be appreciated, because if we always think there’s something behind words then we get in trouble the other way, so we've got to caution that. We all know the stories of that. What time is dinner and it’s like well, I’ve been working all day to get dinner ready. Then the person’s thinking no, I want to know on the clock because I’m trying to think do I have time to cut the grass, or however it works. There’s all kinds of little lessons like that.
Fourth thing, sometimes just do it as Nike says. Don’t ask. Sometimes when we notice a need we just need to meet it without asking the person can I help? Sometimes we should ask, but sometimes we just need to get up and do it and that’s always a tough one to discern Just maybe balance that out a little bit as you’re seeing needs.
Fifth thing I have here is that we need to learn how to do life together and that’s really hard. In order to do all these other things, it’s critical to learn how to do life together as a family, as a church and this may take place in small groups and other ways. We tend to do life separately in this country. Maybe it’s as a couple. You just kind of do your own thing, and then you come to things where other people are. It needs to go beyond that. I think two good examples; they’re not going to share today, but Ed and Marianne. They just do a wonderful job of doing life with other people in our church. They’re always inviting people to go do something with them, or it’s Easter time and there are people who don’t have anywhere to go for Easter because they’re just alone here. Ed and Marianne have them over for dinner. Ed and Marianne do life together with other people. That can be a really hard thing. Church, ministries and small groups are not enough. They are important and that’s why we have all of them, but that is just not enough to do life together. It must go beyond that. Those are some things when it comes to individuals.
Now, what I would like to do is look at ways to serve that are maybe a little larger corporately. The first one is serve the least and the little. Corporate serving needs to really, and we serve everybody but we need to especially direct our serving at the least and the little. Jesus talks about that all of the time, about going to the least. Here, I would say again, we have some great examples of this. Especially with the little. The Jundi’s and Alycia Blough, they devote so much time. Unbelievable amount of time. They are tremendous examples at serving the little in our church.
Two, serving through organizing. This is another one that’s really beneficial. Now, here’s what’s important about this. I think of somebody who’s no longer here but is still here, who is a great example of that, and that is Doug Hare. Most of you remember Doug. Doug served through organizing be it a men’s breakfast or a church picnic when he was here. What was so right about how he did it was he was the first one here and the last one to leave working like crazy the whole time, but he also got everybody else to volunteer and be a part of that. Sometimes we can serve by organizing others to serve, but if you do that make sure you’re serving also. Leading in that service.
Three, serving through ministries. Two examples here will be the women’s ministry do a tremendous amount of serving in this church. And the second one is the music people. The music people spend a lot of time serving you in the church. They’re here when nobody else is, so we don’t see them. We just see them when they’re up here. There are many ministries that we can serve through.
Fourth, serving through hospitality. All of us can do that. Hospitality can be small and it can be large. Hospitality is never a competition. There are some people who are entertainers at their house. They are very hospitable, and they know how to have people over. You don’t have to be one of those to be hospitable. It’s great if you are one of those. Those aren’t the only ways to be hospitable.
Five, and I kind of mentioned this, serving whatever need arises. Whatever you see, if you can, take the initiative and do it.
Sixth, serving through visiting. I’m going to invite Annette and Alan to come up and we’ll let Annette and Alan take over for a few minutes.
I want to thank Mike for giving me the opportunity to speak because it was about 20 years ago you gave a similar message. I was a new Christian. Just came to the church. Scared, I had no clue what I was doing at all. Through the message that I heard through Mike, I decided I wanted to become a volunteer at a nursing home. I contacted a nursing home and I went in. I had to find my right niche to be a servant there, but I did. I was doing nail care, and so on Saturday mornings I gave two hours of my time to go there and do nails. Since then a lot has happened, 20 years. I got married, life changes, school. Now Alan and I together, we visit on Sundays after church.
I can’t tell you how special it is for us. We look forward to it. We plan. We don’t really do anything but go in and talk to people, but it has made such a difference in our lives and hopefully in their lives as well. Just recently we have lost a whole lot of people at the nursing home. I bet you in the last three or four months we’ve probably lost seven people, which is enormous for us because we’re only two people. I don’t know how they see each other, so I don’t know that it made that big of a difference to them but maybe it did. I’m going to just tell you one special thing that happened about two weeks ago. We visited and there was a lady there that I’ve been seeing since 2003, and she had a lot of mental issues. She was given some medication, but because of the side effects of the medication she didn’t have a really good memory, and she was very, very, very anxious. She was scared to death. There was a lot of life happening, and she told me all about what was happening, but more importantly I think was that I took the time that Sunday for about maybe two minutes. Maybe not even. I just held her hand and prayed with her. She asked me if I would pray for her and I did. Right there in the middle of the dining room. It didn’t matter. It was just between her and I that moment, and I don’t know if that made a difference for her or not but I hope it did. I know she calmed down, and I would just say “Jane” take a deep breath. Just breathe in, hold your breath and let it out slowly. Breathe in, breathe out and then I prayed, and then she did that. For those few minutes I felt like she was a little bit calmer. I don’t know what happened after that. She died the Tuesday after we visited with her, but she’s been there since 2003 so I’ve known her a long time. She was just a doll.
We have stories about everybody at that nursing home. One of the things that Mike said today, I’m going to paraphrase, get involved in something bigger than yourself. Going to that nursing home and seeing those folks every week is so much bigger than us. I don’t know about you Alan, but I go there and no matter how bad of a day I’m having I can go there and have a good day because they look forward to us coming. I enjoy being with them. I learn so much from them. I can’t tell you what 20 years’ worth of knowledge has done for me, but it’s very humbling. It really is. I’m not telling you to go out and volunteer at a nursing home but get involved in something bigger than yourself, and it’ll make a huge difference in your life. Establish relationships with folks whether it be people here at church or your neighbor or whomever. Just start establishing those relationships. It’s those relationships that really, really matter to each other. It’s not being texted on the phone, but it’s about face-to-face interactions with folks and just letting them know that you care. Now Alan can share.
Thank you. I have to be honest, when I first met Annette and she was visiting the nursing home I thought what is she doing? What’s the point of going and cutting somebody’s nails? Don’t they have people there to do that? Eventually I realized that that was not the point. She was going and for a few minutes these residents had someone holding their hand, talking to them one-to-one. Especially the older guys. They just loved having a pretty, young woman holding their hands, rubbing lotion in, trimming their nails. It was a time when they were receiving some personal attention and I think that just reinforced their self-image as a person and not a patient. I learned that eventually and over the last couple of years in particular that I’ve accompanied Annette to the nursing home. I’ve gotten to know some of the residents and it’s difficult, because you begin to know them, and you walk in one Sunday morning and they’re gone. The last couple have really touched me deeply. You get attached to people and you know they’re going to pass away sometime soon. Hopefully not too soon but it’s not unexpected.
Another thing that impresses me is that it takes so little to make a difference in someone’s life. There’s one woman we visited regularly and in the summer we’d take her cherry tomatoes. She didn’t get much fruit or vegetables in her diet. We’d take her a little baggy of cherry tomatoes from our garden and her eyes would light up, and she would eat them within five minutes of getting them, because she liked them and didn’t get them that often. We’d take her a fresh orange because they did not serve oranges. I went out and found some Black Jack gum. All the old geezers out there, remember Black Jack? I found a store that sold it, took it in and she was so delighted. Again, it’s something so small and to us is insignificant, but it can make a huge difference to someone else. It’s very humbling when I go and talk to someone. They’re talking about things that happened 40, 50 years ago and you look at these people, and they’re frail, weak and old, but at one point in their lives they were young and vibrant. They were 20 or 25 in the prime of life. They had their whole lives ahead of them. Today they’re in a wheel chair, bed ridden. Just trying to connect with them on a personal level is very humbling. I thank Annette for bringing me along. It means more to me now than I ever would have realized. It’s something small that can make a big difference in someone else’s life. It doesn’t take a lot of time, energy or money. I just encourage you to go out and find a way to serve someone else yourselves. I struggled with the idea that if it makes me feel good am I doing it for the right reason? Yeah, God wants us to serve in ways that make us feel good. If we felt bad what incentive do we have to do it? We should do it cheerfully and we do get something out of it.
Thank you. In closing, let me also just say with that. They’re visiting nursing homes. There are also folks even in our church at times. It’s a real way of serving to just go visit somebody in the church. Especially some who maybe have a hard time getting out and stuff, but all of us have that responsibility to visit one another.
Let’s close in prayer. Lord we just thank you for Annette and Alan’s testimony to us. So practical and yet so simple. Such a simple way to serve and yet such a powerful way to serve. To touch lives with little gestures and little kindnesses. I pray we’d understand how much our service means to others. In Your name we pray, Amen.