A willingness to be served by others can also be an act of servanthood.
Let me tell you about a man I once knew. His sudden death, seemingly in the prime of life, came as a shock to everyone. One phrase was used repeatedly to describe him: "He was a nice guy.” I knew that this was true. But I knew something else: He had been unhappy.
"I'm everybody's doormat," Mr. Nice Guy once said. "I don’t mind doing things for others. But I never seem able to muster the courage to ask anyone else to help me."
Often, nice-guyism is at least partially motivated not by love for others and certainly not by a desire to respond to God’s love given to us through Christ, but by a desire to feel important.
Richard Foster writes of the night Jesus spent with the apostles before He was arrested: “When Jesus began to wash the feet of those he loved, Peter refused. He would never let his Master stoop to such a menial service on his behalf. It sounds like a statement of humility; in reality it was an act of veiled pride. Jesus’ service was an affront to Peter’s concept of authority. If Peter had been the master, he would not have washed feet!”
As a pastor, I’m often given special treatment by other Christians. Because of that, I try to incorporate service into my daily relationships. At a wedding reception one night, I was going to refrain from getting my food, which was being served cafeteria-style, until everybody else had theirs. But as I sat at my seat, the bride’s father approached me. “What would you like to eat, pastor?” he asked. “You don’t have to get my meal,” I told him. A somewhat hurt expression crossed his face. He said, “I know I don’t have to do it. But I want to do it.” It would have been the cruelest act of arrogance on my part not to let that man serve my food to me.
A willingness to be served by others can also be an act of servanthood.
Bible Passage to Ponder: “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me...She has done what she could” (Mark 14:6, 8).
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