40-Days to Servanthood: Day 24

A commitment to servanthood will include a commitment to giving.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll, in his helpful book, Improving Your Serve: The Art of Unselfish Living, says that a servant is “a giver.” Servants give away more than money. A man recently told me, “Money is the easiest thing to give away, Mark.” He’s right. Often, we give money as a guilt-offering or as a way of placating others who need more valuable things than we feel we can afford to give.

Servants are generous in the donation of their time, energy, love, support, prayers, encouragement, and money. They take to heart the words of Paul in Philippians 2:3-4: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit...Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

Swindoll recounts an incident that took place in bomb-ravaged London after the Second World War. In a bakery one morning, sweet rolls were being baked and iced. A little boy, dressed in ragged clothes, pressed his nose against the bakery window, looking longingly at those rolls. An American soldier, part of the force still in England, happened by in a jeep. Taken by this sight, he stopped, for a time staring at the boy. The soldier then climbed out of his jeep and walked over to look in the bakery window.

“Would you like one of those rolls, son?” the soldier asked the boy. “Oh, yes!” the little guy replied. The soldier went into the bakery, ordered a dozen of the rolls, and brought them out to the boy. “There you go,” he said and turned to walk toward the jeep. Just as he was climbing in behind the wheel, the soldier felt a tug on his coat. It was the little boy. He peered into the soldier’s face and asked, “Are you God?” Swindoll concludes that we are never more like God than when we give.

I would add that when we give, we also get to see God in those to whom we give. “Whenever you do it to the least of these...” Jesus has said, after all (Matthew 25:31-46).

A commitment to servanthood includes a commitment to giving.

Bible Passage to Ponder: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).