40-Days to Servanthood: Day 13

Servants serve on purpose.

I recently met some remarkable high school seniors. The local chapter of the university alumni group to which I belong annually gives a scholarship to a freshman from our area who attends our alma mater. The job of a committee on which I served was to interview about twenty young people and recommend one of them for the scholarship.

These young people weren’t just outstanding students, they were also outstanding people, each with notable commitments to service. Whether it was tutoring younger students, teaching ballroom and hip-hop dancing to kids at church in order to enliven them to the physical and mental attributes God had given to them, serving dinners at an outreach in an impoverished area, or counseling children at a camp for diabetics, all were involved with service.

“Why?” we asked them. One young woman’s answer distilled the responses we got from each one: Service was her way of giving back to God for all of His blessings to her. “And,” we asked, “how do you find time for serving?” “My mother taught me,” she told us, “that you can always find time for what’s important.”

Servanthood is, as we’ve said, a byproduct of our life with Jesus Christ. In a way, a lifestyle of servanthood sneaks up on us as we allow Christ to be central in our lives and wills. But it’s also true that only those who purposely open themselves to opportunities for service will enjoy the kinds of lives that God blesses and uses for wonderful purposes. That means penciling times of service onto our calendars.

In the New Testament book of First Timothy, the first-century preacher, Paul, mentions a man named Onesiphorus twice. Why? In spite of having family duties and obligations, Onesiphorus went out of his way to visit and care for Paul during one of his incarcerations. He was an on-purpose servant.

Servants serve on purpose.

Bible Passage to Ponder: “May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chain; when he arrived in Rome, he eagerly searched for me and found me —may the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day! And you know very well how much service he rendered in Ephesus.” (Second Timothy 1:16-18)