40-Days to Servanthood: Day 21

Now that you’re committed to a lifestyle of servanthood, don’t give up!

One week ago, we said, “If you’re intent on taking the hard and God-blessed path of servanthood, you might want to pray this prayer each day, ‘Jesus, help me serve not for the compliments of others, but to glorify You and to help others.’ Then, do more than pray about it; work at it! This is how you can cultivate servanthood as a way of life!”

After saying that “trial, error, and success” are the key elements in finding your own unique brand of servanthood, we identified several important ways of being a servant, based on a list compiled by Richard Foster: serving in hidden ways; doing the service of small things; serving by guarding others’ reputations; allowing oneself to be served by others; and affording courtesy to others.

In the coming week, we’ll look at other ways of serving. I hope that this list will do more than respond to any curiosity you feel about what the Bible means when it talks about servanthood. It’s presented in order to spark you (and me) to use trial, error, and success on the way to authentic, pervasive Christian servanthood!

The New Testament book of Galatians was written by the apostle Paul to a church that confronted several dangers. One was the danger of believing that one can be saved from sin and death by the good things that a person does. Another danger was the opposite notion that if a Christian sinned, failing to live in an attitude of love toward God and neighbor, it didn’t matter. Both ideas were wrong, Paul said. To his friends in the Galatian church, he wrote, “You foolish Galatians!...Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” (Galatians 3:1-3). Paul was urging those first-century Christians not to give up. Later, he says, “...let us not grow weary in doing what is right...” (Galatians 6:9).

There are only nineteen more days left in our journey to servanthood. Ask God to help you incorporate these lessons in Christian service into your daily life so that even after these forty days, the good things the Holy Spirit is planting in your heart now will keep growing and blooming in a lifestyle of Christian servanthood all your life!

Now that you’re committed to a lifestyle of servanthood, don’t give up!

Bible Passage to Ponder: “Let us not grow weary in doing right” (Galatians 6:9).