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Improving Your Serve

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Philippians 2:1 “Therefore if you have…any affection and mercy,…”

It’s easy to ignore that phrase and so I compared it to other translations, and here is what I found: “..if any affection and compassionate sympathy…” Another translation: “…you are concerned for others…” or “…are your hearts tender and sympathetic…” or “…if you have a heart, if you care…” or “…do you have any love and care for others?”

This is the result of the previous blogs “litmus tests.” “If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you….” then serving others will follow. You will want to serve Jesus first, and then others. That service will begin in your family first and spread to your church family, your neighbors, and people you have never had the privilege of meeting. As you do practice these things you will come face to face with your weaknesses. You will realize you need to the Power of the Spirit. You will realize that your words, and acts of love and kindness are not enough. That you need the gifts of His Spirit. You will recognize and realize that everyday you cannot neglect seeking to be connected to Jesus; to abide, live, and remain in Him. You will not want your efforts to be in vain and you will desire to see the fruits and evidences of that connection manifesting in others.

Over the years I have heard people say, “Well, pastor, that’s not my gift.” Others have said, “I have done my part now it’s time to let someone else have a chance to serve.” Henry Blackaby, author of Experiencing God writes, “When you believe nothing significant can happen through you, you have said more about your belief in God than you have declared about yourself. You have said that God is incapable of doing anything significant through you. The truth is, He is able to do anything He pleases with one ordinary person who is fully consecrated to Him.”

1 Jn. 3:14 We know that we have passed over out of death into Life by the fact that we love the brethren (our fellow Christians). He who does not love abides (remains, is held and kept continually) in [spiritual] death. Love, true love, God’s love, is expressed not in words alone, but in actions. Those actions will manifest in service to others, especially Jesus, and His body. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t say I love Jesus and then ignore the body of Christ. People will say, “I can worship God at home. I watch a service on TV.” First of all, Jesus defines love and worship as obedience, and surrender. If you are not an active member of a church – you don’t love Him and you sure aren’t worshipping Him through disobedience. You are ignoring Him. You are rejecting Him. Second, if anyone is living like this they have failed to take the “litmus tests” of Scripture. Paul said in 2 Cor. 13:5 “Examine and test and evaluate your own selves to see whether you are holding to your faith and showing the proper fruits of it. Test and prove yourselves [not Christ]. Do you not yourselves realize and know [thoroughly by an ever-increasing experience] that Jesus Christ is in you—unless you are [counterfeits] disapproved on trial and rejected?” To not serve Jesus and others – especially in the Body of Christ is quite simply unbelief. You are not passing the test of faith – you are failing it.

The true follower of Jesus, is not sentimental about Jesus. What does that word sentimental mean? It can be a “view of or attitude toward a situation or event; an opinion; exaggerated and SELF-indulgent feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia.” Followers of Jesus do not base their actions or inactivity on opinions. They base them upon the Word of God. They pick up their cross, deny self-indulgent feelings, sacrificing their all for the Reward of the Lamb and for His suffering. True followers of Jesus practice doing what Jesus said, and taught. They practice doing the things Jesus did. They practice over and over the commands of the Word of God. They are always practicing His Word. Are you? Are you passing the tests?

Chuck Swindoll penned an appropriate analogy regarding serving Jesus and others: “This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to do and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody would do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.” Are a somebody or are you a member of Jesus’ Body? His body?

Big Things in Small Packages

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1 Chronicles 4:9-10 Jabez was honorable above his brothers; but his mother named him Jabez [sorrow maker], saying, Because I bore him in pain.10 Jabez cried to the God of Israel, saying, Oh, that You would bless me and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and You would keep me from evil so it might not hurt me! And God granted his request.

It’s hard to believe that 25 years ago a tiny book was written by Bruce Wilkinson titled The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life. A Wikipedia article about the book noted: In the book, Wilkinson encourages Christians to invoke this prayer for themselves on a daily basis: I challenge you to make the Jabez prayer for blessing part of the daily fabric of your life. To do that, I encourage you to follow unwaveringly the plan outlined here for the next thirty days. The book became an international bestseller, topping the New York Times bestseller list and selling over nine million copies by 2002.

What strikes me most about this passage of Scripture is that it emerges from amidst three chapters of genealogies. Many a new years resolution to read the Bible through has ended abruptly when encountering what appears to be an endless genealogy. Yet, Psalm 25:2 states clearly that it’s the Glory of the Lord to conceal a matter – but the glory of kings is to search out a matter. God conceals these hidden gems to see if those who are destined to be kings and queens in His Kingdom are willing to persist in the search for His hidden treasure. One pastor wrote that Jabez was the unknown who became well known.

Not only was Jabez a nobody, his birth and arrival was cursed by his mother, and his dad was non-existent. There wasn’t a blessing to be received from either parent. Chuck Swindoll, noted: The English rendering is Jabez, but the Hebrew is pronounced yah-betz (the second syllable sounds like the word baits.) His mother had the Hebrew word ah-tzav in mind when she chose her son’s name. The term ah-tzav refers to anguish, intense sorrow, or pain. To arrive at his name from the Hebrew word, you transpose two letters. So it’s a pun based on sound play. This would be like someone who hates cottage cheese, which is made from milk curd, saying, “I don’t prefer milk crud, thanks.” Somehow, his birth was associated with intense pain, though we have no idea how or what that pain might have been.

Jabez overcame, in spite of his curse, becoming a honorable man. Chuck Swindoll adds that: “The Hebrew word for honorable literally means “heavy.” We use that same concept in English when we say, “This is a weighty matter.” When used of a person, it conveys the idea that he or she is impressive or noteworthy.” What made him honorable or noteworthy is not specifically mentioned in Scripture. Yet, anyone reading this passage can see what is inferred: Jabez cried to the God of Israel,…In a polytheistic culture this was uniquely, and distinctly different from the average inhabitant of Canaan. Jabez chose Yahweh to be his God, and God chose to answer his prayer.

Jabez prayed a mountain shaking prayer. Filled with faith and desperation, he cried out saying, Oh, that You would bless me and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and You would keep me from evil so it might not hurt me! And God granted his request. In Jewish tradition the phrase, “your hand might be with me” when referring to God means that God’s protection, guidance, and support are with you. Essentially it signifies that you are not alone and God is actively involved in your life, providing strength and assistance. The “hand” metaphor represents God’s power and presence in a tangible way. What’s truly amazing about his prayer is that he was not born-again. He did not have the indwelling Presence of the Godhead living in him. He did not have the testimony of Jesus’ life, or Resurrection, yet he has the boldness to pray that God’s Power and Presence would be with him in a tangible way. Modern, western-minded, church attenders are typically waiting to die and go to Heaven in order to “know” God in a tangible way. Jabez was not having any of that. He was in pursuit of the “Prize” – the “Pearl of Great Price.” He refused to allow his circumstances, or the spiritual climate that surrounded him to determine the altitude he was desiring to ascend to.

Big things are made up of small things. Big destinies are typically shaped by small, ordinary, everyday choices – when nobody is watching and no one cares. BUT GOD. What little thoughts have you been having; what tiny choices have you been making? Are you willing to turn life’s stumbling blocks, and curses into stepping stones of advancing into the reality of God?


In God We Trust?

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2 John 5-6 And now I beg you, lady (Cyria), not as if I were issuing a new charge (injunction or command), but [simply recalling to your mind] the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. 6 And what this love consists in is this: that we live and walk in accordance with and guided by His commandments (His orders, ordinances, precepts, teaching). This is the commandment, as you have heard from the beginning, that you continue to walk in love [guided by it and following it].

It sounds so simple to obey the command to love. But in reality it’s easy to love the people we like or that love and like us. The difficult people not so much. I’ve been pastoring for over 30 years and I have had the “blessing” of being on the receiving end of all of the above. Practicing this command hasn’t gotten any easier but I can say that the Lord has given me some tools to help cope with the pain that comes from rejection, hurt, criticism and pain. What are some of those tools?

  1. Become like Jesus. That’s a simple but profound truth. It’s been said you can’t become an overcomer till you have been given something to overcome. The same is true of becoming like Jesus. If I am going to “become” then I will need to face the challenges that do not look or sound like Jesus. When I am challenged I am learning to see that as an opportunity to become like Jesus. In other words, I lean into the pain. John 4 states that Jesus had need to go to Samaria. Samaritans hated Jews. Thus you can infer from this passage that Jesus had need to be rejected. He knew He would grow through it.
  2. Pray to see the person or difficult situation as Jesus sees them (or it). In the Book of Genesis God goes looking for Adam and Eve after they had eaten the forbidden fruit. Adam tells the Lord that he had hidden himself because he was afraid; and I was naked. The Lord wisely asks, Who told you that you were naked? The enemy, the accuser of the brothers, is in the full-time business of reminding all of us that we are naked. God on the other hand covers our sins, nakedness, shame, and guilt.
  3. Release the person from your expectations. One of the weirdest passages in the Bible is found in John 2:24: But Jesus [for His part] did not trust Himself to them, because He knew all [men];…How can Jesus, Who loves all people perfectly, not trust them? 1 Corinthian 13:7 states that Love always trusts. I asked the Lord about this and He gave me a great answer. He reminded me of my children when they were toddlers. He asked, Robert did you love your children when they were toddlers? I said, Absolutely Lord! He asked, Would you have trusted them to drive your car? I answered, Absolutely not! He asked, Did you love your children less because you didn’t trust them to drive the car? His point was made. Jesus loves, and He always trusts – yet He has realistic expectations of what we are and are not capable of doing and being.

Chuck Swindoll author of, Make Up Your Mind, writes that: In the 1960s a teacher was given a roster showing the actual I.Q. test scores of the students of one class, and for another class a roster in which the I.Q. column had been (mistakenly) filled in with the students’ locker numbers. The teacher assumed that the locker numbers were the actual I.Q.s of the students when the rosters were posted at the beginning of the semester. After a year it was discovered that in the first class the students with high actual I.Q. scores had performed better than those with low ones. But in the second class the students with higher locker numbers scored significantly higher than those with lower locker numbers!

When we shift our focus, and expectations from others onto Jesus, He empowers us to do all the above. Which really is all about trust. Who do you trust? Isn’t it funny that we have trouble trusting Jesus and others? Yet, we trust ourselves – more than them – to protect us from being harmed or hurt. We say we Love Him. If love always trusts then our focus will need to shift from us – onto Him.