Habit #3 - Service
As a spiritual discipline service frees us from pride and builds into us blessed, Christ-like humility.
Every sphere of life is a sphere where we can serve other people: At home, at work, in the church, amongst our friends, in the wider community. In different seasons of life we will serve in different ways. In some seasons (such as when we have a young family or an ill family member) we have to serve more at home. In other seasons we have a greater freedom to serve outside the home – in our church community or in the town we live. But no matter where we have committed to serve the important thing is that we commit to serve in the spirit of Christ. We come up underneath people and bless them with our service. We empty ourselves to build others up.
As you build a rule of life, consider where you have committed to serve others ‘on the regular.’ Are you serving your family? Are you serving your church family? Are you serving your town?
The following is in excerpt from “The Spirit of the Disciplines” by Dallas Willard:
In service we engage our strength in the active promotion of the good of others and the causes of God in our world.
Here we make an important distinction.
Not every act that may be done as a discipline need be done as a discipline. I will often be able to serve another simply as an act of love and righteousness, without regard to how it may enhance my abilities to follow Christ. There certainly is nothing wrong with that, and it may, incidentally, strengthen me spiritually as well. But I may also serve another to train myself away from arrogance, possessiveness, envy, resentment, or covetousness. In that case my service is undertaken as a discipline for the spiritual life.
Such discipline is very useful for those Christians who find themselves—as most of us by necessity must—in the “lower” positions in society, at work, and in the church. It alone can train us in habits of loving service to others and free us from resentment, enabling us in faith to enjoy our position and work because of its exalted meaning before God.
Paradoxically perhaps, service is the high road to freedom from bondage to other people. In it, as Paul realized, we cease to be “menpleasers” and “eyeservants,” for we are acting unto God in our lowliest deeds: “Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not with eyeservice, as menpleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you are serving the Lord Christ” (Col. 3:22–24, RSV).
ur environment.
Can this be applied by the mother of six who must leave her little children uncared for in a derelict neighborhood to support them by scrubbing office floors at night? Can it be applied by the refugee from Central America who pushes his ice cream cart around the neighborhood, ringing his bell as he goes? Yes, it can be, if they have heard and received from the heart the gospel of the Kingdom of God—though this provides not the least shadow of an excuse for failing to do all they reasonably can to help them. And truly, it must be so applied by them. For they are where they are, and God has yet to bless anyone except where they are. Needless to say, only clear teaching and example, with much practice in the discipline of service, can make us strong here.
But I believe the discipline of service is even more important for Christians who find themselves in positions of influence, power, and leadership. To live as a servant while fulfilling socially important roles is one of the greatest challenges any disciple ever faces. It is made all the harder because the church does not give special training to persons engaged in these roles and foolishly follows the world by regarding such people as “having it made,” possibly even considering them qualified to speak as authorities in the spiritual life because of their success in the world. Some of the most important things Jesus had to say concerned the manner in which leaders were to live:
“Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whoso- ever will be chief among you, let him be your servant. Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many (Matt. 20:25–28).”
We misunderstand this passage if we read it merely as instructions on how to become great. It is, rather, a statement on how those who are great are to behave. To be ‘great’ and to live as a servant is one of the most difficult of spiritual attainments. But it is also the pattern of life for which this bruised and aching world waits and without which it will never manage a decent existence. Those who would live this pattern must attain it through the discipline of service in the power of God, for that alone will train them to exercise great power with- out corrupting their souls. It is for this reason that Jesus told his disciples to wash one another’s feet and set them an example (John 13:14). But where are our seminary courses that would teach leaders in all areas of life—even the church—how to do this and accustom them to it as the fine and easy thing to do?
Service to others in the spirit of Jesus allows us the freedom of a humility that carries no burdens of “appearance.” It lets us be what we are—simply a particularly lively piece of clay who, as servant of God, happens to be here now with the ability to do this good and needful thing for that other bit of clay there. The experience of active love freed up and flowing by faith through us on such occasions will safeguard us from innumerable pitfalls of the spiritual life. We must, then, strive to meet all persons who cross our path with openness to service for them—not, of course, in any anxious, obsequious, overly solicitous manner, but with ease and confidence born of our vision of our lives together in the hands of God.
Every sphere of life is a sphere where we can serve other people: At home, at work, in the church, amongst our friends, in the wider community. In different seasons of life we will serve in different ways. In some seasons (such as when we have a young family or an ill family member) we have to serve more at home. In other seasons we have a greater freedom to serve outside the home – in our church community or in the town we live. But no matter where we have committed to serve the important thing is that we commit to serve in the spirit of Christ. We come up underneath people and bless them with our service. We empty ourselves to build others up.
As you build a rule of life, consider where you have committed to serve others ‘on the regular.’ Are you serving your family? Are you serving your church family? Are you serving your town?
The following is in excerpt from “The Spirit of the Disciplines” by Dallas Willard:
In service we engage our strength in the active promotion of the good of others and the causes of God in our world.
Here we make an important distinction.
Not every act that may be done as a discipline need be done as a discipline. I will often be able to serve another simply as an act of love and righteousness, without regard to how it may enhance my abilities to follow Christ. There certainly is nothing wrong with that, and it may, incidentally, strengthen me spiritually as well. But I may also serve another to train myself away from arrogance, possessiveness, envy, resentment, or covetousness. In that case my service is undertaken as a discipline for the spiritual life.
Such discipline is very useful for those Christians who find themselves—as most of us by necessity must—in the “lower” positions in society, at work, and in the church. It alone can train us in habits of loving service to others and free us from resentment, enabling us in faith to enjoy our position and work because of its exalted meaning before God.
Paradoxically perhaps, service is the high road to freedom from bondage to other people. In it, as Paul realized, we cease to be “menpleasers” and “eyeservants,” for we are acting unto God in our lowliest deeds: “Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not with eyeservice, as menpleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you are serving the Lord Christ” (Col. 3:22–24, RSV).
ur environment.
Can this be applied by the mother of six who must leave her little children uncared for in a derelict neighborhood to support them by scrubbing office floors at night? Can it be applied by the refugee from Central America who pushes his ice cream cart around the neighborhood, ringing his bell as he goes? Yes, it can be, if they have heard and received from the heart the gospel of the Kingdom of God—though this provides not the least shadow of an excuse for failing to do all they reasonably can to help them. And truly, it must be so applied by them. For they are where they are, and God has yet to bless anyone except where they are. Needless to say, only clear teaching and example, with much practice in the discipline of service, can make us strong here.
But I believe the discipline of service is even more important for Christians who find themselves in positions of influence, power, and leadership. To live as a servant while fulfilling socially important roles is one of the greatest challenges any disciple ever faces. It is made all the harder because the church does not give special training to persons engaged in these roles and foolishly follows the world by regarding such people as “having it made,” possibly even considering them qualified to speak as authorities in the spiritual life because of their success in the world. Some of the most important things Jesus had to say concerned the manner in which leaders were to live:
“Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whoso- ever will be chief among you, let him be your servant. Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many (Matt. 20:25–28).”
We misunderstand this passage if we read it merely as instructions on how to become great. It is, rather, a statement on how those who are great are to behave. To be ‘great’ and to live as a servant is one of the most difficult of spiritual attainments. But it is also the pattern of life for which this bruised and aching world waits and without which it will never manage a decent existence. Those who would live this pattern must attain it through the discipline of service in the power of God, for that alone will train them to exercise great power with- out corrupting their souls. It is for this reason that Jesus told his disciples to wash one another’s feet and set them an example (John 13:14). But where are our seminary courses that would teach leaders in all areas of life—even the church—how to do this and accustom them to it as the fine and easy thing to do?
Service to others in the spirit of Jesus allows us the freedom of a humility that carries no burdens of “appearance.” It lets us be what we are—simply a particularly lively piece of clay who, as servant of God, happens to be here now with the ability to do this good and needful thing for that other bit of clay there. The experience of active love freed up and flowing by faith through us on such occasions will safeguard us from innumerable pitfalls of the spiritual life. We must, then, strive to meet all persons who cross our path with openness to service for them—not, of course, in any anxious, obsequious, overly solicitous manner, but with ease and confidence born of our vision of our lives together in the hands of God.