Articles From Our Bulletins
Being Served or Serving ("Epecting Good Service" or "Happy to Serve")
There is a whole industry built around “service.” It is probably one of the fastest growing areas of our economy. Its scope is truly astounding. You can now be “served” in previously unimaginable ways. We can pay someone to do things for us that people for eons have done quite easily and well for themselves. But we pay someone else to do them now. Why? Is it necessity, convenience, or is it that when and if we can afford it, we just like being “served” because it makes us feel more important?
For some (or many?) of us, wherever we go and whatever we do, we expect “good service.” After all, we’re paying for it! With regard to expectations, some of us have gotten so used to being served, and being “well-served,” that we demand our every expectation of service to be met in areas or situations that we shouldn’t. So, we get all bent out shape and lose our cool when the teenager with his/her first job at the fast food place is unable to accommodate our “special” instructions on how we want our $4.99 hamburger served. But there is also, as is usually the case, a bleed-over issue…
Because so many of us have come to expect “good” if not “great” service in virtually every aspect of our lives- where our every whim or expectation is catered to at all turns, we have a problem adjusting to a “service-oriented” way of life where we are the servers rather than the ones being served… like Christianity.
Question: Do you consider yourself better than Jesus? Are you more deserving or worthy of service than He? “Well of course not; don’t be ridiculous!” Then why do you presume upon Him/His to serve and cater to your every desire and expectation? “I don’t!” Really? Then…
- Why do you refuse to worship Him (or complain about “the service”) when/if you “get nothing out of it,” or it doesn’t meet your estimations of (a) “good service”? Isn’t “worship,” by definition and nature, supposed to be about Him rather than “me”, cp. John 4:23-24 and Philippians 3:18-19?
- Why do you demand that bible classes and/or sermons to fit your expectations of time, manner of delivery, level of content, and personal applicability; or if they fail to meet your expectations, refuse to participate? Are you the whole body, or just the most important part of it, 1Corinthians 12:12-20?
- Why do you refuse to believe in and follow Jesus when/if He doesn’t provide all the “things” you want in life- like a job that meets your financial and personal desires, a spouse that fulfills your “needs,” personal or family health, the kind of house you want in the “right” neighborhood for you, or…. basically anything and everything you want in and from life? Many in the multitude in John 6 apparently also expected “to be served” in these kinds of ways. When they weren’t, “many of His disciples withdrew, and were not walking with Him anymore,” v.66.
The reality is that modern Christianity (especially in the U.S.) faces the very real problem of a populace that has become so accustomed to “being served,” and even “well-served,” that it expects God to serve and worship them rather than the inverse. Or at a minimum, a populace that will only “serve” and “worship” Him on their own terms, or in ways that suite them.
In John 13, after Jesus had washed His disciples’ feet, He said, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them,” vv.12b-17. Christianity, and by that I mean being a true Christian, is about serving rather than being served. If we miss that, we miss everything.
What about it? Do you “expect good service” from your religion, or, are you “happy to serve” in His kingdom?
- Served_or_Serving.pdf (80.63 kB)
