People offer any number of excuses for not engaging in active service to others. Some say that they don't have
time; others say that they have other priorities. The two basic reasons, however, that I see at the root
of why people don't serve are these:
1) Pride. They simply don't want to humble themselves to serve others. Selfishness is a form of pride—people
don't want to be inconvenienced or detoured from what they want to do, when they want to do it. Self-centeredness
is pride.
2) Fear of failure. Many people feel that they don't have anything to give to others or that others will
not be open to receiving what they can or desire to offer.
Ultimately, the person who steadfastly refuses to engage in service is a person who …
• … doesn't understand who God is. If a person truly has an understanding of God as a loving, generous
Father—One who gave His only begotten Son so that we might be reconciled to Him and live with Him forever—then
a person has a built-in desire to give. How can a person know the extent of God's love and not want to share it
with others? God not only requires us to give service, He desires for us to give service. If we know from our own
experience of salvation that God is love, then we must also know that as God's Spirit resides within us, we must
love others. That means serving others and giving to others in order to meet their needs.
• … don't understand why he or she is alive. So many people today question, “Why am I here?” The Christian
should never have to ask that question. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you are alive on this earth to worship
God and to reflect glory to God by the way you serve your fellow man. Loving God and loving others, just as you
love your own life, is the commandment of God to you. It is your purpose, your job, your role, your position, your
meaning in life.
• … doesn't understand God's purpose for this world. God's purpose for the world is that all men might
come to know God and receive forgiveness through Christ Jesus. Jesus came to seek and to save all who are
lost. God's purpose for you as a part of the larger body of Christ is that you be a part of an ongoing, consistent,
and diligent effort to win lost souls to Christ and to build up the faith of your fellow Christians. God's purpose
is that His kingdom be established on earth, just as it is in heaven. Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father in heaven,
/ Hallowed be Your name. / Your kingdom come. / Your will be done / On earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:9–10).
If a person truly understands who God is, why he is on this earth, and what God's purposes are for all mankind,
how can he dare to say to God, “I'd rather do my own thing than serve You by serving others”? How does he dare
to exert his own will over God's will?
I have much more compassion for those who don't believe they have any talents to give to God than I have for
those who know they are talented and who refuse to use their talents for God's glory.
My word to those of you who believe that you don't have anything to offer in the way of service is this: you
do. God does not call any person to do anything within His kingdom unless He also equips that person—spiritually,
materially, physically, mentally, financially, and in all other ways. For whatever type of service God may be opening
up to you, God not only has prepared you and equipped you to succeed in doing it, but He will continue to assist
you and increase your talents as you engage in the work set before you.
• In what ways are you feeling challenged by the Holy Spirit right now?
Created for Service
Service is a part of God's reason for creating you. Ephesians 2:10 tells us,
We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should
walk in them.
Even before you were born, God had in mind who you would be and what He would desire for you to do in this very
specific time and situation in which you are living right now. You haven't arrived where you are in your life by
accident or whim. God's plan and purpose for you is unfolding. God would not intend for you to engage in service
for Him without preparing you for the challenge.
Your service is an outgrowth of the talents and abilities that God has placed in your life. We each have been
given certain “service-ready equipment” from birth: a unique personality, mental and emotional capacities and propensities,
talents, and strengths.
God has been at work in your life from your first moments, molding and preparing you to fulfill His plan and
purpose for you. Throughout our lives, God has allowed us to have certain experiences, engage in certain relationships,
and be a part of certain groups of people in certain environments and cultures—all of which become a part of the
mix of who we are and what we bring to any form of ministry or service. We can be assured that He will continue
to work in us until the day we die.
God works in us and through us as we serve, and He uses our service to continue to prepare us for even greater
service in the days ahead.
You may feel that you are at the kindergarten level of service—that you have limited resources and abilities
with which to serve. God's plan is that you use what you have been given to the fullest, and in the course of your
using those resources and abilities, He will increase them so that you are able to serve Him with greater
and greater abilities, and to do so more and more effectively.
God's purpose for you in service is never to decrease you or to diminish you but, rather, to increase you and
to cause you to prosper in all areas of your life—mentally, physically, emotionally, materially, relationally,
and above all, spiritually.
• Reflect back over your life and isolate several examples of how God has equipped you for service through
the talents, experiences, skills, and capacities He has given you and helped you to develop.
What the Word Says
Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through
the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what
is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen (Heb. 13:20–21).
What the Word Says to Me
What the Word Says
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and
the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto
Jesus the author and finisher of our faith (Heb. 12:1-2a).
What the Word Says to Me
What the Word Says
He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6).
What the Word Says to Me
• How do you feel in knowing that God is at work in you and through you as you serve others?
• In what ways are you feeling challenged in your spirit?
Equipped with Spiritual Gifts
Not only have you been equipped with certain natural gifts and abilities, but the Holy Spirit dwells within
you. He brings to you His unlimited gifts and abilities! That's why Paul could claim so boldly, “I can do all things
through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).
What you lack, the Holy Spirit supplies.
When you are weak, He is strong.
When you err or fail in your service to others, He has the capacity to continue to work all things together
for good—both to you and to those whom you serve (Rom. 8:28).
Indeed, if God is for us, who can be against us (Rom. 8:31)? We are guaranteed to be successful in our service
to others as long as we rely upon the Holy Spirit to work in us, through us, and on our behalf—not only individually
but as members of the greater body of Christ.
Paul cites several types of spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit gives freely to those who believe in Christ
Jesus and are filled with the Spirit.
In Romans 12:6–8 Paul lists several gifts:
Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us
prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching;
he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy,
with cheerfulness.
Note that Paul's emphasis is on the use of spiritual gifts. What the Holy Spirit gives to us we are to
use for the benefit of others. They are not gifts given to us for our exclusive benefit or enjoyment but,
rather, that others might benefit and, in the process, we might grow in our faith and spiritual power.
Furthermore, it is the Holy Spirit who determines which gift of His He will choose to put into operation
at any given time in our lives and service to others. The gifts of the Spirit are just that—the Spirit's gifts.
They reside in Him and are given to us for the greater use of the entire body of Christ. We see this clearly as
Paul describes some of the gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:4–11:
There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord.
And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. But the manifestation of
the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit,
to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts
of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning
of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same
Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.
God gifts us with supernatural gifts so that we might serve others. If you feel a need arising in your service
to another person, ask God to endow you with whatever gift you need in order to get His job done for His
glory. He will do so! He is the One who gives spiritual gifts so that His people might be edified and His kingdom
expanded and His love and grace revealed to the lost.
• What new insights do you have into God's spiritual gifts and their relationship to your service of others?
What the Word Says
Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase
the fruits of your righteousness, while you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving
through us to God (2 Cor. 9:10–11).
What the Word Says to Me
What the Word Says
Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.… He who prophesies speaks edification
and exhortation and comfort to men (1 Cor. 14:1, 3).
What the Word Says to Me
What the Word Says
For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure (Phil. 2:13).
What the Word Says to Me
The Purpose for Gifts
Paul wrote this to the Corinthians:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts
us in all our tribulations that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which
we ourselves are comforted by God. (2 Cor. 1:3–4)
The gifts of the Holy Spirit—both those given to us as natural endowments from our birth and throughout our
lives, as well as those that the Holy Spirit gives to us for the meeting of specific needs and situations—are intended
for us to use in comforting those who are in trouble. As we have been comforted by Christ, so we are to comfort
others.
All of our experiences in life—and especially those which have brought us pain, sorrow, and suffering—equip
us in unique ways to have empathy with others and to show compassion to them. Everything in your life, and perhaps
especially your failures and trials, has in some way prepared you to show the love of God to others in ways that
are more heartfelt, meaningful, and effective. God's grace to you in your past times of suffering prepare you to
become an effective minister of God to those who are currently suffering.
Too often, the laymen in a church expect the pastor to do all of the ministering to those who have emotional
or spiritual needs. That is far from what the Bible sets as the standard for service. Read what Paul wrote to the
Ephesians:
To each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.… And He Himself gave some to be
apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the
work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the
knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. (Eph. 4:7,
11–13)
The leaders in any church setting—those called to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers—are
placed there for one main reason: to equip the saints for the work of ministry. If you are a layman,
you are a saint who is being equipped for ministry.
Your purpose in life is not to listen to hundreds of sermons and attend dozens of seminars and then die and
go to heaven. Your purpose is to hear the Word of God as it is preached and taught to you and then immediately
and consistently to apply that preaching and teaching in practical forms of service to the people around you. The
“work” of ministry belongs to all of God's people. In ministering to others, you become an agent of God's comfort
and care.
• What new insights do you have into your role of service and into who is called to be a “minister”?
None of us can justify our existence apart from God. We each are deeply indebted to God for every blessing He
has given us—every bit of help He has given in times of trouble, every bit of consolation and comfort He has given
in times of pain and sorrow, and every bit of encouragement He has given in times of failure.
It is out of a heart of thanksgiving for what God has done for us that we, in turn, serve others. If you have
thanksgiving in your heart … if you have been forgiven by God and are the recipient of God's love … then you are
equipped for service. What you lack in ability, He will provide.
• In what ways are you feeling challenged in your faith walk today?
From Developing a Servant's Heart by Charles
Stanley. Copyright 1998 by Charles Stanley.
