06/10/2018
Do you feel called to serve the Lord, but just can’t seem to satisfy yourself in the answer to His calling? Do you answer “Here am I!”, and yet doubt the significance of what you are giving towards the effort? Well forget the grand desires you may have, and concentrate on giving all of yourself to Him, not to bring Him glory in the earthly sense, but in every little thing He asks of you. Do His will as He would have you do it.
“Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.”
Isaiah 53:12 ESV
We call Jesus Lord, and King of the Jews, and yet he lived as a poor man of meager existence. He was the Son of God, but He walked everywhere He went, and when He slept in houses they were those of others. So what made Him different, and what did He do that we still remember, honor, and worship Him to this very day? Oh, we can say that He influenced people, or worked miracles, but what He really did was obey God’s will, and did the small insignificant things in life as if they were the greatest ones. He gave Himself to God in His entirety, and humbled himself in His nature as a man.
What does it mean that He humbled Himself in the nature of man? Well, Jesus was all man, and all God at the same time. This is hard for us to comprehend, but he had a dual personality. He was everything you and I are, and at the very same time He contained the full divinity of God. Yet someone had to be the master, and in Jesus that was God... so His nature as man humbled itself before who He was as God.
“"No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
Matthew 6:24 ESV
In this scripture Jesus gives us the key to serving God’s will; He tells us how we are to cope with our own duplicity... our own conflict between who we are spiritually and and physically. This is the choice Jesus had to make, and it is our choice as well. We must humble who we are as men before who we are as spiritual beings. So let’s look at what that means to our answering the callings of God.
God is a spiritual being, and although He created all the physical things we see around us, as well as us, His primary concern isn’t in what we are as flesh and bone, but who we are in character... in spiritual perfection. Jesus is telling us this directly when He explains how we should worship Him...
“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."”
John 4:24 ESV
So what is important to God? What is it about our answer to His will that brings Him glory? Does He get more glory from such things as building St. Peter’s Basilica, or a small grass hut in the jungle of Africa, South America, or on some distant island? The answer is... neither... He gets glory in a very specific way, and Jesus gives us a clue to it in this scripture:
“Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”
John 14:13 ESV
Doing the will of God is what brings Him glory! He doesn’t want great buildings, money, fame, notoriety, or any of the things we value so much as men... He simply wants us to do His will... which is what Jesus is doing when He gives us what we ask for in prayer. It isn’t what He gives... it is quite simply that He gives it, and why.
A man has two employees, and they both do the same hourly job. Both do exactly the same work between the hours of 8 and 5, but when something really needs to be done and it requires working past normal hours, one will ask if he gets overtime, while the other will just do it. The difference in the two is that one works solely for himself and what he earns, while the other serves the man because he loves him, and the job. Which employee does the man reward more? Which one does he value more?
God can do all things with a word, so why does He call us? What is it about our serving Him that brings Him glory? Is it really what we accomplish, or is it why we do His will in the first place? The answer is in the greatest commandment as Jesus quoted it for us...
“And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”
Matthew 22:37-38 ESV
The answer to “what is the glory?” in John 14:13 boils down to this... whether Jesus answers the prayer of a child who wants a puppy, or a King who desires a Queen... the glory is always in why He answers in the first place... the will of God, and how much He loves His Father as He serves Him.
So we are back to our initial question “Do you feel called to serve the Lord, but just can’t seem to satisfy yourself in the answer to His calling?” If you are feeling this way then perhaps you aren’t serving Him for the right reasons. Maybe it is time to determine who your master is, and to humble the man in you before the God you serve. Perhaps it is time to replace the love you have for yourself with a total and all encompassing love for God. It will be in this way that God can ask you to sweep a floor and be glorified just as much as He would if He asked you to build a beautiful village in His name.
Prayer:
Father, thank you for calling me to serve you, and in showing me that your glory is not in my effort, but in the reason I answer. I thank you for Jesus Christ who showed us that doing your will isn’t about earning your favor, it is about demonstrating our love for you, and allowing you to pour out yours on us. Help me Father to put the old man behind me, and to walk as a new creation before you. Help me Holy Father to serve you and not he who is in the earth, and who tempts me with false glory and power. Help me Father as I place you before all other gods, and love you with all my heart, soul, and mind. Help me Father to walk closer with you each time I answer your call, and to serve you from my heart. Help me Merciful Father to see the glory in the most trivial of tasks, simply because I am loving you in doing them... there is no greater glory I can bring you, and nothing else I can give to you. Great are you my God, and greatly to be served... even in the lowliest of tasks I humble myself before you, and have no master but you. Holy, Holy, Holy, are you the Lord over my life, the vessel into which I pour all the glory of my love.
Rich Forbes