Serve Others and Serve Yourself
Friday, July 2, 2021
Romans 12:4-5
For the past two Life Lifters, we've been talking about how to improve our serve. We don't mean a tennis technique, but a personal technique of serving others. So far, we have said that we have to learn to serve like Jesus Christ (Mark 10:45), and the only way to know what your spiritual gifts are is to serve. You can't just study, you have to deploy and put it into practice. Today, I want to share this truth, which I hope will encourage you and challenge you: serve others and you'll serve yourself. I get this from Romans 12: 4-5. It says, "Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, who are many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others."
He's saying, just like our body has hands, feet, eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth, shoulders, a back, and knees - all these different parts that all function differently, so does the church. The church is referred to as the body of Christ. It uses the metaphor of our body as a picture of the church. Some people in the church are an eye, some are a nose, an ear, a hand, a foot, etc. Nobody is an armpit, by the way. We all have different parts in the church, but we are all one body.
So, here's one of the many things I draw from that: If my foot needs the help of my hand, and my hand helps my foot, does the hand helping the foot, help the hand? Yes, because when my foot has a problem, my hand fixes that problem, and then my entire body feels better. If my eye has a problem that my hand can fix, and my hand fixes the problem, my eye feels better, but so does my hand because my whole body feels better. Using your gifts in the church will take energy, commitment, devotion, time, talent, treasure, etc. But here's the thing, when you serve in the church, which is the body, you make the whole body better. Then, because you're part of the body that you've made better, it benefits you. Whenever you give your life away, God gives it back to you. The Bible even says, "He who tries to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my [Jesus'] sake will find it" (Luke 17:33). One of the ways to do that is by serving in the church. The Bible again and again teaches that when you give your life to others, God gives you more satisfaction. Who are the most unhappy people? Narcissists. What's a narcissist? It's a person who only thinks about himself, or only focuses on herself. I'm sure you know people like this - they only call when they need something. They're always unhappy. The happiest people in this church are the people who are always serving, always looking to help others. They never have a self esteem problem, never a lack for friends, they grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, and that's how they improve their serve.
If you want to get better at serving, then serve others. And when you serve others, you'll find so much fulfillment that you will realize you actually served yourself. Father, thank you so much for this principle of serving others, and how it benefits the service of our own self. Help us as a church. Help every Bible-believing church have more and more people who understand the joy of serving, and may our church be better for it. Why? So that we can bring you more glory, because we're doing the work you want us to do on earth. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.