Who's Serving Who?

What if you were to go into a restaurant for lunch today and when you sat down, the waiter/waitress came to your table and sat down saying, "I'll have a sandwich and a cup of coffee." What would be your first response? Wouldn't the question come into your mind, "Who's serving who here?" The word serve in the Greek is, Diakoneo, and it means to render any kind of service. It is also a derivative of the Greek word, Diakonos, which is where we get our English word, Deacon, from. A Deacon's work, as recorded in 1Tim 3, is a service ministry. A good example of this is in Acts 6 where seven men were selected to oversee the distribution of food to the widows in the early Church.

When we are saved and begin our Christian lives, we read and study the Bible and each day learn more about God and how to serve Him in this life. As the Lord begins and continues to sanctify us and we grow spiritually, He will call us into a specific service for Him. Some are called to be pastors and teachers and some to the mission field and some to clean bathrooms. None of these callings is greater than the other; in answering the call to any of these types of ministry, we are serving God and His people.(His call is not limited to the above mentioned)

A pastor is not the top dog in the local church, he is a servant. The pastor is a servant to all who are a part of that local church. The usher in that same church is also a servant. He assists and helps people as they come through the door. The custodian who cleans the bathrooms is providing a service to God and His people. None of these people, in these positions, is any greater than the others. We are all in service to the Lord, if we are doing His work.

I'm reminded of a story which Pastor Chuck Smith used to tell and I won't attempt to quote him but I will give the main point. He arrived at the church one morning and noticed that there were cigarette butts scattered around the parking lot. He mumbled his displeasure and began to pick them up but complaining about the butts in the parking lot and how he disliked that. While he was picking up these butts and complaining, the Lord spoke to him and asked, "Chuck, whose Church is it?" Chuck responded by saying, "It's yours Lord." The Lord had reminded Chuck that it was His Church and Chuck was serving Him by picking up those butts.

I think we sometimes loose sight of who is really serving who as we go about our daily Christian lives. I have met and talked to a lot of Christians who had their view of God and our relationship with Him turned around. Some of them thought they should never have to suffer or go through any type of affliction. Whether they had been instructed on how to take scripture out of context, or even twist it to meet their ideas or not, was having an adverse effect on their walk with God. This happens a lot of times with Christians who have not disciplined themselves to reading and studying the word of God.

I'm not picking on Christians or attempting to be harsh and critical, but instead, I'm being honest about a problem which exists in the Church today. Far too many Christians don't read their Bibles and have got the idea of service turned around. They believe and think that God should be serving them. When they have a problem, they demand that God show up and fix it. When they are in need, or want, of something, they think God should present it at the snap of their fingers.

This really reminds me of the Positive Thinking doctrines and the older Word of Faith Movement (which has pretty much morphed into the New Apostolic Reformation movement or NAR). The latter was always referred to as the 'name it and claim it' or 'blab it and grab it' movement. I've heard some of the claims these teachers have made when it comes to demanding from God the things they 'want' in their lives. Of course, it's all based on how much faith you have in God and if you don't receive it, your faith was too weak.

This false doctrine bled into prosperity and health. God will bless you with riches and wealth if your faith is strong and you just ask Him. That's not the way it works. Many of these false doctrines and lies are based on scripture taken totally out of context. There are many scriptures which refer to the riches of the Lord and these are skewed to meet these false teachings. As an example,

True humility and fear of the Lord lead to riches, honor, and long life. Proverbs 22:4 

But the word of God also tells us this,

 Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment.  1 Tim 6:17

The problem with this teaching, well one of the problems, is those who teach and following this teaching and practice it, are expecting God to work for them. They demand that God give the things they want, they demand wealth and riches and they expect God to heal and provide them with 'divine health'. God doesn't work for us and He doesn't serve us and provide for our every whim. He provides for our needs and heals according to His will, not ours.

How many stories have you heard concerning people, even children, dying because they believed these lies? Children being taken off of insulin or other required medication and the results are death? Even adults have had this happen and they made the decision for themselves. God provides for what we need regardless if its medication or money to buy milk. I remember my mother telling me how much she trusted in the Lord to provide food for us during hard times.

She told me about a time when we had very little food in the house and there were eight of us at the time. She wasn't sure what she was going to do for supper that evening and she started to pray and there was a knock at the door. When she answered the door, there was a man there with a huge sack of potatoes. God knew what we needed that day and my mother didn't have to make demands to get it. She simply prayed and asked God to provide. George Mueller was famous for this; he depended on God to provide food and the other needs for the orphans he was taking care of. He believed in the power of prayer and believed without any doubt that God would always provide and He did. There are far too many accounts to record here but there are recorded in his story, George Mueller, Moody Press.

The Lord provides for our needs, not our wants,

“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’  These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs.  Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.  MT 6:31-33

With a promise like the one above, why would we expect God to work for us or to answer to our demands? Why would we feel the need to demand? It's not about getting what we can from God but as the passage above states, if we seek Him and His kingdom first, He will provide what we need.

To make this even easier to understand, when we are saved, we begin to grow closer to Jesus and we learn as we read and study His word and the time we spend in prayer. As we grow and get to know Him more and more, we have a desire to serve Him in the way He has called us. As I mentioned at the beginning of this writing, we serve Him and His people in many different ways. We are gifted by His Spirit, as we read in 1Cor 12, and in these ways, we are doing His work. It's all done out of love for Him and those who are around us, saved or not.

Don't ask God what He is going to do for you today, He already saved you from eternal condemnation. He didn't have to send His Son to die in our place; He didn't have to provide us with a means to salvation. It was because He loves us so much, He sent His Son to die for us and save us from our sin. We all deserve to end up in hell (nobody wants to hear this truth) but He died for us and extended His grace and mercy so we wouldn't have to suffer for eternity in hell.

So, if God did all of that for us, why should we think He should be working for us? Why would we believe He should be serving us and catering to our every whim? For those who might be guilty of this, stop and drop, to your knees, and start praying and ask Him to forgive you and show you the way. We serve God out of love, not because we are forced to or because we have to. There is no other way.