Anyway, so over break I was just thinking about a phrase that was kind of thrown around a bit, "joy in serving," and I wanted to really see the Biblical basis for that phrase, and for serving in general. Serving was a personal struggle for me this past semester because there were definitely times I felt tired, or felt like I was serving too much, and so the question became--is tiredness just something I'm supposed to press on through or am I serving in the wrong way? So I meditated on serving for a bit, trying to think about various Bible passages that talked about serving, what it meant, what it looked like practically, but something that really helped me was a sermon by John Piper entitled "How Not to Serve God in Giving and Sending."
He first went over how we are not called to serve God--we're not called to serve God as if He needs it, Jesus came to serve, and don't look back to past grace and try to make up for it (in either the spirit of debt or the spirit of gratitude) (he referenced Acts 17:25, Mark 10:45, 2 Corinthians 9:8 for this portion).
His main point was that instead of looking back to past grace, we need to look forward to future grace given to us through prayer. He basically said that each thing we do, each bit of "service," we need God's grace at each moment to enable us to do it. Basically, God is not looking for someone strong enough to work for Him, He is looking for someone weak and dependent enough that He can work through. One verse that Piper mentioned was 2 Chronicles 16:9
2 Chronicles 16
9 For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.
1 Corinthians 15:10
10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
One of the most useful things in his sermon, though, was how he practically applied it in his life. I mean, it's one thing to say that we need to rely on His future grace given to us through prayer, but how do we implement something like that in our daily lives? He gave this acronym: APTAT
Admit that without God you can do nothing
Pray--ask God for help
Trust a particular promise--store them up in your heart (one that he uses a lot was Psalm 31:19)
Act--work, do
Thank Jesus for helping
Anyway, it's been pretty cool. APTAT is pretty helpful for me, haha, even though as an acronym I feel like it's so weird--it's not like it spells anything.
SIDE NOTE: For those who don't know! We can download any book by John Piper online through his website Desiring God.
Here's his sermon: http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/conference-messages/how-not-to-serve-god-in-going-and-sending
No comments:
Post a Comment