Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Why Do You Serve?
Scotwise's "Daily Encouragment" for this date looks at I Thess 1:2-3 and lists three motivational principles for Christian service
In the end, we lack the resources to obey as we should, but obey we must, and in our efforts to obey, we must turn even more to God for the strength and power to do so -- confessing our disobedience as we do. Herein lies a true understanding of the love of God. The less we realize we are, the more we realize how much He loves us to bother with us at all.
- WORK OF FAITH
- LABOUR OF LOVE
- STEADFASTNESS OF HOPE
I run a grave risk here since these are pulled directly from the scripture in question, but there is one other thing I would add to John's great list here -- OBEDIENCE.
In this narcissitic age, obedience is generally the last motivation anybody will list for anything, but I think it is an extraordinarily important one. Yesterday's "Utmost for His Highest" entry says the following:
Our Lord never insists on having authority over us. He never says, "You will submit to me." No, He leaves us perfectly free to choose? so free, in fact, that we can spit in His face or we can put Him to death, as others have done; and yet He will never say a word. But once His life has been created in me through His redemption, I instantly recognize His right to absolute authority over me. It is a complete and effective domination, in which I acknowledge that "You are worthy, O Lord..." ( Revelation 4:11 ). It is simply the unworthiness within me that refuses to bow down or to submit to one who is worthy. When I meet someone who is more holy than myself, and I don?t recognize his worthiness, nor obey his instructions for me, it is a sign of my own unworthiness being revealed. God teaches us by using these people who are a little better than we are; not better intellectually, but more holy. And He continues to do so until we willingly submit. Then the whole attitude of our life is one of obedience to Him.Becoming obedient to God, as Chambers described it here is about becoming who God created us to be. It is, actually, the ultimately narcissitic act -- for in submitting ourselves to God wholly and completely, in the utter self-denial that that entails, we become the magnificent creation we were intended to be instead of the fallen, lifeless husk that we are.
In the end, we lack the resources to obey as we should, but obey we must, and in our efforts to obey, we must turn even more to God for the strength and power to do so -- confessing our disobedience as we do. Herein lies a true understanding of the love of God. The less we realize we are, the more we realize how much He loves us to bother with us at all.
