SERVICE TO GOD THAT COUNTS

(Joh 12:26) If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.

 

If you really wish to serve a person and please him/her, you must know what that person wants so that you can do just what will make him/her happy. This principle also works in your relationship with God. In order to please God, you must know what God wants, you must see things from His perspective, you must know His “needs.” At any point in time, wherever the master is, there the servant should be also.

Pleasing God in service involves understanding what God’s specific concerns are at a point in time. We all know God is primarily committed to redeeming human beings for himself out of the bondage of sin, so that blood washed holy people may worship Him and be prepared for eternity. But this is a wide goal with several assignments. Pleasing God in service would require that we know his specific priority at any point in time.

To have a proper picture of the mind of God and his goals, we must learn to have a global view of God’s purpose on earth, though we can only act locally. The principle can be rounded up thus: think globally and act locally. What does this mean? It means that within the frame of God’s concern about the whole world and how to rescue it, there must be a current priority agenda. Accuracy in God’s service requires that you know this agenda, especially if you are a leader in the body of Christ. This is what it means to think globally. If all that ever matters to you are the programmes and activities of your denomination and your local church, you have already missed an essential principle in being an effective contributor to God’s purpose. In particular, denominational leaders who do not understand God’s global concerns, miss what makes God happy. They may do a lot of work, but such work may not really make God happy. But if they understand God’s specific agenda at a given point it time, and consequently position their denominational agenda to fit in, they would please God. This also applies to the individual.

One must concede the fact that it is not possible for every denomination or everybody to act globally; most of us can only act locally. However, those local acts must fit into God’s global goals. That is what it means to think globally and act locally.

Let me share an illustration to explain this. Sometime ago I encountered a sister who was apparently so jubilant about crowds that attend Christian programmes in a certain country, and how bigger and more sophisticated auditoriums were being built. She celebrated and declared that the Church was winning. Somehow, my spirit did not clique with her celebration. I sensed in my Spirit that while we must always celebrate our God and appreciate all His mercies, crowd and extravagant buildings may not excite God at that moment. I sensed that there is an urgency to reclaim the momentum of real increase which the Church has lost globally. I therefore pointed this out to the sister. I mentioned the massive decline of the Church in Europe and the Western world generally, pointing out how church buildings were being sold and converted to mosques and dance halls. I explained the collapse of the Church in parts of the Middle East as a result of the activities of ISIS and how Islamic terrorism was decimating the Church in parts of her own country. I could have told her more if I had time. She needed to understand the huge gaps between the goals of the great commission and what we have done so far because she had no idea about the tragedy of the declining percentage of the world’s population that are practicing Christians. She never knew some historians are even beginning to refer to our age as the post Christian era. Apparently, the little I mentioned was News to her. I was glad my point was made: the real work of winning the world for Christ is suffering while denominational empires are celebrating new buildings and arranging jamborees, fanfares of excitement, thrills and prophecies of personal goals.

Several years ago, a brother had the opportunity of sharing these things with a Church in a village. At the end of his message, a Church elder rose in remorse and declared “we have been busy doing church work; we forgot about God’s work.” The paradoxical statement is pregnant with issues. Unless church and personal activities are in line with God’s concerns and agenda, they cannot really be called God’s work, no matter how we paint them.

May the Lord open our eyes to see the burdens of heaven for our world, which God so loved that he gave his only begotten son.