Live For Others: Have A Servant Heart! Series

Live for Others: Have a Servant Heart!

We are continuing in our series on Discovering our destiny and this week we are going to be thinking about what it means to live for others.

This morning we are considering what it means to have a servant heart. To focus our thoughts, listen to the words of Ephesians 6:6 from The Message, “Don’t just do what you have to do to get by, but work heartily, as Christ’s servants doing what God wants you to do. And work with a smile on your face, always keeping in mind that no matter who happens to be giving the orders, you’re really serving God.”

If you are in Christ this morning, if you have repented from your sin and asked Jesus to be your Lord and your Saviour, you have been freed from the burden and penalty of your sins, past present and future.

At the moment you accepted Jesus into your life, you were assured that your place in Heaven was secure in Jesus and that your destiny was to spend eternity with God.

But, God has not taken us to our eternal home yet. He has a destiny, a plan, a purpose for each of us while we still walk upon this earth.

God calls us to serve Him and other people.

God calls us to share the truth of the Gospel with those who are heading to a lost eternity away from God.

God calls us to minister to those who desperately need to hear the message of salvation for themselves.

God calls us to be both salt and light in this bland, sin sick world.

God calls us to serve Him, and God also calls us to guard our hearts. Proverbs 4:23 says “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.”

What are we to guard our hearts from?

The simple answer is anything that will lead us away from God’s plan and purpose for us. Our hearts are meant to be different, our motivation is meant to be different, serving God and His purpose for us is meant to be at the centre of our lives. We are meant to be different because Jesus has made a difference in our lives.

We are set free, we are saved, we are in the world but we are not of the world.

Let me unpack this a little further, how can we be in the world, but not of the world?

In John chapter 17 we have a record of a prayer of Jesus.

While praying to Father God, Jesus said of His disciples, His followers, in John 17:14-16, “I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. They do not belong to this world any more than I do.”

The word translated “world” in the original text is the Greek word cosmos. Cosmos refers to the inhabited earth and the people who live on the earth, which functions apart from God. 1 John 5:19 reminds us, “We know that we are children of God and that the world (the cosmos) around us is under the control of the evil one.”

If Satan, the evil one, is the ruler of this world, this cosmos then we can understand why Jesus would say in His prayer that those who believe in Him are are no longer of this world. As followers of Jesus, we are no longer ruled by sin, we are not bound by the sinful principles and practices of this world. We are set free from the power of sin, we are set free from the control of the evil one, we are saved and we are being changed and transformed into the image of Christ. Our interest in the things of the world decreases as we grow closer to God and mature in our Christian lives.

In the world, but not of the world, we are physically present, but not part of its value system, we are set apart from the world.

When we are saved God calls us to be holy because He is holy, we are set apart to be holy, to live a holy, righteous life. Remember the words of Paul in Romans 12:1-2, “dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship Him. Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”