My Month Of Service

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the month of April, the month of service. I pray God will give you grace to serve God by serving your generation as David served his generation. You certainly can become great by offering service. Show me the man that is willing to serve and I will show you a man that is on his way to greatness. Cyrus served God as a heathen king and became great. David, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Daniel served God and became great. Jesus was the greatest service provider. The bible says because of his service he earned the greatest name on earth and in heaven. Many desire to serve, some are serving in one way or the other but everything has its guiding principles. I will like to look at some principles that guide service so that our service will be acceptable to God.

What is Service?

Service is doing something for others to make their life better, easier or great. Service means carrying out duties, being useful for a particular task, without asking for a reward. It is called volunteering in the world. God gave everybody special gifts that can be referred to as talent there is nobody that is living without at least one talent. Service is always at a cost: time, energy, talent, treasure, cash or kind. According to scriptures being a servant means giving up my rights for others Phil 2:6. Being a servant means becoming less so others can become more Phil 2: 7.Servanthood means being obedient whatever the cost Phil 2:8. We tend to look for that one BIG experience where we can demonstrate our faithfulness to God, demonstrate our servanthood by giving of ourselves in some heroic fashion. But in reality, genuine service happens in the small, everyday, somewhat uneventful occurrences of our lives. Being a servant is more about being than it is about doing, just like giving is about the heart not what is given. There is a beautiful paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 4:2 in The Living Bible which reads like this: "The most important thing about a servant is that he does just what his master tells him to.

What is the correlation between service and greatness?

Service has a purpose both for the person serving and the person being served. Jesus explained this in scriptures. “Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Matt 20:26-28 NIV “The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” Matt 23:11-12

What does God demand

God wants people who will worship him in truth and in spirit. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. John 4:24. “And ye shall serve the Lord your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee. Ex 23:25. And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul. Deut 10:12. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Ps2 :11. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: Heb 12:28

The Value of service. It is very difficult to place value on service. The value of service is generational.

Take for instance the case of Abraham’s servant when he was told to get a wife for Isaac. When he got to that land, he prayed, “Lord, God of my master Abraham, make me successful today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. 13 See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. 14 May it be that when I say to a young woman, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’—let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.” Gen 24:12. Rebecca came along, she gave water to Abraham’s servant and ten Camels! That service made her to become a part of God’s plan to establish the nation of Israel as we know it. I remember I went out of my way in the production department of Warri Refining Petrochemical Company (WRPC), a subsidiary of NNPC, I took up a challenge of the technical department to carry out a research to produce another grade of polymers, which led to my earning a doctorate in Chemical Engineering. This was the open door for me to do a post-doctoral research at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) from where God opened the door for my migration to Canada, which led to starting the International Gathering of Eagles Ministry, which has given me the opportunity to minister in over 70 nations! Can you imagine all the designs, incidents and inventions? Most have originated from a willingness to serve, to do something. What service is God asking you to offer today? You may be denying a great impact for eternity if you don’t do it.