Feb 07

The Servant Prayer

Bible, Gospel of Mark, Spiritual Disciplines 2 Comments »

In Mark’s Gospel, the first ten chapters cover the three years of Jesus’ earthly ministry. And the final six chapters cover one week, the Passion Week. Up to this point, Jesus has been training the twelve disciples, teaching them His heart and His kingdom values, and showing them what happens when the rule and reign of God shows up in the lives of people. Before we enter into the final week of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has one more lesson for the disciples and for us… a lesson that’s the culmination of His heart and His mission for this world. The heart of Mark 10:32-52 calls us to pray and live out the Servant Prayer:

#1 To know what You have done for me

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Jesus doesn’t give His life simply as the supreme example of servanthood. Something much larger is happening… something much more significant. When Jesus dies on the cross and gives His life for us, He pays a ransom. He’s paying the price to free us from the penalty of our sin and rebellion against God. Jesus giving “His life a ransom for many” is the clearest statement in Mark’s Gospel about the redemptive purpose of God in Jesus’ death.

On the cross, Jesus dies in our place as a substitute. We deserved death because of our sin and treason against God, but Jesus takes it in our stead. We are freed from and forgiven the penalty of our sin. Understanding this is crucial as we press into the remainder of this Servant Prayer. It is the heart change that Jesus accomplishes as He pays the penalty for our sin that enables us to then live out Jesus’ heart of servanthood.

Pastor Tullian Tchividjian wrote in his book Surprised by Grace:

It’s the gospel (what Jesus has done) that alone can give God-honoring animation to our obedience. The power to obey comes from being moved and motivated by the completed work of Jesus for us. The fuel to do good flows from what’s already been done. So, while the law directs us, only the gospel can drive us.

It is only as we grow in our understanding and application of what Jesus has done for us that we begin to grow in our understanding and application of serving the people and world around us.

#2 To seek greatness in serving

Each year USA Today honors overlooked and often unappreciated football players by naming them to what the newspaper calls its All-Joes Team. Now in its 19th year, the All-Joes award celebrates men who sacrifice their egos for the good of their team. USA Today writes:

Our Joes are not average or even sloppy, but rather unheralded, unloved and, sometimes, underpaid since the one prerequisite for being an All-Joe is that you cannot have a Pro Bowl on your résumé. The NFL’s stars wouldn’t succeed without the adjacent All-Joes. They would never make the Pro Bowl minus those who perform the grittier tasks. That’s one reason the All-Joe team doesn’t allow Pro Bowl picks on its roster and it lends bitter truth to its motto: If you work hard, good things will happen — to someone else.

The motto of the All Joes team really is applicable to those who are servant-hearted: “If you work hard, good things will happen… to someone else.” I’d tweak it… if you live in the grace of Jesus Christ, good things will happen… in and through you… to the people in your world as you serve them in the name of Jesus. We serve others because Jesus first served us. And the Servant Prayer calls us to seek greatness in serving others. While the world entices us with the idols of power, position, and prestige, Jesus invites us to pick up the towel and basin and wash feet. D.L. Moody once said, “The measure of a man is not how many servants he has, but how many men he serves.” Seek greatness in Jesus’ His kingdom by serving.

#3 To follow You with spiritual eyes

The Servant Prayer ends by asking Jesus for the spiritual eyes to follow Him… asking Jesus for the gift of seeing people and the world around us the way He sees people and the world around us. It is asking Jesus to give us the spiritual eyes to be people who are servant-hearted and kingdom-minded. It is asking Jesus to give us the spiritual eyes to see through the deception of the world’s values and to give us the spiritual eyes to live with kingdom values. Jesus, please grant me the faith to follow You with spiritual eyes… with eyes that know what You have fully done for me… with eyes and a heart that seek greatness in serving others.  Jesus, please grant me the faith to follow You with spiritual eyes as I deny and surrender myself and daily pick up my servant’s cross and servant’s towel and follow after You.

When we pray the Servant Prayer, we’re transformed by Jesus’ great grace to be people that follow Him and serve the world around us with His eyes. We become people who are servant-hearted and kingdom-minded.

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Aug 01

Ultimate Meaning

Ecclesiastes: Meaning of Life, Sermons, Theological Musings No Comments »

Here’s a life-changing question: “what do you want said about you at your memorial service and then live life backwards?” I think this is the question Solomon is inadvertently asking and shaping the answer to as he pens the ancient book of Ecclesiastes.  So what do you want said about your life… that dash between your date of birth and date of death on the service program? And how can you begin to live life now so those things are said?

Here’s the Johnny Cash cover of “Hurt” I showed during Sunday’s message from Ecclesiastes 12:1-14… in a sense, how NOT to get to the end of life and say, “If I could start again, a million miles away. I would keep myself. I would find a way.”

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Maybe the best way to NOT get to the end and have to say “If I could start again…” would be to determine what is most important in your life right now? What are the qualities and values you want to define your life? How does the gospel of Jesus Christ inform and shape those values? How are you living them out right now? When you think of a “preferred” future, what do you see? And how do you live life in light of Jesus Christ, with every moment and aspect of your life lived in joyful obedience and worship?  Seek the answers to these kinds of questions through the leading of the Holy Spirit, and you will have the things you want said about you at your memorial service.

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Jun 20

Unstable or Unshakable?

Bible, Hebrews: Supremacy of Christ, Theological Musings No Comments »

“All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” ~ Hebrews 12:11

Here’s the reality about spiritual formation: the forming in “formation” is painful. Forming always means change.  Let’s face it, we often don’t like change. The way that God changes us involves removing things that aren’t about Him… removing our unstable, earthly values and replace them with and forming in us His unshakable, eternal values.

Everything that He does and allows is for our greatest good, for our spiritual maturity, and for our everlasting joy. I know that’s difficult to believe, especially when we are going through difficult seasons in our lives. And that’s why we live by faith… even and especially when we don’t see and we’re not sure of what God is up to in our confusion and crises. As He removes the unstable and replaces it with the unshakable, we walk and live by faith, believing that God is who He says He is and that He does what He says He does.  But remember that in the moment, it’s not pleasant. It’s not always filled with immediate joy. That tends to and seems to come afterward.

Here’s what A.W. Tozer wrote about the pain of true spiritual formation in The Pursuit of God:

The ancient curse will not go out painlessly; the tough old miser within us will not lie down and die obedient to our command. He must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the soil; he must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw. He must be expelled from our soul by violence as Christ expelled the money changers from the temple. And we shall need to steel ourselves against his piteous begging, and to recognize it as springing out of self-pity, one of the most reprehensible sins of the human heart.

Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all Those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Where in your life is He removing the unstable to form the unshakable?

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