When the Servant is our Lord…

When the Servant is our Lord…

In 2007, Dudley Daniel told the lead elders in Australia, “You have to come out of everything that is not under the lordship of Jesus Christ”!

When we heard that line also, “God is blurring the lines of leadership”, we should have known that we were at the end of an era… Consider a church leader whose church prayer meeting lasted more than 100 years and which is used to send over 2000 missionaries into the nations? Consider that he was a marketplace man who did not do the majority of the preaching in his church community! Does this challenge us, or does it tantalize us?

The Lord is not our servant, but the Servant is our Lord? That is why it is more true to say that serving Him releases leadership, rather than that leadership releases service. Servants are always leaders, but leaders are not always servants. Jesus said that those who are last will be first; those who are servants, will be great, and those who are slaves, will lead the way for others! Therefore, when looking for a leader, we ought to seek for those who do not want it; or for those who do not feel they qualify, and for those in whom God’s fore-ordination precedes duty and responsibility. These are most likely to facilitate than to dominate. Leaders, who take what belongs to others to make it theirs, seek to be Lord over the servants, rather than servants to the Lord! In a world of people predisposed to overestimate their part in the process, and to underestimate the part of others, the life of Jesus Christ is an offense, and despised, because he values the little above the “big”.

The extreme arrogance of overestimating our part in the process of helping others should not escape us. Flowers can only be opened, without damage, from the inside, and not from the outside. Our responsibility to instruct grows only from God who inspires it, lest our pride obstruct it. The Lord uses us in instruction, but only He can inspire a response from us or from anyone! A proper view of God and of our part in the process, does not deactivate God’s fore-ordination, and promote our responsibility! As born again believers we are lovely men, until we try to do things in our own strength. We instruct our children because we have been inspired, and not because we are ‘responsible’ to inspire. Understanding this will keep us, and our children from being exasperated, or separated!

Without humility, there can be no authority. Authority is thus only seen in the fruit of the Spirit, and not by the other things that define success. Authority is measured by the Holy Spirit, whose fruit is joy, peace, goodness, godliness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, love, self-control, and not by size of church, personality, leadership capacity, talents, and gifts, preaching invitations and engagements, books sold, and by money in the bank!

Loys