Chapter 11: A Man and Service

from Pat Morley

Volume 231
May 21, 2007

Today we continue with the series of excerpts from my new book, A Man’s Guide to the Spiritual Disciplines. Visit www.maninthemirror.org/spiritualdisciplines for numerous additional audio, video, and print resources on the Spiritual Disciplines.

Developing the Mind-Set of a Servant

As with all the disciplines, we’re not trying to develop a service mentality simply because we want to get God’s attention or improve our spiritual scorecard. Instead, service spills out of a maturing relationship with Jesus Christ. Here’s how it works.

Early in your spiritual journey, you didn’t have enough Jesus for yourself, much less any left over to give away to others. You did your good deeds as duty. However, over time you began to fill up in your personal relationship with Jesus. You began to plumb the depths of His holiness, mercy, love, and grace. You were awestruck by His power, greatness, and majesty. You were humbled by how you had underestimated the work of Jesus. And you grew.

At a point, you realized you finally did have enough Jesus for yourself. You felt filled up in your relationship with Him. That spurred you on to new growth. Another couple of years passed, and one day you realized that you were spilling over with Jesus. Not only did you have enough Jesus for yourself; you had some left over to give away to others as well.

In fact, you were so filled to overflowing that you felt as if you would burst unless you could give some of Him away. That’s how a servant is supposed to feel—as if he can no longer be happy unless he does something to serve. Anything less will represent a failure.

Maybe you are there, maybe not. Service is one of the latter disciplines. If you cannot serve out of overflowing gratitude, then don’t. Don’t pretend to have taken hold of that to which you still aspire. Instead, pursue Christ and let Him continue to sort you, fill you, make you, shape you. When the time is right, you will know what to do.

Obviously, if a man “never” feels compelled to serve, he is either (1) not growing as a disciple or (2) not in Christ.

For the glory of Christ and no other reason,

Pat Morley, Ph.D.

P.S. You can order this book through our bookstore by clicking here.