SHAPED FOR SERVING GOD

40 Days of Purpose Week 5- Ministry

May 30, 2004

 

For three weeks, Elvis’ album of greatest hits had been the number one album in the nation, 25 years after the guy died!  Now in spite of enormous success, Elvis was, according to friends, an unfulfilled and unhappy man.  He died of obesity and drug dependency at 42.  And in an interview with his wife, Priscilla, she said this about her husband: “Elvis never came to terms with who he was meant to be or what his purpose in life was.  He thought he was here for a reason, maybe to preach, maybe to serve, maybe to save, maybe to care for people.  That agonizing desire was always with him and he knew he wasn’t fulfilling it.” 

 

Today we’re continuing our 40 Days of Purpose, and we’re going to look at God’s fourth purpose for your life, there on the top of your outline…you were Shaped to Serve God.  Elvis felt like he was here to do something with his life, but he just couldn’t quite figure it out.  I don’t want you to make that same mistake.

The Bible says this, let’s read it together in Eph. 2:20, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”.  You were made to make a contribution, not just to consume.  God made you to make a difference.  And what matters is not how long you live, but how you live.   

 

Now whenever God gives us an assignment to do something, He never gives it to us without equipping us first.  And in the next verse Job says, “Your hands shaped me and made me.” (Job 10:8).  And God uses five things to shape you:  Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality, and Experiences.  That spells ‘SHAPE’.  Those five things make you different from anybody else in the world, for a purpose.  And that purpose is to serve God.  You’re going to be reading about them in detail this week in your daily readings. 

But look at the next verse. It says we’re to use whatever God’s given us to serve others!  Your talents are not for your benefit.  Do you remember the first line in the Purpose Driven Life book?  “It’s not about you.”  God gave you gifts and talents and abilities and experiences and all these things to serve other people. 

So write this down, “My fourth purpose in life is to serve God by serving others.”  That’s why you’re alive.  You were put here to serve God and the way you serve God is by serving other people.    

 

Now the Bible has a word for this, it’s called “ministry”.  When I say the word “minister” most people think of priest, pastor.  They think of somebody who wears those funny collars, or a robe, and talks like “GOD”.  But the Bible says every believer is a minister.  Even our bulletin says so.  Any time you use your talents and your abilities to help somebody else, you know what that’s called?  Ministering.  And you know what you are?  A minister. 

I want you to turn to the person next to you and say “You’re a minister”.  Go ahead, just say that right now.   

 

Notice the next verse. Let’s read it aloud together: Matt. 20:28, “Jesus said, ‘Your attitude must be like My own, for I did not come to be served, but to serve’.” 

Well it takes three things to serve like Jesus.  Number one, write this down.  Serving like Jesus means being available.  One day Jesus was walking down to go to Jericho and some blind men start yelling at him.  And the Bible says this (Matt. 20:30-32): “Two blind men shouted ‘Lord, have mercy on us! Jesus stopped and called them.  ‘What do you want me to do for you?’.” 

 

Jesus stopped.  If you want to be used by God, if you want to serve God, you must be willing to be interrupted.  Most of Jesus’ ministry and most of Jesus’ miracles were interruptions.  Think about it.  His first miracle? Interrupted at a wedding.  He second miracle? Interrupted on the way to Galilee. 

It says, “Jesus stopped”.  Study how many times Jesus stopped in ministry.  The Bible says this: Prov. 3:28, read it with me, “Never tell your neighbors to wait until tomorrow if you can help them now.”   

 

Here was John Wesley’s motto:

        Do all the good you can by all the means you can by all the ways you

        can in all the places you can and at all the times you can to all the people

        you can as long as you ever can.

That, my friends, is what it means to be shaped to serve God.     

 

Now what keeps us from being available?  Let me give three common barriers.  Number one: self-centeredness.  The Bible says, “Forget yourself long enough to lend a helping hand.” (Phil. 2:4)  You see the number one enemy of compassion is busyness.  We just get too busy!  If you really have a servant heart, like Jesus Christ, you don’t mind being interrupted because your agenda is God’s agenda. 

 

A second barrier to being used by God is perfectionism.  You know, wanting every thing to be perfect.  “When it’s all just right, when things settle down, then I’ll serve.”  Let’s read Eccl. 11:4 together: “If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get anything done.” Would anybody like to give a testimony on that verse?  Real servants, Christ-like servants, do the best they can with what they have.  They don’t wait.  Why? Because God doesn’t use perfect people because there aren’t any! 

 

We have seen Exhibit A of that in the 40 Days of Purpose as 8 normal people opened up their homes as hosts.  And over 50 people are being blessed because normal, ordinary, average people said, “My house isn’t perfect, and I’m not perfect, my schedule is not perfect.  I don’t perfectly know the Bible, but I could do this!”  And guess what?  God is blessing it.  So go ahead and start serving while things are not perfect. 

 

Number three: materialism.  Jesus said, “No servant can serve two masters.  You cannot serve both God and money.” (Lk. 16:13).  You cannot serve both God and money.  It’s an impossibility.  You see, you get so busy taking care of things; you don’t have time to take care of people.  Now if God wants to give you wealth, that’s great.  That’s wonderful, but it is not the number one goal of your life.   

 

So serving means being available.  Serving like Jesus also means being grateful.  To serve like Jesus, we have to serve gratefully, grateful that we get the opportunity to serve.  The Bible talked about our attitude of gratefulness in Psalm 100:2. Let’s read this together: “Serve the Lord with gladness.” You did sound grateful in that! 

We serve Him with gratefulness because He’s given life to us through Jesus Christ.  And if He never did anything else for us, that is enough to be grateful for the rest of our lives. 

 

Now, as human beings, we tend to trip over ourselves on the way to serving God.  There are some things that get in the way.  One of the barriers is comparing and criticizing.  The Bible tells us in Rom. 14:4, “Who are you to criticize someone else’s servant?  The Lord will determine whether His servant has been successful.”  We’re all His servants.  We have the same goal.  We’re trying to make God look good to the world, let the world see how good He really is.  And to think that somehow we can compare or criticize in that is pretty ridiculous. 

 

The second way we get in the way is wrong motivations.  The Bible talks about this in Matt. 6:1. Jesus said, “When you do good deeds, don’t try to show off.  If you do, you won’t get a reward from your Father in heaven”.  Self-promotion and servanthood don’t mix, but it’s easy to get them mixed up.  A lot of our service, let’s just be honest, it can be self-serving at times.  We serve to get others to like us.  We serve to be admired.  We serve to achieve our own goals.   

 

And there’s a third thing.  Serving like Jesus means being faithful.  Now what does that mean?  It means you don’t give up.  You keep on going. 

Jesus said this in John 17:4, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work that You gave me to do.”  Now you may retire from your job someday, but you’re never retiring from ministry.       

 

Because even the smallest thing we do can have a big impact.

Several years ago two teenage boys tried to come into a church service at night, much like this, only it was packed out and they couldn’t find any seats.  So they turned around and decided to leave because they couldn’t find a seat.  But one usher said, “Come on, guys.  I’ll find you a seat.”  And that usher personally escorted them down to the center and set them in the middle and found them two seats.  That night both of those boys accepted Christ and became Christians.  One of them was Billy Graham who has now led millions and tens of millions of people to Christ.  We have no idea of the significance of small acts.  It’s all important.  There are jobs here in this church for everybody!

 

Now I know what some of you are saying. “Well you know, a church this size, it doesn’t need my help.”  Are you kidding?  Spend a day with me.  I’ll show you a couple thousand unmet needs!  Because there are always more needs to be met than people willing to get up off their seat and say, “I was shaped to serve Christ.”  You’re here because God knew you had something to give back.  He did not bring you here just to sit and soak and enjoy.  He brought you here to serve. 

So the question is, How will God use you?  Check out the Ministry Fair after the service.  God wants to use you. 

 

One day you’re going to stand before God and He’s going to say to you, “What did you do with the talents, the abilities, the background, the freedom that I gave you?    

Look at Matt. 25:21: “Well done good and faithful servant!  You have been faithful with a few things so; I will put you in charge of many things.  Come and share your master’s happiness.”  You know, family, more than anything else, I want God to be able to say that about you.  I have dedicated my life so that when you stand before God one day, you will hear, “Well done!  You did what I put you here on earth to do.  Come on in and enjoy eternity and all the rewards I’ve planned for you.” 

 

You know, I started this message talking about Elvis.  A curious fact about Elvis…the only Grammy award he won for an album out of 250 million albums sold, was for a religious album that he recorded called, “He Touched Me”.  And a song on that album expresses this very verse.  It says this:

        After the lightening and thunder,

        After the last bell has rung,

        I want to bow down before Jesus

        And hear Him say, “Well done, my son.”

        He is my reason for living,

        He is my King of Kings.

        I long to be in His possession.

        He is my everything.

 

Is God going to be able to say “well done” to you?  Is there anything in your schedule where you’re giving back unselfishly, or are you too busy?  Are you waiting for things to slow down?  Or do you have other priorities? 

One day Napoleon pointed at a map of China and he said, “There lies a sleeping giant.  If it ever wakes up it will shake the world.”  Every weekend I look at the St. Paul’s Church family and I say, “There is a sleeping giant.  If everybody who came here served here, what kind of enormous, spiritual, nuclear reaction would we see in Ocean County and New Jersey and the world?”  I make no apology in saying to you that the most important thing you’ll ever do with your life is serving God in ministry.  It’s far more important than your career, it’s far more important than your hobbies, more important than everything else you can think of because they aren’t going to last.  But this is.  You were put here on earth to practice serving.