Serve With Faithfulness
“Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshipped beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.” – Joshua 24:14
In his book titled “Called”, Mark Labberton describes a time with Pastor John Stott: “I witnessed John’s faithfulness in public and private, as a highly visible speaker and as a nearly invisible spiritual shepherd to many. What I saw served to cement my conviction about life abundant as a follower of Jesus. It was on a trip to India and Bangladesh where, in a dark, dilapidated courtyard surrounded by small fire pits, blackened pots and a group of simple homes housing a handful of people, I heard the global Christian leader give one of his most memorable sermons. I saw that the abundant life I hoped for—that he and those to whom he spoke shared—was carried with them on the inside. Inside, they were not bound; they were no longer small.
John had been asked by a friend, a priest serving in Burma, for a tender and intimate favor: John, he said, I am serving so far away from my dying mother in Madras; you might be able to reach her sooner than I can. She is poor, in declining health, and her teeth are falling out one by one. Would you make a pastoral visit to her the next time you are in India? And so we set off, with scant information about location, to find his friend’s elderly mother.
After hours of searching, moving self-consciously through streets of shacks and shelters so different than the more established structures we’d left only three hours before, we arrived at the door to this woman’s home. Eventually, she emerged from the shadows, frail but beaming with tearful joy. At her insistence, she knelt at John’s feet and kissed them, and then the two of them spoke through our translator for a while.
At the end of our visit, she asked John to speak and to give her a blessing. A small piece of carpet was honorifically placed for him in the center of the mud floor, and without anything like the kind of pulpit to which he was often accustomed, John preached on John 3:16. It was John Stott at his fullest. Filled with love for Jesus and for his fellow pastor, John spoke to the mother who had believed, in spite of her poverty, not as a stranger but as God’s own. The mother who provided such a rich inheritance to her son received the blessing of her son’s gratitude as John interceded.
His words were simple and clear. His tone was compassionate and dignified. His intellectual rigour and verbal skill were fully intact. And his assurances were personal and tender. He was fully present to her and to the goodness of God. It was the sermon of his life, and it has shaped my view of following Jesus ever since. That scene was a rich moment of God’s grace. A priest in Burma, a widow in India, a world-renowned British preacher and his young American intern—we were so deeply connected in the family of Christ, by Christ and in Christ that a transcendence beyond all of us and our meager circumstances took place, filling us.”
Wherever the Lord has planted you, serve Him faithfully. Praise Jesus for the gifts and talents He has given you and seek to serve Him faithfully.
“As long as I see anything to be done for God, life is worth having; but O, how vain and unworthy it is to live for any lower end!” – David Brainerd
“If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides so that in all things, God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.” – 1 Peter 4:11