Serving...with a Selfish Heart

Serving. What is serving? What is true serving for Christians? How do you know what is true serving? How can we, as Christians, differentiate between serving with a loving heart and serving from a selfish motive to made one look good?

This topic came from today's church sermon by Jeff Hatton, the pastor of my church, Redeemer, in Waco. He took his sermon from Galations 5:13-15, prefaced by Galations 5:1.

 ¹For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

¹³For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. ¹⁴For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." ¹⁵But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

                                                           -Galations 5:1,13-15 (ESV).

So, in the service, Jeff talked about loving each other, by serving your neighbor. And then my friend asked me about being selfish when serving. Because she definitely didn't want to play a animated game with a young boy she was babysitting for 3 hours, but she did because the boy loves the game and my friend loves the boy. So, of course she was going to serve his family and him by playing 3 hours of this game.

Serving with a begrudging heart is different than serving with a selfish motive. So what then is a selfish motive?

I believe a selfish motive would be the heart desire to do something that makes you look good to the eyes of men. This is not loving your neighbor as yourself. This is loving your reputation and image more than yourself as a person with a wish to love your neighbor as yourself. 

In verse 13 of the Galations passage, the word "opportunity" is a militaristic word in the Ancient Greek text (Jeff Hatton). It means the start of an assault. As Christians, we must look for that opening, but to serve our neighbors through our love for them.

This, I believe, is true service. I don't think that it is bad to have a reluctant heart when serving, but I do think that it's bad to serve with only the thought to better yourself through the service. 

This is a shorter blog post and I apologize for it. I just want to thank all those who read my blog. It makes me very happy to hear that people like to read what I have to say. :)

My quote for the day: "For every man, there is a purpose which he sets up in his life. Let yours be the doing of all good deeds" ~Robin Hood, BBC (as portrayed by Jonas Armstrong).