Page 5 - The Standard Volume 1

to their car. It is the way of Jesus to be sure to it that a person—saved or unsaved —knows how to locate the restroom in your church even though you are not an usher. To talk about what you went through or what you suffered to do so is not the kind of serving Jesus did.
Jesus was despised and rejected yet He opened not His mouth. He was led like sheep to the slaughter yet He opened not his mouth. We have to learn that if we are going to serve, we cannot have any more servanthood gripe sessions when something doesn’t flow the way we thought it was supposed to flow.
guest’s lives easier by giving your service —which should be a labor of love from the heart.
FOLLOWING JESUS’ EXAMPLE
Mark 8:34 CEV
“Jesus then told the crowd and the disciples to come closer, and he said: If any of you want to be my followers, you must forget about yourself. You must take up your cross and follow me.”
What did Jesus mean when He said to “deny yourself,” “take up your cross,” and “follow Him”?
most decidedly come out of servanthood when you think that someone is taking advantage of you.
I had a man once tell me, “You’re taking advantage of me by not paying me enough.”
I said, “Brother, if that was the case, I would have closed the church years ago.”
No, we are called to suffer wrong. This builds character in us is and God raises us up because we did not complain. Why? Because servants always get exalted and always get delivered out of trouble.
Jesus said if any man was going to follow Him, he must deny himself. First and foremost, servanthood is following Jesus. This means we must model how Jesus became a servant by denying ourselves. As soon as you talk, your conversation reveals you are not being like Jesus. Instead of people admitting they don’t have the heart of a servant, they criticize what others do or who they have to work with because they’re hiding the fact that servanthood is revealing they’re not a follower of Jesus. If you want to know if a person is a follower of Jesus, don’t base it upon listening to the tongues they speak because speaking in tongues does not mean they will talk to you.
CARRYING A BURDEN
Servanthood requires us to carry a burden yet many people think it is ungodly to do so.
“I’ve got too much on me!”
No, you don’t. After all the Lord Jesus Christ has done for you, to you, and about you? How can you have the audacity to murmur and complain about the work? The key is to put yourself in a position where you are not allowing the enemy to talk you out of following Jesus. This is the crossroad where you either move forward or lose ground.
When I was a child we would watch O.J. Simpson play football. We would watch Jack Tatum, Mean Joe Green, L.C. Greenwood, and Ed “Too Tall” Jones. When we played football as kids, it was a joy to have their jersey. We tried to mimic Tony Dorsett’s movements and everybody wanted to be Lynn Swan or Roger Staubach. We’d go out on the football field trying to play exactly the way they did because they were our heroes. When you murmur and complain, you’re actually
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“He was oppressed and tormented, but didn’t open his mouth. Like a lamb being brought to slaughter, like a ewe silent before her shearers, he didn’t open his mouth.” Isaiah 53:7 CEB
“But it doesn’t make any sense!” It might not, but we have to present His ways to whom? To His Body and the lost. When you murmur and complain, you are not walking in His ways.
“I was up on my feet the whole night as the Pastor and his guests who had come into town were talking until one o’clock in the morning. When they were done, I had to drive them to their hotel and then escort them to their rooms!”
We don’t need a debriefing about how late you were up or how long it took for the Pastor’s guests to get to their hotel rooms. If you’re going to serve, you realize you’re there to help make your Pastor’s and his
Jesus said, “If any of you want to be My followers,” but right before that He said, “Come closer.” Beloved, you cannot come closer to God if you are not already serving. Everybody that claims to be close to God but is not serving, is under deception.
So what did Jesus mean when He said, “If any of you want to be My followers?” Well, He does not mean, “If any of you want to quote My verses.” He does not mean, “If any of you want to make crosses and then show them to everyone.” No, He means, “If any of you want to do the things I did, you must forget about yourself.” In other words, you can’t serve thinking about whether or not you are being used wrongly. You will