5.10.26 Sermon Notes “The Servant in You – Hiddenness”
God is calling us to something more significant than than “getting more volunteers” to do all this ministry stuff.
He is calling us to grow as His “Servants” in the world!
When Jesus comes to live in us by His Spirit He brings His heart with Him.
The heart of Jesus becomes the animating center of our being.
The heart of Jesus is a servant’s heart… and its foundational core is Love!
The spiritual practice of service is:
The expression of Christlike love through meeting the practical needs of another, especially those most in need of help.
If practicing the way of Jesus isn’t filling me to overflowing with the love of Jesus, I’m nothing more than noisy — religiously busy but out of tune with God’s redemption in me and the world around me. But if practicing the way of Jesus is deepening my own experience of God’s irrevocable love to the degree that I increasingly serve others with the same kind of love then my life is harmonizing with the renewal of the world.
Tyler Staton
In this series we are looking at four key ways the Spiritual Practice is expressed:
Love Hiddenness Availability Kinship
Jesus is forming a necessary humility in us as He calls us to serve in Hiddenness
with quiet stealth
in the midst of the ordinary.
Matthew 6
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Recognition for serving is best left in God’s hands and not engineered for me by me.
Some of our “serving” needs to be “in secret” with “quiet stealth” - a healthy rhythm of keeping the “self” in check.
Do you have “secrets” with God?
Am I content with only the Father seeing?
The humility that “hiddenness” forms serves in the ordinary and not just extraordinary situations of life!
John 13:2-
2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
“Many of us, imagining the environment where Jesus will form us into a radical gift of sacrificial love for the world, picture … a soup kitchen … or rehab program…. or third world village.… and don’t get me wrong, it could be that. We’ll get there in the coming sessions.
Most of us tend to imagine service to be practiced among people we don’t know in environments we aren’t currently in, but it’s worth noting that Jesus grounded service in ordinary places, and among everyday relationships.
The office of the business executive….the kitchen of the stay-at-home parent… the classroom of the high school student… the studio of the designer…. the shared living room in the college dorm….the dinner table of the married couple.
Jesus is grounding the most sweeping, glorious of promises in the most common, ordinary places and ordinary company … by humbly taking up ordinary service — all in the name of love. And that, for me at least, serves as both a comfort — and — a confrontation. Because the truth is:
Most of us (myself included) are better at doing “projects” of love than becoming “people” of love.” (Tyler Staten)
Serving with Hiddenness leaves recognition in the Father’s hands, finds contentment knowing its enough that the Father sees and lifts the otherwise mundane and ordinary opportunities into the realm of the holy.
There is only One truly safe place for the servant to go for
affirmation, validation, strength and encouragement….
into the presence of the One who served us in the hiddenness of
divinity wrapped in humanity and gave His life in service to us.
Help us, Father, to remember that your loving gaze is always upon us;
That no good deed escapes your delighted attention.
Lead us to serve in familiar and hidden places,
beyond all other rewarding eyes but yours. Amen.