The Way Up Is Downनमूना

The Struggle of Servanthood

Servanthood marked by this self-emptying, selflessness, or kenōsis begins with the surrender of our wills to God. Little by little in the strength of the Holy Spirit, we submissively renounce our self-will and cooperate with God to empty ourselves of our Godless selves so that we might be filled with God’s life.

It is a life characterized by offering ourselves out of love for God, others, and creation. We surrender to God so he might live in and through us. Our lives become a love offering. Plain and simple.

But it's not so simple.

Sometimes, we don’t want to do what God calls us to do. We fear the heavy toll it will take on us. Life already has us ragged. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know we are habituated toward being self-serving instead of self-giving. We are inclined to choose ourselves first over God. We’d prefer to give God and others orders instead of taking them.

Maybe we worry that self-offering won’t get us anywhere in the world or the church. It probably won’t. There won’t be any standing ovations or saintly Nobel Peace Prizes awarded or even measly high-fives. Offering ourselves as living sacrifices, our heroic deaths, the kinds that legends are made of, will pass by mostly unnoticed by others. Yet our love and obedience are never wasted. One day, they will be richly rewarded.

Hearing the call to renounce our wills in each new circumstance so God’s will can be done in and through every part of us is the call to selflessness. It’s not a one-time deal. It requires daily repentance and conversion to the ways of God. We’ll constantly have to examine ourselves and decide whether we really want to go Jesus’ way and surrender all control of the outcomes to God.

In all this, we have a great high priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses, endlessly patient with us.

Prayer:

God, I need you every day. I want to surrender my life to you so that I may love others as you do. Thank you for loving me even when it’s hard to be a servant for you. Remind me that living for you is better than living for anything else. Amen.