Mission To Children

	About MTC	Donate Online	Contact Us

Home

Recalibrating for Fruitful Service

During the past couple weeks, it's been my privilege and my joy to serve as your tour guide. We've been touring the Scriptures to find out what they tell us about how we should live. What we've seen is that no matter what our circumstances may be, whether good or bad, God gives us simple instruction for living. It isn't necessarily easy to do, but it is simple to understand.

God's direction is very clear: He wants us to worship Him.

When times are good, worship Him. Thank Him for His grace and mercy.
When times are ho-hum, worship Him. Thank Him for leading you beside still waters.
When times are tough, worship Him. Thank Him for being the Rock of your salvation.

"But what is 'worship'?" you ask. Based upon what we've discovered in Scripture, here's my attempt to capture the concept: Worship is loving, abiding in and serving God; it is acknowledging His worth in acceptable ways.

Worship is all about bringing glory to God. First, the foundation of our worship is to acknowledge God's worth by loving Him. The kind of worship that God accepts is the kind in which all the rest of our worship emerges from love: His love for us, and our love for Him. 1 Corinthians 13 clearly declares that anything we know and anything we accomplish is worthless in God's eyes if not done in love.

Second, another thing we learned about worship is that worship is a combination of inward attitude and outward action. Inwardly, we love God. And because we love Him, we simply want to express our love for God in outward service. Do you see how these attitudes and actions complement each other? Service for God is the overflow of our love for God, as if we were pitchers of cool water overflowing and bringing welcome moisture to the dry, thirsty ground around us.

It's important for us to note a word of caution about the service side of our worship: Serving God is a special privilege. It's also a very visible activity. Other people see us serving God. Unfortunately, getting their attention can become the focus of our attention. Because our time is limited, little by little we can begin to neglect loving God and abiding in God. In fact, let me repeat a quotation I mentioned in a recent message. Oswald Chambers wrote a startling comment about over-eager servants of the Lord. Here's what he said in his devotional book My Utmost For His Highest: "We slander God by our very eagerness to work for Him without knowing Him."

What did he mean by that? Imagine that you're so eager to play a ball game that you rush out onto the playing field without allowing the coach to prepare you for the contest. You're so eager to experience the rush of adrenaline that you know you'll feel when you play, that you show disrespect for the coach—hat is, you slander him—by dashing out there and embarrassing him with your lack of understanding and lack of preparation. If you did that, you'd not only dishonor your coach, but you'd frustrate and embarrass yourself. That's how games are lost, not how they're won. To do this is to invite personal disaster.

Instead, we need to follow the path of wisdom. God's Word reminds us that "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." When we look to God's Word, we begin to be wise.

With that in mind, let's look in His Word - the gospel of John, chapter 15 - for counsel about how to serve God without slandering Him.

First, we see in verse 5 that God calls us to constantly re-connect with our Creator. Jesus Christ says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." If we want our service to be blessed by God, our service cannot occur in a vacuum; it has to happen in the context of abiding in Him. If we don't abide in Him, our service is fruitless, a waste of time. Instead of growing fruit, we'll grow stubble. We need to spend undistracted time with our Lord every day, so He can nourish our souls and keep them from getting brittle.

Another way for us to understand the importance of this is to see it by means of another word picture. Years ago, I flew a small airplane. Each time I revved up the engine and went through my checklist before take-off, one of the things I needed to do was recalibrate my altimeter. An altimeter tells a pilot his altitude, and as you can imagine, it's rather important for a pilot to know how high or low his plane is flying! Yet, the altimeter always wandered away from the true altitude when the engine was shut off between flights. Every time I took off, I had to re-set - recalibrate - that altimeter. If I didn't do that, it wouldn't fulfill the purpose or the service for which it was designed. In the same way, time with God enables Him to recalibrate us to fulfill the purpose and the service for which we were designed.

It's for this absolutely vital reason that we engage in such disciplines as unhurried prayer, reflective Bible reading, and quiet solitude. During these times, God nourishes our inner life so we can fulfill our design.

Have you taken time to recalibrate for the day ahead of you? If not, do it now; just do it.

Tomorrow we'll continue looking to God's Word for wisdom about effective living. Join us as we resume our study of John 15.