Burn97 said that american's don't know or understand what it means to be His servant... I will have to agree... this was my journal entry on Sept.25... it's a long one - but a real eye opener.
My eyes have really been opened just now... I was looking for a scripture to post in the post a verse thread when I came acoss Titus 2:9 AMP which says:
[Tell] bond servants to be submissive to their masters, to be pleasing and give satisfaction in every way. [Warn them] not to talk back or contradict.
Then I wondered... "what is a bond servant?" So I went to the internet and googled it... when I went into this page... wow was I shocked and humbled. For so many years I have been known as "ImHisServant" - it's my name here at CF, my e-mail address, my instant messenger name, my e-bay name, my MySpace address etc. WHAT A LIE!!! I have NEVER been His servant!!! Yes I have loved Him with all my heart... yes I go to church, yes I do bible studies, yes I pray... But after reading this - I know I am not His servant. My heart is repentant today as I realize this and I pray that from now on I will become more and more His bond-servant as He has called me to be.
Here is a copy & paste of the site which had this study... prepare yourself for the truth.
SERVANTS? - [SIZE=+2]SERVANTS? - [SIZE=+1]SERVANTS?
[/SIZE]DOWN! - [SIZE=+2]DOWN![/SIZE] - [SIZE=+2]DOWN!
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Exploring a comment Jesus made about our duty and service helps us to see how lowly a position we are called to - and how you and I may have much more to learn about HUMILITY than we thought.NOTHING IS CLEARER from the New Testament than that the Lord Jesus expects us to take the low position of servants. This is not just an extra obligation, which we may or may not assume as we please. It is the very heart of that new relationship which the disciple is to take if he is to know fellowship with Christ and any degree of holiness in his life.
When we come to the New Testament, the word in the Greek for the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ is not "hired servant" - one who receives wages and has certain rights - but "bond-servant," meaning that our position is one where we have no rights and no appeal, where we are the absolute property of our Master, to be treated and disposed of just as he wishes.
The word SERVANT comes from the Greek word doulos, one bound to his master as his slave, one who was in a permanent relationship to his master, which relationship could only be broken by death, one whose will was swallowed up in the will of his master, one who served his master even to the extent that he disregarded his own interest. Further, we shall see more clearly still what our position is to be when we understand that we are to be the bond-servants of One who was himself willing to be a bond-servant.He took "the very nature of a servant" (Philippians 2:7) - without rights, willing to be treated as the will of the Father and the malice of men might decree, if only he might thereby serve men and bring them back to God.YOU AND I ARE THE BOND-SERVANTS OF HIM WHO WAS AND ALWAYS IS A BOND-SERVANT, whose disposition is ever that of humility and whose activity is ever that of humbling himself to serve his creatures.
HOW UTTERLY LOW, THEN, IS OUR TRUE POSITION!
How this shows us what it means to be ruled by the Lord Jesus!
That leads us to something further. Our servanthood to the Lord Jesus is to express itself in our servanthood to our fellows. The low position we take toward the Lord Jesus is judged by him by the low position we take in our relationship with our fellows. An unwillingness to serve others in costly, humbling ways he takes to be an unwillingness to serve him.
We are now in a position to apply all of this much more personally to our lives.
Let Luke 17:7-10 speak to your heart: "Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, "Come along now and sit down to eat"? Would he not rather say, "Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink"? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, "We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty."
FIVE MARKS
I see five marks of the bond-servant.
1. He must be willing to have one thing on top of another put upon him, without any consideration being given him.
On top of a hard day in the field, the servant in the parable had immediately to prepare his master's meal, and on top that he had to wait on him at the table - and all that before he had any food himself. He just went and did it, expecting nothing else. How unwilling we are for this! How quickly there are murmurings and bitterness in our hearts when that sort of thing is expected of us. But the moment we start murmuring, we are acting as if we had rights, and a bond-servant hasn't any!
2. In doing this he must be willing not to be thanked for it.
How often we serve others, but what self-pity we have in our hearts and how bitterely we complain that they take it as a matter of course and do not thank us for it. But a bond-servant must be willing for that. Hired servants may expect something, but not bond-servants.
3. Having done all this, he must not charge the others with selfishness.
As I read the passage, I could not but feel that the master was rather selfish and inconsiderate. But there is no such charge from the bond-servant. He exists to serve the interests of his master, and the selfishness or otherwise of his master does not enter into it with him.But we? We can perhaps allow ourselves to be "put upon" by others, and are willing perhaps not to be thanked for what we do, but how in our minds we charge the other with selfishness! Yet that is not the place of a bond-servant. He is to find in the selfishness of others a further opportunity to identify himself with his Lord as the servant of all.
4. Having done all that, there is no ground for pride or self-congratulation, but we must confess that we are unworthy servants - we are of no real use to God or man in ourselves.
We must confess again and again that in our flesh, there dwelleth no good thing; that if we have acted as willing servants, it is no thanks to us, whose hearts are naturally proud and stubborn, but only to the Lord Jesus, who dwells in us and who has made us willing.
5. The bottom of self is quite knocked out by the fifth and last step - the admission that doing and bearing what we have in the way of meekness and humility, we have not done one stitch more than it was our duty to do.
God made man in the first place simply that he might be God's bond-servant. His restoration can only be, then, a restoration to the position of a bond-servant. A man has not done anything specially meritorious when he has consented to take that position, for he was created and redeemed for that very thing.
This, then, IS THE WAY OF THE CROSS. It is the way that God's lowly bond-servant first trod for us, and should not we, the bond-servants of that Bond-Servant, tread it still. Paul the Apostle, who was a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, said, "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death" (Philippians 3:10).
If you really want to know what a man is really made of,
study his actions when he's under pressure.
The Apostle Paul was under a tremendous amount of pressure when he penned the above prayer (contained in his letter to the church at Philippi).These words were written in prison; Paul's very life could have been in jeopardy. He might well have been chained to a Roman guard twenty-four hours a day, loosed only for the necessities of life. Even when Paul was in prison, he never forget that he was a bond-servant to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now what can we learn by reading this one short passage, written by the Apostle Paul in this moment of great duress? Naturally his writing was guided by the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit used Paul's personality, Paul's thoughts, and Paul's emotions. So we must come back to the question, "What does a man do under pressure? How does he conduct himself? How does he act? Does he come apart at the seams?" Certainly, he will show his true colors, but what are his true colors.
The most wonderful thing about true Christianity is that it works, and particularly under pressure. And that, perhaps, is what best separates Christianity from all the philosophies, religions, which have come and gone over the centuries.
First of all, Paul never forgot that he was still a bond-servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, even though he was in prison, under pressure. Another lesson we learn is: that he doesn't seek release from prison. Isn't this strange? One would think this would be his most compelling need - yet he doesn't even mention it.
Throughout his life Paul never asked for reward, he never asked for praise. As a matter of fact, he never asked for any of the things we might consider to be available to one this close to God. Without question, Paul had God's ear and God was using him at this moment, just as God had used him throughout the greater part of his adult life.
And yet, Paul asked for none of these things. Why? Paul never forgot that he was a bond-servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that he had no rights. He was owned by the Master, and even while in prison, he was obligated to obey the orders of his Master. The prison guards were not his master. The authorities of the prison were not his master. His Master was still the Lord Jesus Christ. As a bond-servant, he still followed the orders of his Master.In fact, the only thing Paul asked for was:"...that I may know Him." As bond-servants of the Lord, this ought to be our cry, our prayer as well, "that we will know the Master better and more intimate, every day.
We are taught that we must bear our crosses and deny ourselves daily - by doing so, we enlarge the capacity to contain more of our Master, our Redeemer. By doing so, we become more effective as a bond-servant of our Lord.Paul could have asked for a miracle to escape the prison house, he could have asked for the divine Hand of God to comfort him, to encourage him, etc, but instead, he said that he wanted to know his Master better. As a bond-servant, he wanted a greater intimate relationship with his Master .
As a bond-servant, Paul wanted to know the power of his Resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering. May the prayer of the Apostle Paul be our prayer as well.
Down and Up
Does it seem hard and forbidding, this way down? Be assured, it is the only way up. It was the way by which the Lord Jesus reached the Throne, and it is the way by which we too reach the place of spiritual power, authority and fruitfulness.[/SIZE]
He ALONE is God! ~Amen!
