Welcome to Waymaker Church! We are so excited to have you join us today! We exist to Encounter, Live for, and Advance the Kingdom of God!

As we continue in our series Worthy of the Gospel, I want to share with you about developing a servant’s heart. As I closed my message last week, I mentioned that maturity in the faith is about realizing that our life is about service to others.

The testing and trials in our lives not only solidify our trust in the Lord by helping us to understand the power and the potency of the word of God, but they also prepare us for service in the kingdom. The spiritual nature of the born-again man or woman of God is to become a servant.

God has entrusted us to carry the flame of the Gospel in our generation, but its advancement into future generations rests upon our ability to steward the baton well.
The message of the Gospel transfers from generation to the next by those who surrender their lives to the king, and then pick up the servant’s towel.
God has prepared good works for us to do.

What we must understand is that our spiritual service to God, and the good works that He has prepared will be displayed through our service to others. God’s heart is always on people.

He cares about the condition of their souls and the trajectory of their lives. He cares about the addict on the street, he cares about the struggling marriage, he cares about the single parent, he cares about the one experiencing grief, he cares about the one battling fear and uncertainty.

The way he meets the needs of those he cares about is through us. To meet the needs, we will have to develop a servant’s heart, because we are not naturally hardwired to serve others. It must be developed.

My greatest desire is that we would carry the flame of the gospel to our generation well, but to do it successfully we will need to discover and implement the characteristics of a servant’s heart.

Unity. Unity is not about conformity. It is about being like-minded, having the same love, united by the same character, affections, and mindsets vs. being divided. Jesus died for people. Not denominations or religious practices.

Developing the heart of a servant begins with esteeming others better than ourselves. It’s not about debasement of ourselves, but it is about selflessness.

The Heart of a Servant Has Five Characteristics:

Characteristic #1: Availability
This thought might make you cringe as you consider the busyness of your personal schedule. The question: How can I be available to God when I can barely keep up with what I already have going on?

This is something that every one of us will have to wrestle with. As a servant, you must be willing to let God interfere with your schedule as he needs to. This may mean that you will have to change some priorities in your life. Serving Jesus isn’t about convenience, it’s about availability.

It will require you to keep your schedule less burdened to be able to answer the call to service when it comes or be willing to put aside less important matters to answer the call.

This may sound stressful, but it’s freeing. Changes to your schedule and interruptions in your day become less irritating when you see them as opportunities to do God’s work. Ministry most often happens in the inconvenient moments of life.

Characteristic #2: Perceptiveness
People with a servant’s heart look for ways that they might be able to serve others and take opportunities as soon as they spot them.

Pastor Robert Schuller made this statement, “The secret of success is to find a need and fill it, to find a hurt and heal it, to find somebody with a problem and offer to help solve it.”

You need perception and flexibility to fulfill this characteristic:
Perception helps you sense when someone needs your help, even when it’s not immediately clear. Flexibility is necessary because moments to reach out to those who need help usually pass very quickly, so you need to be flexible enough to seize the moment without thinking about your schedule.

To work on your servant’s perception and flexibility, make a point of looking for small, unnoticeable tasks that need to be done. One of the aspects of our membership study is taking ownership. This can be as simple as seeing a piece of trash on the ground and picking it up to throw away. Other times it is seeing the need in a ministry and instead of waiting to be asked you offer your help.

Outside of Church opportunities to serve may look like raking your elderly neighbor’s leaves while they’re out or staying after a committee meeting at your child’s school to help clean up the room after an event.

Train your eye to see the little things that need help and adjust yourself to serve.

Characteristic #3: Dedication
People with a servant’s heart do the best they can with what they have, no matter the circumstances. They don’t wait for better timing or better tools, and they don’t make excuses—they simply use whatever they have and jump into their work.

1 John 3:18 “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”

Serving is about action. God doesn’t care about perfection. You may be hesitating to serve or waiting for a “better time” because you think you have nothing worthy to offer.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. God can and will use any sort of service that you are willing to put out into the world. Everyone has a learning curve, and often their first attempts at service aren’t always the best, but the only way you can improve is by practicing.

The only thing God can’t use are thoughts of service that are never carried out. Those with a servants heart simply offer themselves for the needed task.
In my own life, I am just as willing to clean the toilets in the church and throw out the trash as I am to preach the message.

The heart of serving is about being willing to take care of the small things without the need to be seen.

Always keep in mind that no task was “beneath” Jesus. He washed feet, helped lepers, and made food for his disciples—all to the best of his ability.

Characteristic #4: Reliability
People with a servant’s heart are reliable doing what they say they will do.

Characteristic #5: Humility
People with a servant’s heart are not looking for the spotlight. Their aim is that Jesus would get the glory. Those with a servant’s heart don’t need to be noticed or praised for their service. If they do get praise, they acknowledge it but don’t let it change the way they serve or get in the way of it.

In a final thought about a serving heart, I couldn’t help but think about the greatest example of what it means to be a servant. Jesus.

Instead of looking for a crown, Jesus picked up a towel.

Imagine the feet of the disciples. They primarily wore sandals. They walked down dusty roads, through mud, etc., without anything to really protect their feet. I would imagine some of them might have had scrapes or cuts from brushing their feet against something abrasive.

We can only imagine that they weren’t necessarily pleasant and manicured. Jesus though, as our example, took the towel and humbled himself. He washed their feet. After He finished, he made this statement

Jesus had the right to be served as Lord and King, but He chose humility and service.

Today, we need to ask ourselves the question? Am I serving the Lord by serving others? It’s easy to think of this in the context of church ministry, but are you washing the feet of your spouse? What about your children or your employer?

The heart of the servant is about lifestyle where we are ready, willing, and available to God at any moment for any need. My prayer this morning is that we would find joy in serving.