The motivate of a servant's heart shows it to be true or not.
Many moons ago a topic, chosen by my accountability group, was to describe yourself in one word. And in this one word we were to describe ourselves, the good and the bad. My first thought was how can that be possible? As I pondered the thought more, the first word to illustrate both the good and bad parts of my character was: servant.
I'll start with the unpleasant. One bad part about serving is that sometimes I can serve for my own benefit, serve so others will serve me, or serve so others will like me, mostly serve so things can work out my way. I see myself as a hard working person who loves to be appreciated much to the extent of doing things for others just for approval & apprecitation. Thank Jesus, he nipped this in the bud. How he did this was kind of interesting. I was at the barbershop cleaning my life away, and began to have conversations with myself (come on we all do it) about how if I wasn't cleaning it wouldn't matter because no one appreciated it anyway. I mean my peers or my boss didn't even notice! Then I heard the voice (we've all heard it) ya know sounded like my own but its the one that shows me how wrong I've been. It's the voice of God. What he reminded me of that day was Gal. 1:10 and how I was living quite the opposite. NLT states it, "Obviously, I'm not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ's servant." It wasn't until I heard His voice, that I understood why I did not recieve appreciation and pat on the backs from people. He wanted me to get my approval from Him, and now thats all I really need.
I don't think I have to talk too much about the good side of it. It's pretty self-explanitory. I do believe its a desire God put in me and puts in all of us to serve and love him. By doing this, it most always means we have to serve and love others. When I am spending time with God on regular basis, to serve others is second nature. When serving now, God reminds me of this verse in Phil 2:5-7
In your relationships with one another,
have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God
something to be used to his own advantage; rather,
he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Please enjoy some other good blogs on One-Word descriptions by Emily-Kate & Shelly.
