Celebration of Discipline Week 8: Service
This is week eight of our 12-week series exploring Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.
Join us as we journey through the twelve spiritual disciplines found in the book choosing to go deeper with Jesus and grow in our spiritual lives. It’s not too late to join us – so grab a copy and dive in!
Here’s last week’s blog where Helen shared her thoughts on Submission. You can also watch her video update too.
Discipline Eight: Service
If you have been around church for even a little while, you will undoubtedly heard a request for more people to ‘serve on a team’ – whether that’s kids work or the coffee rota.
None of these ways of serving are bad things! But it’s easy for this type of service to shape and limit our understanding of the spiritual discipline of service.
The significance of service is not only in blessing those we serve, but in the way it shapes us to be more like Jesus. Bernard of Clairvaux says:
‘Learn the lesson that, if you are to do the work of a prophet what you need is not a sceptre but a hoe.’
Last week, we explored the discipline of submission. While submission might look like a cross, service often looks like a towel.
‘The wrong state of the heart can lead to ‘self-righteous service,’ where service comes through human effort, and is concerned about making impressive gains and requires external rewards. ‘True service’ is rooted in our relationship with Jesus’
Jesus says in John 13:14–15:
‘If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have also given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.’
Jesus was doing more than telling his disciples to wash one another’s feet – he was getting at something deeper. Like his disciples, we are all called to take the place of a servant and be willing to serve those around us, just as Jesus did.
Richard Foster spends a good portion of his chapter on service exploring whether we have the right heart when it comes to service. The wrong state of the heart can lead to ‘self-righteous service,’ where service comes through human effort, and is concerned about making impressive gains and requires external rewards. ‘True service’ is rooted in our relationship with Jesus. True service delights in the service itself, whether private or public, and builds community rather than fracturing it.
To master the discipline of service, we first need to learn draw near to Jesus and learn to be with him and get to know him. As we do this, he shapes our hearts and the service which stems from this place will be ‘true service’, rather than ‘self-righteous’ service.
You may have come across the idea of ‘love languages’ before. The idea is that we each express and experience love – whether it’s romantic or platonic – in five core ways: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time and physical touch. Usually we have one primary and one secondary love language.
My mum’s primary love language is definitely acts of service! She is constantly serving those around her wherever she is. You would be hard-pressed to have spent longer than two minutes before she is already serving you in some way, whether it’s making you a cup of tea, serving up a mega Chinese feast (her absolute speciality), or there with paintbrush in hand helping you decorate your house. My mum is thoroughly servant-hearted, formed through years of happily serving others without caring whether anyone else sees her doing so.
Foster highlights the great value of small, everyday acts of service which require constant sacrifice, and which flow from a place of being a servant – rather than the great virtues of (often) one-off public acts of service.
For Foster, ‘service is not a list of things to do, though in it we discover things to do. It is not a code of ethics, but a way of living.’
Richard Foster highlights nine different types of service which come under this ‘way of living’:
1. Service of hiddenness
2. Service of small things
3. Service of guarding the reputation of others
4. Service of being served
5. Service of common courtesy
6. Service of hospitality (but don’t forget to #StayHome)
7. Service of listening
8. Service of bearing the burdens of each other
9. Service of sharing the word of life with one another
The Bible encourages us to serve in each of these ways – and reminds us that it’s as much for our benefit as for the benefit of others. This week I’m going to be focusing on one type of service: the service of bearing the burdens of each other.
This type of service struck me to as being particularly relevant in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Galatians 6:2 gives us a clear instruction: ‘Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.’ Right now, we desperately need to be a community which really looks out for and cares for one another. Many of us will know someone who is walking quite literally through the valley of the shadow of death, or having a tough time with financial insecurity looming, or struggling with the loneliness of lockdown. Now more than ever, they need someone to come alongside them (at a social distance, naturally) to simply love and care for them, helping them carry their burdens.
‘Right now, we desperately need to be a community which really looks out for and cares for one another. Many of us will know someone who is walking quite literally through the valley of the shadow of death’
And as we practice the discipline of service we will grow in humility. Foster says: ‘More than any other single way, the grace of humility is worked into our lives through the discipline of service.’
Finally, though, a word of caution – as you seek to grow in the discipline of service, pray for an increase of wisdom and discernment so that you will know when to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’. All to often I say ‘yes’ to too much and catch myself becoming bitter, or even burning myself out. For many of us, obedience will look like saying ‘no’ as much as it is saying ‘yes’!
Challenges for this week:
1. One person:
Think of one person who you know is struggling in lockdown. Pick up your phone, drop them a text or send them a card to see how you can serve them so as to bear their burdens.
2. Pray for the small things:
Foster encourages us to wake up every morning and pray: ‘Lord Jesus, as it would please you, bring me someone today who I can serve.’ How about starting every day this week with this prayer and seeing how God leads you?
Richard Foster recommends these daily scripture readings as explore service this week:
Monday: The call of service – Matthew 20:20–28
Tuesday: The sign of service – John 13:1–17
Wednesday: The commitment of service – Exodus 21:2, 5–6, 1 Corinthians 9:19
Thursday: The attitude of service – Colossians 3:23–25
Friday: Service in the Christian fellowship – Romans 12:9–13
Saturday: The ministry of small things – Matthew 25:31–19
Sunday: Service exemplified – Luke 10:29-37
Video Update
Here’s Becky with a video update at the end of the week exploring the discipline of service.
Follow @onelifeleaders on Instagram to continue the journey.
We’ll be sharing blog posts, encouraging quotes and video reflections on each chapter of Celebration of Discipline..