SERVICE

SERVICE

True service is to Christ, who is both Lord and Master. Though we may be the servants of the church, the church is not our master. We shall and ought to serve the church, but we must take our orders from the Lord, and for His sake and in subjection to Him serve whomsoever, wheresoever, and howsoever He may appoint. True service flows naturally from life, and is the work of love. There is no effort in it, no perplexity about it. It is whatsoever the hand findeth to do for the Lord, done readily without question. But it can only be performed in communion. If the soul is not in communion with the Lord, there can be no true service. The Lord as sovereign may and does use whom He will, taking up often the unclean vessel and instrument, and displaying His power or His grace through such. But this is not service, at least not such as the heart of any saint desires for himself. That cannot be called true service which does not proceed from affectionate and intelligent apprehension of the Master’s will. An instrument is not a servant, at least not in a happy sense, though, alas! from our low condition, we are more often thus used than in distinct communion with the Lord concerning the matter in hand.

There is, however, one thing which all can do, that is, be “meet for the master’s use” (2 Timothy 2: 21); and this is the secret of usefulness. Usefulness is not activity; it is not the merely being used, but it is fitness, cleanness, preparedness, and separation of heart, singleness of eye, the affections set on things above — all, in fact, that proceeds from the judgment and denial of self, and the dwelling of Christ in the heart by faith.

A true servant is always ready. “Here am I” — “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” express his condition. He does not choose his work, but obeys his Master. If he has nothing given him to do he is quiet and patient; when he gets his Master’s order, he does it joyfully without demur.

Nine-tenths or more of our difficulties about service are from lack of intelligence as to our Master’s will. We wait and wait for some great commission, and often leave undone the thing present. We shrink from the work which the Lord Himself may be putting before us, and desire to be used in other service in which He does not require us. The consequence of this unsettled and insubject state is complete uncertainty as to what our proper work may really be. The large majority of saints would confess that they do not know certainly what the Lord would have them to do. They would like to serve Him, and they try to do so again and again, putting their hands to this and that thing without effect. There has not been the sitting at the feet of Jesus to learn His mind before the attempt at active service.

Again, how common is the complaint of Martha: “Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?” How that little word “alone” betrayed the character of her service. If I am for His own sake serving my Lord in faith and love, I shall never complain of serving alone. Indeed, all true service is in one sense alone. It is founded on individual responsibility and faith. We serve our own, and not another man’s master. Fellowship in service, when we get it, is indeed a happy thing; but the faithful servant who has his Lord’s mind, and is serving Him, will never murmur at being alone, or desire the mere aid of another not called to, nor having heart for, the same work. To meet a fellow-servant walking in the same line of service, and so to serve together, is very blessed, but it is rare. A “true yoke fellow” is not often met with, nor, as we learn more of the Lord’s ways and our ^[p. 59] responsibility, shall we look for it. The harvest is great and the labourers are few; and if each were doing his own work, he would not be looking for help from other servants doing theirs. There is much misapprehension on the subject of fellowship in service. Saints give it a low place and often a wrong one. They think, for instance, that they may serve without question in fellowship with those with whom they have no communion at the table of the Lord. They do not see that our fellowship in Christ is the first thing to be owned, and that this is properly displayed at the Lord’s table. If I am not agreed with one as to this, how can I consent to sink this vital ground of communion to take up with him the lower ground of service? And yet again, it is not merely because we have taken our places at the Lord’s table that we can serve together. In order to do this there must be that brotherly confidence in the purpose of heart, the walk and the ways of another, which it is needless to say, though painful to admit, does not necessarily accompany a right church position. This was true in Paul’s day; it is true now to the true servant of God. So it is a legal heart that murmurs at a lonely path of service. Still, a true servant may mourn the inactivity of others; but that was not Martha’s thought. She could not exactly rebuke Mary’s better choice; but she was sinking under the weight of a service undertaken in her own strength, apart from faith, and unsought for by her Lord; and it was her own relief she sought, and not that Mary should share with her any blessing in the path. And this part of the Martha character stamps the service of most of those professing christianity in the present day. Association, human energy, direction, and organisation, are all considered essential and excellent in religious effort. Mission work, evangelisation, as well as philanthropic works, are in the hands of societies and committees where all individuality is swamped by the mass. It is easy to serve with and as the multitude. It is easy to be one of a ^[p. 60] committee or of a society, or to serve in a line of things made ready to the hand. It is only when a christian is led towards a true and scriptural church position that he begins to learn, or is in the way to learn, what service really is; and this, I believe, accounts to a great extent for the accusation brought so commonly against some of ceasing to be useful when they leave the associations they had been connected with. As I said before, it is easy work in a society where all is done by rule, or in any of the thousand ways in which the religious world carries on its works. But when we leave these human arrangements, and are cast upon our individual responsibility before God how to serve Him, unsupported by the arm of flesh, it finds us out where we really are; and the man whose energy under a human system has been marked often finds himself for a time brought very much to a stand when he takes his proper place as a member of the body of Christ, and waits for the manifestation of the Spirit as to his path of service. But if faith be in exercise, though his path of sight and sense be shut up to him, another way will be opened speedily and his abstinence from active service will not be for long.

If there be true dependence upon God, and purpose of heart to be anything or do anything He may appoint, there will be no lack of work to do, nor lack of joy in the doing it. For most certainly the blessing to our own souls in serving Christ is not in proportion to the outward show our work may present, or the apparent fruits of our labours, but just in extent as we are conscious of the guidance of His eye, and are in communion with the desires and purposes of His heart and mind. On the other hand, in those who have not learned individuality in service, there is much disappointment and consequent discontent. For one christian who knows his path of service, and is satisfied to walk in it humbly and quietly with his Lord, there are fifty in a restless, uncertain mood, desiring activity, but ignorant ^[p. 61] of what to be at. If the true servant strikes into a service which the Lord evidently calls him to and owns, the fifty others are ready to imitate his line of things. And all this uncertainty causes the discontent and murmurings, so often heard amongst saints, of lack of fellowship, want of care for souls, no evangelistic effort, etc., those who murmur loudest generally being those who have the lowest sense of individual responsibility, and the least power from God for a distinct path.

Still we must all confess to sad shortcoming, coldness, deadness, slothfulness. But the remedy is not in murmurings and disputings, but in self-judgment and purpose of heart to learn, and from henceforth to do our work for God. All are not preachers. But all have a place in the body of Christ; and membership implies activity and life, responsibility to the Head, and care for the members. All have a God and Saviour whose doctrine they are called to adorn in all things. All of us are living in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, amongst whom we are to shine, “holding forth the word of life”.

If we are meet for the Master’s use, and prepared for every good work, we shall soon find that there is no time for complaint, but that the time rather fails us to do the many, many things the Lord will put before us day by day, and hour by hour. We may not have to preach to great congregations, nor even to small ones; but there is plenty to do besides preaching, and many a little work, unseen and unknown by any but the Master Himself, will get its reward in that day when every man shall have praise of God.

But the conclusion of the whole matter is, that we must be near to God in heart and conscience before we can serve Him acceptably. Let us, then, seek for this first of all, so that our service may be as the calm and settled stream flowing from full hearts, whose highest interests are the interests of the Lord whom we love. Next, as once was said by another, ‘Let each find out ^[p. 62] from God what his work is, and then do it’; or, as Paul put it to Archippus, “Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it”, Colossians 4: 17.