SHAPED FOR SERVING GOD
THE PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE - PART 5
May 21, 2006

The Bible says this:

We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Ephesians 2:20

You were made to make a contribution, not just to consume.

God made you to make a difference. And what matters is not how long you live, but how you live.

What matters is not the duration of your life, but the donation of your life. On this planet nobody gets a free ride.

  1. We're all meant to give something back.
  2. We're all meant to make a contribution.
  3. We're created to serve,
  4. we're saved to serve,
  5. we're gifted to serve,
  6. we're shaped to serve. We're commanded to serve God back.

Now whenever God gives us an assignment to do something, He never gives it to us without equipping us first. Job says, "Your hands shaped me and made me." (Job 10:8).

God uses five things to shape you:

Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality, and Experiences.

That spells 'SHAPE'.

Those five things make you, and God uniquely shapes you, different from anybody else in the world, for a purpose. And that purpose is to serve Him.

Now we're not going to go into detail today on these five things (the spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, and experiences) because we cover them in Class 301 and because you're going to be reading about them in detail this week in your daily readings. But I do want you to notice this, God made you unique and your uniqueness is not for your benefit.

Let's read it aloud: 1 Peter 4:10 "Each of us should use whatever gift he's received to make a lot of money". Oh! That's not what it says! It says we're to use whatever God's given us to what? Serve others!

Your talents are not for your benefit. Do you remember the first line in the Purpose Driven Life book? "It's not about you." Your purpose in life is to be what God made you to be. And He gave you gifts and talents and abilities and background and experiences and all these things for the benefit of other people, to be used by serving others.

So write this down, "My fourth purpose in life is to serve God by serving others." You want to know why you're alive? That's why you're alive.

You were put here to serve God and the way you serve God is by serving other people. Now, some people want to serve God; they just don't want to serve others. But you can't do that. The only way you can serve God is by serving others.

When I say the word "minister" most people think of priest, pastor. They think of somebody who wears those funny collars, or a robe, and talks in a deep voice, that kind of stuff! But the Bible says every believer is a minister.

Now, not every believer is a pastor, but every believer is a minister. Ministry simply means using my shape to help somebody else in the name of God.

Any time you use your talents, your abilities, your background, your experiences to help somebody else, you know what that's called? Ministering. And you know what you are? You're a minister.

In the Bible the word "service" and "ministry" are the same word. And in the Bible "servant" and "minister" are the same word. So all of us are called to ministry. So you say "I'm not called to ministry". Oh yes you are! If you are called to salvation, you are called to serve.

Now the good news is that God not only created us for service, He gave us a model. He came to earth Himself and said "This is how you do it. I want you to watch Me". And so he came to earth in the form of a man, Jesus Christ, and He said, "This is what I want you to do with your life". You were created to be like Christ, and what did Christ do while He was here on earth? He served.

Let's read it aloud together:

Jesus said, 'Your attitude must be like My own, for I did not come to be served, but to serve'.

Matthew 20:28

Now listen to this, because this is real important. Your SHAPE (spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, experiences) your SHAPE determines your ministry, but your attitude determines your maturity. Big difference.

Your SHAPE determines your ministry. You want to know what God wants you to do with your life? Look at your spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, and experiences. But your attitude, your servant heart, determines your maturity.

You know a lot of people spend so much of their time searching for self-esteem, for self-worth, and significance. They want to feel good about themselves. But they're looking in all the wrong places!

  1. You don't get your self-worth from success, because there's always somebody else who does a better job.
  2. You don't get your self-esteem from status.
  3. You don't get your self-esteem from sex.
  4. You don't get your self-esteem from your salary.

The Bible says you get your self-esteem from service. Jesus said to give your life away in order to find it.

What does it take to be used and to learn to serve like Jesus? Well it takes three things.

1. Serving like Jesus means being available.

It means being available. One day Jesus was walking down to go to Jericho and some blind men start yelling at him. And the Bible says this:

Two blind men shouted 'Lord, have mercy on us!' Jesus stopped and called them. 'What do you want me to do for you?'.

Matthew 20:30-32

Jesus stopped. If you want to be used by God, if you want to serve God, you must be willing to be interrupted.

Most of Jesus' ministry and most of Jesus' miracles were interruptions.

Never tell your neighbors to wait until tomorrow if you can help them now.

Proverbs 3:28

Servant-hearted people don't procrastinate. They're spontaneous, they're sensitive, and they say "OK, let's do it!"

Let me give three common barriers.

Number one: self-centeredness. The Bible says,

Forget yourself long enough to lend a helping hand.

Philippians 2:4

Whenever you see a need right in front of you, guess what? God is giving you the opportunity to practice serving.

God is giving you the opportunity to learn to serve, to learn to be like Jesus Christ. You see the number one enemy of compassion is busyness. We just get too busy! And because I'm so busy, I don't have time to serve. I've got my agenda, my plans, my dreams, my goals, my ambitions. You know what the problem is? We hang this "do not disturb sign" on the door of our heart. We do it all the time. We say, "do not disturb". "Don't disturb my heart. I've got my goals. I've got my safe little life going here, so don't disturb me for the needs of other people."

Number two: perfectionism. You know, wanting every thing to be perfect. You know, "When it's all just right, when things settle down, then I'll serve."

If you wait for perfect conditions, you'll never get anything done.

Ecclesiastes 11:4

Number three: materialism. Materialism is the third barrier that keeps us from being available to serve. Jesus said,

No servant can serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and money.

Luke 16:13

You see, you get so busy taking care of things; you don't have time to take care of people. And that's a problem. The most important decision you're going to have to make in life once you become a believer is, "Am I going to be a kingdom-builder or am I going to be a wealth-builder?"

2. Serving like Jesus also means being grateful.

To serve like Jesus, we have to serve gratefully, grateful that we get the opportunity to serve.

The Bible tells us a story in John Chapter 11 of Jesus serving in an incredible way. His friend Lazarus had died, and He went there, some people thought for the funeral, but Jesus had a different idea in mind. He went there to do ministry, to raise Lazarus from the dead. Now, He could have walked up and prayed a prayer and not said anything to anybody, to Himself and God. But He decided to pray the prayer out loud so that we could still read it today and see what He had to say, so those people could hear it.

Jesus looked up and said, 'Father, I thank You that You heard me. I know that You always hear Me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here. I want them to know that I am grateful that you heard Me'.

John 11:41-42

Jesus had an attitude of gratefulness in everything that He did. He started with gratefulness. That was His attitude in ministry.

  1. Why do we serve God with gratefulness?
  2. What do we have to be grateful for?
  3. Why do we serve God, not with a sense of duty, but with a sense of delight? Not out of a sense of obligation, but a sense of the great opportunity that He's given to us?

We serve Him with gratefulness because He's given life to us through Jesus Christ.

It is He who saved us and chose us for His holy work, not because we deserved it, but because that was His plan.

2 Timothy 1:9

He saved us, and out of the gratefulness of that, what He has done for us, we serve Him.

Two barriers that get in the way of serving God

Number one is comparing and criticizing.

The Bible tells us over in Romans 14:4, "Who are you to criticize someone else's servant? The Lord will determine whether His servant has been successful."

Number two is wrong motivations, our own wrong motivations.

In Matthew 6:1 Jesus said, "When you do good deeds, don't try to show off. If you do, you won't get a reward from your Father in heaven".

The wrong motivation of showing off. Self-promotion and servanthood don't mix, but it's easy to get them mixed up.

A lot of our service, let's just be honest, it can be self-serving at times. We need to be honest with ourselves about that.

  1. We serve to get others to like us.
  2. We serve to be admired.
  3. We serve to achieve our own goals.
  4. We serve as sort of a bargaining chip with God. "God, I'll serve and You take care of me here."

Let's admit it, sometimes servanthood is just our way to try to manipulate God.

How do you know if you have a wrong motivation? Gratitude. This very attitude. When you lose a sense of gratefulness, of gratitude in your life, you can know right away there's something wrong with my motivation.

The minute you lose the gratitude you can know, that's a strong indicator there, I don't know what it is, but there's something wrong with the motivation of service in my life. Wrong motivations don't last.

3. Serving like Jesus means being faithful.

It means you don't give up. You keep on going. You don't quit in the middle of your assignment.

Jesus said this in John 17:4, He said, "I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work that You gave me to do." I want you to be able to say that when you get to heaven. You completed the work that God gave you to do.

Jesus was faithful in fulfilling His service. He didn't give up. He didn't give in. He was persistent.

Here's the point:
And if you're going to be like Jesus it means you're going to serve as long as you're alive.

So what motivates us to keep on going? The Bible says

The one thing required of servants is that they be faithful.

1 Corinthians 4:2

How do we be faithful? What motivates us to stay faithful in serving God over the long haul?

You're going to be rewarded. So we have gratitude for the past and we have faith in the future reward. We also know that what we're doing really matters. Now let's be honest folks, most of what we do in life doesn't matter. It isn't going to matter next week much less next year or next decade or in eternity. But any time you're serving in Jesus' name, no matter how small, it matters.

Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for Him is a waste of time or effort.

1 Corinthians 15:58

Notice "nothing": that means it all matters, even the little stuff. Why? Because in God's book, there is no little service.

Now if you're going to learn to be a servant of God, you must learn the difference between significance and prominence. They are not the same thing.

  1. On my body, my nose is quite prominent. But I could lose my nose and still live the rest of my life, because while it's prominent, it's not significant.
  2. If I lost my liver, or if I lost my heart, it's not very prominent. You don't see it. But if I lost it, I'd be dead.

You see the fact is with our limited perspective, we can't see how our small acts have big consequences, but they do!

How will God use you?

One day you're going to stand before God and He's going to say to you, "What did you do with what I gave you, the talents, the abilities, the background, the experiences, the freedom, the education, the family experiences? What did you do with your SHAPE?"

"Well, God, I was a little busy with my ambitions and plan. I never got around to serving You." And God's going to say, "Wrong answer! What were you thinking? Do you think I put you on earth to live for yourself? I put you here to serve Me by serving others." Now you may be thinking nobody's watching you, and nobody's noticing what you do, but God's watching.

Hebrews 6:10 "He will not forget how hard you've worked for Him and how you've shown your love to Him." How? "By caring for other Christians". And God keeps His promise.

You know on earth they give awards for 10 years of faithful service? In heaven you're going to get eternal rewards. Look at the next verse

Well done good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things so; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness.

Matthew 25:21

Question: Is God going to be able to say "well done" to you? "You spent your life in serving Me. Well done!"

Let's bow our heads. Would you pray this?

Father I realize that I was shaped to serve You by serving others. Forgive me for the times I've put a "do not disturb" sign on my heart. Help me to see the interruptions as opportunities to serve. Help me to make time for what matters most. You've been so good to me. I want to give something back. I want to serve You freely and gratefully and faithfully, and I want to practice before I get to heaven so one day I can hear You say "Well done, good and faithful servant". In Your name I pray, Amen.