“For who is greater, he who sits at the table, or he who serves? Is it not he who sits at the table? Yet I am among you as the One who serves.” Luke 22:27
We see here that Jesus asks and answers a question. In the natural, a person who sits at the table is greater than the one who serves. But that is, in the natural. Jesus says, Yet I am among you as the One who serves.” Service is the Kingdom way. Jesus way.
I spent many years as a child/youth in a false religion based on the occult. By the time I was a teen, I would attend about five times a week. We knew how to serve, but it came out of legalism and control. But our God uses all things to the good for them that believe even works based on legalism.
When I joined a church for the first time, my only understanding of a spiritual group was this false religion. So I went to the pastor’s wife and asked her what I could do at the church. I was used to serving the tea, setting up, helping with children, gardening, cleaning, and so on. It was my normal. So she said I could help with the tea on a Sunday morning. I said that would be wonderful, but what else. She said to help with the toddlers in the evening service. I said, great, what else. She looked at me in a confused way. She said I could help on occasion with the children in the morning; I said, great, what else. (I needed five as to me that was how you served). She said perhaps I could go to the lady’s group. I said yes, but where else? She said that was it. All to say, I understood the act of service, but I did not appreciate its supernaturalness.
Although I knew how to serve, it is not naturally a strength in me, I know God has called us to serve, and our love for Jesus and love for people motivates us. But it was when we lived in Cape Town that God showed me the supernaturalness of serving. We went on outreach with David Cape. He walked through South Africa and washed people’s feet as led. This particular evening he washed the feet of a young boy. This boy had never walked. The boy’s feet started to move as David began washing his feet. After a few minutes, David got him out of the stroller and stood for the first time. Then came the first steps. He then ran for the first time as God healed him. David was serving.
In Genesis 24:12-22 we read the story of Abraham’s servant going to the city to find a wife for Isaac. Verse 14 says, “Now let it be that the young woman to whom I say, ‘Please let down your pitcher that I may drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I will also give your camels a drink’—let her be the one You have appointed for Your servant Isaac. And by this, I will know that You have shown kindness to my master.” We know Rebekah came and gave not only the servant water to drink but also drew water for all of his camels. A typical camel can drink 200 liters (53 gallons) of water in three minutes. So if we were to say that each Camel drank 30 gallons of water and there were 10 Camels, that would mean Rebekah had to draw 300 gallons of water for the Camels. “Little did Rebekah know that those camels she gave water to were carrying untold gifts for her and her family. Little did she know that her future destiny lay in this seemingly ordinary act of service.” Rebekah was a servant-hearted lady. This story shows that natural service and kindness can open the door to our destiny.
To me, serving is like a foundation. As faith is to healing and miracles, service can open the door to our calling and the supernatural.
1 Corinthians 15:46: “…the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual.” When God opens doors for us to serve in practical ways, it might not seem like the ministry gift we desire, but it is the very thing that can open doors for supernaturalness to flow. It is there we learn faithfulness, and we can grow in character.
There are so many places to serve. Our local church is one of the places we have ample opportunity. We might never know the fruit of that in our lives, but the Lord knows, and one day we will begin to see it.
