Your Serve
“Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible” (1 Corinthians 9:19).
James Hewett tells of a neighbor trying to put up a T.V. antenna on his roof. It was apparent this neighbor was to mount an antenna what Pavarotti was to pole vaulting. If left to himself it wasn’t going to happen. Hewett fetched his fancy bucket of tools. Ten minutes later he basically installed the antenna for his neighbor while giving him the satisfaction of feeling mutually responsible for the accomplishment. “So, what do you usually make with such fancy tools?” his neighbor asked him. Hewett’s smiling reply was, “Friends mostly!”
Do you leverage friendships in a similar way with the gifts God has given you? Are you on the lookout for a way you might help others or allow them to help you to engender friendship? It’s easy, so easy, to be so busy in life with family and responsibility that we lose this perspective. After all, do you really have time for friendship anyway? Or is it even safe, right!?
Fight this perspective, my friend. No, not everyone has to be your best friend. However, our culture is increasingly becoming one of isolation, anonymity, and a sinking feeling of being unloved. People are God’s true treasure. Men and women matter most to God, and many need friendship. So, learn to see others and think, “My serve!” There must be a way I might serve that person with my gifts to love them with the love of Christ. And not just for friendship!
Five times in I Corinthians 9:19-22 Paul says his aim is to win people. Verse 19: “that I might win the more.” Verse 20: “that I might win the Jews . . . that I might win those under the law." Verse 21: “That I might win those who are without law.” Verse 22: “That I might win the weak.” At the end of verse 22 in his summary statement Paul says, “I have become all things to all men that I may by all means save some.” The gospel is the good news that in Christ we are saved from the wrath of God and heaven bound. Our aim, like Paul’s is to save people from the wrath of God and to win them for eternal life through the gospel. Yes, it’s your serve!
Byron Kennedy was enjoying the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' blowout win over the Chicago Bears when history became his. The Buccaneers fan was recording Tom Brady’s historic 600th touchdown pass when Mike Evans surprised Kennedy by giving him the ball. That football is worth $500, 000. Tom Brady wanted it back. Would you give away a half million-dollar football? Kennedy did. When asked why, in part, he said, “I knew how much it meant to him. Don’t people give away what is priceless to others freely anymore?” Yes! They do, don’t they?
