The Art of Serving

Today's sermon is from our soon-to-be pastor Daryl, who is coincidentally an ex-SEGian and also the youth leader. Usually he'll be the one giving announcements but today his role has changed to preach instead, and can see that he was nervous. Hahahaha.

So the topic of the day is the Art of Serving.

In John 13, Jesus shows his disciples the meaning of serving by washing their feet. During the Easter day this year, Pope Francis did the same to refugees of different religions too.

When a person serves, he is being humble and acknowledging the importance of everyone whatever status they are.


How do we serve then?

i. Serve with hands
   -  set aside time, money
   -  sacrifice our convenience/comfort
   -  it's better to be available than able

We serve people around us, whether it's in church or workplace, school, university, household or even to unknown people. We serve people by giving our time to them, by lending an ear, or even by giving out money. Sometimes serving means that we need to sacrifice our convenience or comfort. For example, when we sacrifice our lunch time for somebody who needs our help. And why it's better to be available than able because sometimes we doubt our ability whether we can finish a task given by others, but before we doubt, we must make sure that we are available to serve first. If we're not available, and we are not able to set our time and sacrifice our convenience, then there's no point of asking whether we are able or not.

ii. Serve with heads
    -  others' mentality
    -  good and faithful servants, not good and excellent/grade-A servants
    -  having others in mind

Heads as in our mentality, not really want us to chop off our heads to serve la. Don't be self-centered and always have the others' mentality, meaning we always think of others. We don't need to be excellent or having grade-A when it comes to serving. We just need to be faithful. When the plans don't go as we plan, like Daryl talked about the Trust Me event, because they had planned for 2 months and he was confident that it will be sunny all day, it turned out raining and it was the first day to rain in the afternoon and was followed by the whole week. He was disappointed but he remembers that God says that it's okay if the plan failed. Be faithful.

iii. Serve with hearts
     -  the heart of serving is Jesus
     -  God is a God with purpose
     -  honour God = love people = action

Of course, we must sincerely serve people, not serving just because we are encouraged to serve. Jesus sets a very good example by serving His disciples. When we honour God, we love people. Therefore we convey our love to people with action, that is, serving.

"Serving is the closest we can do to fulfill the Great Commission, which is to make disciples."