This Servant School talk described some common reasons for serving, such as avoiding punishment, getting a return favor, being noticed, etc. Clem Walters talked about serving simply out of love for the Lord (with purity of heart).Â
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
CLEM: Looks like we’re gonna have a little balancing act here without a stand for anything. Jim will help me.
I think before we begin tonight, one of the things I’d like to mention, not only for all of us here, but for those who pick up the teachings on the tapes, and that is, the procedure to go about if for some reason you cannot be available for your service. In other words, if your work or service is coming up and you’re sick, or for some reason you see that you’re going to be out of town, or you can’t be there, the first person you should contact, with as much time as possible, would be the head of that—the head servant of that particular area.
So, if you know that you’re gonna be on vacation or you know that you have to be away on a night that you’re expected to serve, you should sometimes give him as much notice—he or she—as much notice as possible, by contacting the head servant in your area and telling them that you will not be able to attend. That will give them enough time to find someone else to serve in your place.
If for some reason, you’re ill, and you know that a little bit in advance, then you should also contact the head servant in your area. Or even if it’s the night of your service and you’re really sick and you can’t attend, you should also let he or she know that you can’t be there. And, it might be too late for them to do something about it, but at least they know why you’re not there, you know, they’ll try.
Oftentimes the head servant, when you call that person, might say to you, “Can you find a replacement?” And that’s a little unusual, because the replacement should come from Servant School. If it’s servants’ work that we’re doing, it would be good if the head servant sends you off to find someone, that you call one of the people in the present Servant School first. That would be kind of the first thing to do. I guess my preference would be that the head servant would take care of that. That in fact, if you can’t attend, that you let that person know, and as long as you give them a little notice, that that person then would be responsible for finding someone—that the head servant, would be the head servant’s responsibility for finding a replacement for you. I guess that’s the best way to put it.
Any questions about that?
We’re gonna talk about motives for doing work and service—explore. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive study of motives for doing work and service, but we’re going to explore a few motives, and see if we can’t find out what the Lord teaches us and tells us as his—the proper motive for doing work and service, for being motivated.
As an example, a child, or maybe even when we were children, we did work and service, responded, to avoid our parents’, ah, mother or father’s punishment, or maybe denial of privileges. We might have been told that if we didn’t do the work that was assigned, that we were going to find that we were gonna be warmed with a brush or yardstick or in some other way physically punished for not doing the work. Or, we might have been told that we couldn’t watch television. For my time, I’ve gotta go back even further than that and say that maybe I couldn’t ride my bike if I didn’t do the work.
In much the same way, an adult might serve the boss or his company so to avoid the punishment of losing his job. So, in both of those examples, the motive for doing the work and service is to avoid punishment from someone.
Another example of a motive might be a wife, might do the work and service around the house to avoid punishment, and that punishment might just be the bad mouth of her husband, if the house was disorderly as an example, when he came home. Or the dinner was not served at the time that he expected dinner to be served. Or that his shirts or uniforms were not ironed or cleaned and in their proper place when he needed them. So, in that example, that woman, that wife might be doing the work and service to avoid the bad mouth of punishment, of her husband. So, the motive, then again, is of—for doing the work and service, is to avoid punishment, either physical or mental.
Another example: an adult might do work and service to get a salary increase or to win a promotion. And his motive could be to buy more things. In other words, to get a salary increase or to win a promotion then might mean that he could buy more things, that is, objects. And in so doing, winning worldly status and honor that that raise would bring. In that example, the motive for doing the work and service is to buy more things, or to be able to keep the things that he’s already bought if they were purchased on the time payment plan. The motive is to then win worldly status and honor in that example.
Many people are motivated to work and serve others expecting to get return work or service. And I know of examples where people have maybe built a home, and they have given so many favors or work hours to a plumber or to an electrician, or to a carpenter, tradesman. And, on the given day, then, recall that, and call on them for his own use. So, in that example, of doing work expecting it in return, a return favor, the motive then is to gain a measure of security. You build up a measure of worldly or human security and having all those favors and all that work due you.
Another example of a motive for doing work and service is that work is often performed to please others. It could be, just to be, to please someone, out of love for them. It could be that you are doing the work and service for a husband or for a wife or for a community brother or sister. But you—you’re just doing that to please them. But down deep, oftentimes, in fact, most cases when that happens, we’re expecting to be thanked, at least thanked or acknowledged, for that work and service.
I can think of doing work and service for my own children and just training them, in fact, to say “thank you” for the work or the service or what I had done for them. I think that’s good. We should train our children in that way. In fact, for years, we’ve been encouraged to do good deeds for others.
And this being the time of Lent, it’s a good time to think of good deeds for other people. In fact, we have a reminder at home, where we place popcorn in a large bowl each time that we do a good deed for someone in the house, we don’t tell them. So, the children are constantly doing something good for another party in the house, and the only way you know it is if you see this bowl of popcorn growing during Lent, and then we have a smashing party with the popcorn at Easter, you see? But, so we’ve encouraged even our children, then, to do good deeds for others, and that’s good too.
But the difficulty with all that occurs—and in fact, we become very discouraged and disappointed when the efforts go unnoticed—when we do the work and service to please others. We tend to grow very discouraged when the efforts go unnoticed, and in fact, they don’t even seem to be appreciated.
I can give you some examples of that. I recall some time back, in fact, at our house, we all have bicycles. And we, now that the children are getting a little older, we have three-speed bikes. But even before that, it seemed that the bikes were always in need of repair, and not having any older boys, the repair work on the bicycles always fell on Dad. And I can vividly remember going out without them knowing it and kind of—and repairing bikes. I kind of took some time and decided that I would go from the littlest bike to the biggest and pump up tires and repair and get the shifting mechanisms in the right slot, what have you.
And oftentimes even taking the kids out, another example, and suggesting that Peter, my son, learn how to do these things by accompanying me, or maybe holding the screwdriver or doing something. But in fact, in time, I didn’t give him enough to do, so he kind of faded into the woodwork and disappeared.
Then later, they ride off. They just come and ride off and use the bikes. In fact, they didn’t even say thank you for my repairing the bikes. So, I’m kind of disappointed in that whole thing, because I really did expect at least a thank you, or some acknowledgement that in fact, the bike is better for my work.
Another example from home is that last fall, Julie worked one whole day to surprise me, so that when I got home in the evening, she would show me the fruit of her labor. In fact, she did. She built a rock garden. And that rock garden required a lot of time and energy and hard work on her part. In fact, when I got home, she was still dirty and she had to—the dirt ground in under her fingernails, having worked very hard. She’d gone out, in fact, to several people’s houses to gather some of the rocks. They were big rocks, and they were hard to carry. But she built just a magnificent rock garden. And there were all those things that you put in rock gardens, like ivies and moss and things.
Well, the problem was that when I came home, I didn’t handle that too well. She had really done it to please me, and when I saw it, the rock garden was exactly in the spot where I knew a gas line had to be run in just a few weeks. So, she was very disappointed. She had done that to please me, and I couldn’t hide the fact that I was really disappointed because it was in the wrong place.
Another example of working to please others might be in servants’ work. We work hard. Already we find ourself, in some of the servants’ work we’re doing, working hard, and the hours are late, and we really are laying down our lives to do that work and service, and it’s dirty work sometimes. And we would expect that at least someone would thank us, but they don’t. It seems to go unnoticed. So, we’re very disappointed and discouraged.
I contrast this with what the Lord seems to be saying to us. In fact, he says we’re called as brothers and sisters to serve one another simply out of love of God, simply out of love for him. And that means that if we serve our brothers and sisters purely out of love of God, that there is no other purpose or motive involved in that, except just to serve God. In fact, someone much wiser than I gave a label to that whole thing, and that is, it’s called purity of heart. That if, in fact, we have a pure heart, that we do work and service and we care for other people purely out of the love of God, not expecting anything else, but just the opportunity to serve our Lord.
Now, we’ll go back to those shared examples that I gave you earlier, that is, of the bike repairs and the rock garden and the unnoticed Servants’ work. Had the work, in all those examples, been done out of the love of God, and only for him, it really would have made no difference. In fact, it makes no difference at all, if the kids didn’t seem to appreciate the rideable, better bikes. If the work had been done purely out of the love of God, and for the love of him, it made no difference that I didn’t appreciate the location of that rock garden, or didn’t appreciate all the work that Julie had done. Or, had our servants’ work been done purely out of the love of God and only for him, it really doesn’t make any difference that no one notices the work that we’re doing in Servant School. The only thing that really does matter in that is that, had we had a pure heart, if we were able to have a pure heart, that God was being served by our serving our brothers and sisters in whatever we were doing. If the work and service is done, or even attempted out of the love of God, it really doesn’t make any difference if anyone notices or gives us credit for our labors.
Further, further, it doesn’t even matter if we succeed in our task, since we can reach perfection, and that is, we can reach the perfection of a pure heart just by our willing, getting our minds in gear and willing to serve, or even deciding to try. And that is, that once we decide to try, and once we will to serve with a pure heart, we’re on our way to perfection in that regard, regardless of whether we succeed in actually pulling off the service, or pulling it off to the degree that we had hoped to—, like in completing it.
St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Galatians, first chapter, verses 9 and 10:
We have said it before, and now I say it again. If anyone preaches to you a gospel that is different from the one you accepted, may he be condemned to hell. Does this sound as if I'm trying to win men’s approval? No, I want God’s approval. Am I trying to be popular with men? If I were still trying to do so, I would not be a servant of Christ.
What Paul was telling them, and I believe telling us, that, he’s saying, “Am I trying to be popular with men? If I were—if I was still trying to do so, I would not be a servant of Christ.” So, we’re being told that if our motives for doing work and service are to be noticed, which is very, very normal in the world, but if our motive is to be noticed or to become popular, we in fact are not servants of Christ in that activity, in that work.
St. Paul told Titus, the second chapter, verses 11 to 14:
You see, God’s grace has been revealed, and it has made salvation possible for the whole human race and taught us that what we have to do is to give up everything that does not lead to God, and all our worldly ambitions. We must be self-restrained and live good and religious lives while awaiting the appearance of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ. He sacrificed himself for us in order to set us free from all wickedness and to purify a people, so that it could be his very own, and would have no ambition except to do good.
I believe that the Lord is calling us, too; each of us. He’s saying that each of us must give our worldly ambitions, to be popular, to be noticed, to be better than others, that we must give way, that all must give way to a purity of heart, only wanting to serve our great God and King, to work only for him, by serving others in the very best manner we’re capable of.
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