- This is part of a series on the theme of servant leadership. -

While much is being said these days about servant leadership, it is far from a new concept. In fact, we can find its roots deeply imbedded in the Bible. From Genesis to Revelation we see a steady stream of leaders who use their position and power for the greater good of those around them. Clearly, nobody demonstrated this better than Jesus of Nazareth, and there is no time he more clearly modeled the virtue of servant leadership than on the night prior to his crucifixion.

As they entered the upper room, the disciples got into a little fray about their prospective positions. The argument was likely kindled over who was to sit closest to Jesus. Undoubtedly they neglected Jesus’ six-month-old advice to the Pharisees about sitting in the lowest positions rather than elbowing one’s way up the table (Luke 14:7-11).

Jesus had just given a verbal response to the disciples’ debate about who was the greatest (Luke 22:24-30). Next came his visual response. He said that he came as one who served and not as one who sits at the table (Luke 22:27). The astonished disciples then learned the truth of these words. Alone with his disciples in a room in Jerusalem, Jesus did the unthinkable. While the disciples settled into their prospective cushions and the Passover meal was being served, Jesus unpretentiously rose from the table and wrapped himself with a towel.

The evening meal was being served…. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

John 13:2-5

When there was no servant to carry out the custom of foot washing, Jesus assumed the role. The Master became the servant. The greatest and most high became the least and the lowest. In one stunning act, Jesus demonstrated that in the kingdom of God, service is not the path to greatness; service is greatness. Here the divine perspective shines through and appears to our disoriented minds as upside-down.

Author M. Scott Peck was so struck by this scene that he counts it as one of the most significant events of Jesus’ life:

Until that moment the whole point of things had been for someone to get on top, and once he had gotten on top to stay on top or else attempt to get farther up. But here this man already on top – who was rabbi, teacher, master – suddenly got down on bottom and began to wash the feet of his followers. In that one act Jesus symbolically overturned the whole social order. Hardly comprehending what was happening, even his own disciples were almost horrified by his behavior.[1]

Jesus was able to assume the position of servant because he was secure in himself. He knew who he was and where he was going. But Jesus also served his disciples because he loved them. The first verse of the chapter says, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.” While these two reasons would be adequate in and of themselves, the Lord had another reason for his actions.

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

John 13:12-17

The Lord didn’t tell them to do “what” he had done. He commanded them to do “as” he had done. They weren’t to become full-time foot-washers, but rather full-time servants of men and women. They were to be servant leaders. John Calvin was right in saying, “Christ does not enjoin an annual ceremony here, but tells us to be ready, all through our life, to wash the feet of our brethren.” Far from meaning that we are to wash feet literally, Christ means for us to live a life of love, and of humble and sacrificial service.[2]

[2] John Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John 11-21 (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1961), p. 60, comment on John 13:14.

• The Lord didn’t tell them to do “what” he had done. He commanded them to do “as” he had done.

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- This is part of a series on the theme of purpose and passion. -

We’ve learned that, as godly leaders, our purpose in life needs to be directed toward God and his kingdom.  Does that mean we sit idly by and wait for Christ’s return?  No.  The apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:9 that we need to please God both in this life and the next: “So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.”

Paul knew that one day the Lord would replace his earthly body with a resurrection body.  While Paul didn’t want to be separated from his present body, he longed to be clothed with his new one.  Such a longing didn’t lead the apostle to try to escape life or dismiss it as meaningless.  On the contrary, that hope spurred him to please Christ.

As followers of Christ our passion for the Savior needs to both drive and define our purpose for living.  Brennan Manning, in his book The Lion and the Lamb, writes about two ways of discerning our passion and purpose.  First, he advises us to recall what has saddened us recently.  He asks,

Was it the realization that you don’t love Jesus enough, that you don’t seek his face in prayer often enough, that you can’t honestly say that the greatest thing that ever happened in your life is that he came to you and you heard his voice?  Or have you been saddened and depressed over a lack of human respect, criticism from an authority figure, financial problems, lack of friends or your bulging waistline?[1]

Then he asks the question,

What has gladdened you recently?  Reflection on your election to the Christian community, the joy of praying, “Abba, I belong to you?”  The afternoon you stole away with the gospel as your only companion, the filling awareness that God loves you unconditionally, just as you are and not as you should be?  A small victory over selfishness?  Or, were the sources of your gladness enjoying a new car, a suit, a movie and a pizza, a trip to Paris?[2]

By asking ourselves these questions we come face-to-face with what makes us tick as individuals.  What are the primary motivations in our lives?  Then we can begin to take our personal passion and purpose and apply it organizationally.

[2] Ibid.

• As godly leaders, our purpose in life needs to be directed toward God and his kingdom.

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- This is part of a series of highlights from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers -

• Being ambitious only to be pleasing to Him. I have to learn to relate everything to the master ambition, and to maintain it without any cessation. My worth to God in public is what I am in private. 77

• The danger of taking the pattern and print of the religious age we live in, making eyes at spiritual success. Never court anything other than the approval of God. One life wholly devoted to God is of more value to God than one hundred lives simply awakened by His Spirit. 115

• If I put my trust in human beings first, I will end in despairing of everyone; I will become bitter, because I have insisted on man being what no man ever can be—absolutely right. Never trust anything but the grace of God in yourself or in anyone else. 152

• Christian perfection is not, and never can be, human perfection. Christian perfection is the perfection of a relationship to God which shows itself amid the irrelevancies of human life. I am called to live in perfect relation to God so that my life produces a longing after God in other lives, not admiration for myself. 337

• My worth to God in public is what I am in private.

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- This is part of a series on the theme of purpose and passion. -

While Scripture provides us only glimpses of God’s ultimate purposes in creating the cosmos, the Word does reveal God’s universal purpose for believers.  In short, this purpose is to know Christ and to make him known.  God does not want anyone to perish, but desires that everyone come to repentance and enter into a relationship with him through the new birth in Christ (2 Peter 3:9).  Once a person is born again as a child of God, God wants that person to grow in Christ and be “conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Romans 8:29).  Thus, God’s purpose for each of us is edification (spiritual growth) and evangelism (spiritual reproduction).

God also has a unique purpose for each of us, and this relates to our distinctive temperaments, abilities, experiences, spiritual gifts, education and spheres of influence.  Why do you get out of bed in the morning?  What is your life purpose?  Few people can articulate a clear purpose statement for their lives.  It is ironic that people tend to put more effort into planning a two-week vacation than they do in thinking about the destiny of their earthly journey.  In Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth we find more of an eternal perspective on this temporal journey:

Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

This passage provides the context for God’s unique purposes for our lives, and reminds us to develop an eternal perspective so that we will have a passion to give our lives in exchange for the things that God tells us will endure.

• Few people can articulate a clear purpose statement for their lives.

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- This is part of a series on the theme of purpose and passion. -

God has a passion for intimacy with his people.  Singer-songwriter Michael Card put it in fundamental terms when he sang, “Could it be that You would really rather die than live without us?”  That’s the length to which God will go in his pursuit of fellowship with us.  His desire was more than mere words; it prompted him to enter into human history.  The apostle John writes, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).  God believes intimate fellowship with us to be worth the death of his own son.  Who could possibly comprehend that?

You are beautiful beyond description,

Too marvelous for words

Too wonderful for comprehension,

Like nothing ever seen or heard

Who can grasp your infinite wisdom?

Who can fathom the depth of your love?

You are beautiful beyond description,

Majesty enthroned in love.[1]

This is the God who wants to know us.  This is the God who gave his Son as a ransom for us.  The God who created billions and billions of stars, the God who arranged the heavens with the ease of an interior decorator hanging curtains, desires intimacy with us to the point that he would enter our world with all its limitations and allow us to crucify him.  If that’s true, life can only be truly meaningful when we find that God glorified in our lives.

The obvious question that begs to be asked is: “If a God could create and sustain a universe as amazingly complex as ours, if that same God could put together a plan to redeem lost and fallen humanity, if that God would go to such great lengths to rescue people who don’t even know they’re in peril, could that God be trusted?  Could it be that his purpose for our lives is better than that which we could construct on our own?”  The answer is, “Of course!”  But before we pat ourselves on the back for having answered correctly, the follow-up question looms large: “So what?”  What are the implications of this?  How are our lives reflecting this belief?

Practice reveals priorities and beliefs.  We can have a cognitive affirmation that God has a better purpose than anything I could come up with, but does it show in our practice?  Contrary to public opinion, in releasing ourselves to God’s purposes and giving ourselves wholeheartedly and unreservedly to him, we’re not sacrificing anything other than the illusion of self-sufficiency.  We’re embracing something altogether wonderful.

• Practice reveals priorities and beliefs.

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- This is part of a series of highlights from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers -

• A great many Christian workers worship their work. There is no responsibility on you for the work; the only responsibility you have is to keep in living constant touch with God, and to see that you allow nothing to hinder your co-operation with Him. 114

• The Church ceases to be a spiritual society when it is on the lookout for the development of its own organization.  194

• Spiritual leakage. It is the peril of our soul’s welfare that we get caught up in practical work and miss the fulfillment of the vision. 71

• The battle of being so absorbed in work that we are not ready to face Jesus Christ at every turn. Jesus rarely comes where we expect Him; He appears where we least expect Him, and always in the most illogical connections. The only way a worker can keep true to God is by being ready for the Lord’s surprise visits. It is not service that matters, but intense spiritual reality, expecting Jesus Christ at every turn. 89

• Active work and spiritual vitality are not the same thing. Active work may be the counterfeit of spiritual activity. 192

• The central thing about the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship to Himself, not public usefulness to men. 293

• The ministry of the interior; I must take time to realize what is the central point of power. The disciple who abides in Jesus is the will of God, and his apparently free choices are God’s foreordained decrees. Mysterious? Logically contradictory and absurd? Yes, but a glorious truth to a saint. 159

• We are not turned into spiritual mediums, but into spiritual messengers; the message must be part of ourselves. The Son of God was His own message, His words were spirit and life; and as His disciples our lives must be the sacrament of our message. The natural heart will do any amount of serving, but it takes the heart broken by conviction of sin, and baptized by the Holy Ghost, and crumpled into the purpose of God before the life becomes the sacrament of its message. 70

• Beware of outstripping God by your very longing to do His will. We run ahead of Him in a thousand and one activities, consequently we get so burdened with persons and with difficulties that we do not worship God, we do not intercede. 92

• Jesus Christ’s life was an absolute failure from every standpoint but God’s. But what seemed failure from man’s standpoint was a tremendous triumph from God’s, because God’s purpose is never man’s purpose. His call is to be in comradeship with Himself for His own purposes, and the test is to believe that God knows what He is after. A Christian is one who trusts the wits and the wisdom of God, and not his own wits. 218

• The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him. 6

• A river touches place of which its source knows nothing. God rarely allows a soul to see how great a blessing he is. Keep right at the Source. 250

• Worship aright in your private relationships, then when God sets you free you will be ready, because in the unseen life which no one saw but God you have become perfectly fit, and when the strain comes you can be relied upon by God. 254

• The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him.

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- This is part of a series on the theme of accountability. -

Businessman Bob Briner discovered the benefits of accountability as he traveled extensively in the process of building the worldwide professional tennis circuit.  At one time, the Grand Prix circuit included more than 90 professional events held in cities on every continent.

During one of those years, Briner kept a log that recorded his whereabouts for each day of the year.  As December 31 approached, he made some final entries into his log.  As he wrote, Briner realized that, while he had visited many of the great capitals of the world and numerous exotic cities, his two favorite places were McPherson, Kansas, and Greenville, Illinois.

Why?  Briner explained that those two cities were his favorites because they were home to a few of his key friends whom he needed in order to remain focused on building the kingdom of God – not the kingdom of sports.  He suggested that any believer who spends a good deal of time with people who don’t understand – or are antagonistic toward – his or her faith needs relationships built on accountability and caring.[1]

• We cannot be fully authentic without relationships built on accountability and caring.

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- This is part of a series on the theme of accountability. -

A leader needs to hold his or her followers accountable for their actions.  But who holds the leader accountable?  His or her peers.  Peter was a leader in the early church, but he called his fellow “shepherds of God’s flock” to be accountable to one another and to God:

To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ’s sufferings and one who also will share in the glory to be revealed: Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers – not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.  And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.

1 Peter 5:1-4

Peter gave these leaders some necessary counsel.  He said, “As you shepherd God’s flock, remember that you, too, have a Shepherd.”  The Bible urges accountability.  Each person needs other good people with whom they can be honest and accountable (Ephesians 4:25; James 5:16).

• Each of us needs other good people with whom we can be honest and accountable.

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- This is part of a series on the theme of accountability. -

Most leaders don’t experience a sudden blow-out in their lives.  More often it’s a slow leak that leads to disaster.  Or, to use Derek Kidner’s phrase, “We deceive ourselves by the smallness of our surrenders.”[1] In other words, a man can deceive himself into thinking that a small compromise will not matter.  But small steps, taken consistently, add up to a great distance.  Small compromise has a snowball effect; momentum develops, and before we realize what’s happening, life spins out of control.

David didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to trash his life by committing adultery with one of his mighty men’s wives and then having that man killed.  David had already begun the descent into spiritual sloth by making small compromises.  He began by taking an additional wife, then another and another and another.  Eventually David had seven wives in all, but even that wasn’t enough.  So, he stocked a harem.  David had a slow leak of self-control.  And he compounded that problem by not having anyone around who would tell him about the problem.

• It is all too easy to deceive ourselves into thinking that a small compromise will not matter.

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- This is part of a series on the theme of character. -

In the first 12 chapters of the book of Acts we see Peter as the prominent leader in the fledgling church. His strength of character and conviction are a source of inspiration, challenge and encouragement to many. Our Lord is still seeking men and women who will answer, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you,” and who will then develop the character qualities needed to be a godly leader.

Such character is forged in the small things of life. The big events of life can be viewed as final examinations which reveal the true nature of our inward selves. It is in the seemingly unimportant decisions that our character is strengthened bit by bit. C. S. Lewis used the image of the “central core” within each of us that is formed and molded by our choices:

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.” I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.[1]

The choices we make today determine our character. And we’ll take our character with us into eternity. Choose wisely!

• The big events of life can be viewed as final examinations which reveal the true nature of our inward selves.

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