Servant Leadership

Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Servant Leadership. Have you ever heard that term? I have heard it used in so many different ways that I had to double check to make sure I still knew what it meant. This morning in my quiet time with Him, I read from Luke 22. The Apostles were having a discussion over who among them was the greatest. I think their motives were good, I think they were just asking Jesus who He wanted to be the main leader, who deserved the role the most, who He trusted to lead this group the best. They’d had other talks about this before, when a mom of a couple of apostles even requested that Jesus put her sons right next to him in heaven’s seating arrangement. I think it’s really amazing what Jesus says in Luke 22, though.
He said that “whoever is greatest must become as the youngest, and the leader as the servant.” That’s pretty potent talk, really. One of the constant characteristics of Jesus and His ministry was always humility. He was the Son of God, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. If anyone deserved to have folks bow down and worship them it was Him. Yet what do we find Him doing with His time on this earth? He’s touching the blind, lame, deaf, mute, and crippled so they could be healed. He’s giving His attention to the “unclean” lepers that no one else even wanted to look at, let alone heal. He’s kneeling down and washing the apostles’ feet. He’s showing us what He wants us to look like – humility!
Let’s be honest – it’s sometimes hard to embrace humility. I began preaching when I was 14 years old, and immediately began doing youth revivals, filling in for pastors on Sunday mornings and nights, and just speaking constantly. I was barely a teenager, and here I was standing in front of tons of people telling them what God’s Word said about their lives. And for a bit, I let it go to my head – in a big way. I thought I had really attained some status in life. I thought that surely if I was this busy at this age, that I’d certainly be the next Billy Graham. I really thought I was something else – that I had the solution to all that ailed the world. Boy, was I ever wrong AND right.
In and of myself, I’m nothing. Anything that God has ever used me to accomplish has been His doing, not my own. I’m simply like a glove, and He’s the hand. If I’m walking full of Him, things happen. If I’m empty, I’m a hollowed out man. As it turns out, I did have the solution to what ails the world – the Gospel. But many times I was so full of myself that the message of the Gospel was overshadowed by the message of me. God, may it never, ever, ever be so again.
So today, I’m going to try to be last. I want to be a servant leader. I want to lead by example. I want to embrace humility as a lifestyle. Because compared to the One I work for, everything I am, everything I have, and everything He does for me is really because of one thing and one thing alone: grace. And I’m totally okay with that.

That’s just a thought, and I welcome yours.
Until next time,
Blake

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