Sermon quotes on service
Richard Foster
Self-righteous service comes through human effort. True service comes from a relationship with the divine Other deep inside. Self-righteous service is impressed with the “big deal.” True service finds it almost impossible to distinguish the small from the large service. Self-righteous service requires external rewards. True service rests contented in hiddenness. Self-righteous service is highly concerned about results. True service is free of the need to calculate results. Self-righteous service is affected by moods and whims. True service ministers simply and faithfully because there is a need. Self-righteous service is temporary. True service is a life-style. Self-righteous service fractures community. True service, on the other hand, builds community.” True service, on the other hand, builds community.
Martin Luther
The idea that the service to God should have only to do with a church altar, singing, reading, sacrifice, and the like is without doubt but the worst trick of the devil.
John Piper
God is not looking for people to work for Him but people who let Him work mightily in and through them.
Mother Teresa
Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.
Ruth Smeltzer
You have not lived a perfect day, even though you have earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who cannot repay you.
John Hindley
If your service of Christ has grown grudging (or stopped happening), you don’t need to try to obey more. You need to love more. This means that you don’t need to try harder; you need to ask your Father to send His Spirit to work in your heart to make you more loving. You need Him to work in you so that you can increasingly enjoy the goodness of Jesus, appreciate the service of Jesus, and let Jesus recapture your heart with His love.
Serving Without Sinking, The Good Book Company.
Leon A. Gorman
Service is just a day-in, day-out, ongoing, never-ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate type of activity.
Charles E. Fuller
To know the Word of God, to live the Word of God, to preach the Word, to teach the Word, is the sum of all wisdom, the heart of all Christian service.
Martin Luther
As our heavenly Father has in Christ freely come to our aid, we also ought freely to help our neighbor . . . and each one should become . . . a Christ to the other.
The Freedom of a Christian (1520), (accessed July 11, 2019).
Eugene B. Habecker
The true leader serves. Serves people. Serves their best interests, and in so doing will not always be popular, may not always impress. But because true leaders are motivated by loving concern, rather than a desire for personal glory, they are willing to pay the price.
The Other Side of Leadership: Coming to Terms with the Responsibilities that Accompany God-Given Authority, Scripture Press, 1987.
Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon
We are not called to help people. We are called to follow Jesus, in whose service we learn who we are and how we are to help and be helped.
William Barclay
He did not desire to dominate men; He desired only to serve men. He did not desire His own way; He desired only God’s way.
Andrew M Davis
We must serve God, everyone in his own way, wearing either a leather apron or an academic gown—it does not make any difference. Everyone has to serve God, wearing rubber boots or carrying a gasoline can, having as emblem a hammer and sickle (these belong to us) or a painter’s palette, rather than a censer as such. We have to serve God, everyone in his own place in the new God-created community.
The Power of Christian Contentment, Baker Publishing Group, 2019, p.20.
George S. Merriam
When your burden is heaviest, you can always lighten a little some other burden. At the times when you cannot see God, there is still open to you this sacred possibility, to show God; for it is the love and kindness of human hearts through which the divine reality comes home to men, whether they name it or not. Let this thought, then, stay with you: there may be times when you cannot find help, but there is no time when you cannot give help.
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