Article by Dr. Les Hollon, Pastor, Trinity Baptist Church

 

Love is credible as love is specific.  Our love needs are met as we specifically give love and receive love. And acts of loving service are a vital love language.

 

When we serve, we are meeting specific needs in the other person’s life.  When we ask, “may I help you”? … we are communicating our desire to make life better for the other person.  By connecting our willing service to their need, we show love as sweat.

 

Love shifts from being a noun and becomes a verb.  “Come hope me,” is how Ed heard it as a boy.  Men & women, boys & girls, - all working in the fields together.  When one of the big people needed help, the word came out as hope. That is just how it was said in the hills of his home country.  As a boy he saw the connection, and as a man has lived the connection.

 

“Come hope me,” is what any of us are saying when we are in the midst of genuine need.  As we give help, we provide hope.  As we give service, we show love in a way the person needs to receive love. As we are loved, trust is built.  Upon these three – faith (used interchangeably as trust in the New Testament), hope, and love – a worthy life is built (I Corinthians 13:13).

 

Loving service is why Jesus came into our world.  He explained his mission as, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many,” (Mark 10:45).

 

Servant Leadership

By loving us, Jesus came to give us the joy of salvation – sins forgiven, relationships restored, purposeful life provided, and eternity given as security.  He showed and shows us how to love each other through servant leadership. (a concept Robert Greenleaf made popular by his writings from forty years ago).  This is why the Apostle Paul made clear, “For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake,” (II Cor. 4:5).

 

Service is a key love language which satisfies our two deepest desires, to love and be loved.  Loving service also connects with our desire to be useful, to make a loving difference in the world.  We want our lives to add up to something more than just ourselves.

 

In my study is a plaque given to me after I completed the pledging requirements of a service fraternity at Baylor University.  This plaque reads: “I don’t know what your destiny will be but one thing I know, the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”

 

The person who said those words knew them to be true by how he lived the truth of those words, Albert Schweitzer.  He relinquished his work as a European acclaimed organist & physician to become a medical missionary in Africa.  The distinctiveness of his life reached the highest level not by personal accomplishment but by service accomplishment.  As a ripple effect, he became one of the 20th century’s best known persons.

 

Service and Love

The classic parable of Luke 15:11-32 shows the connection of service and love.  If love is separated from service, then the service act retains its functional help but loses its meaning. 

 

When the younger son - rebelled, went prodigal, lost his money – he was forced to work in a non-loving pig farm. When “he came to his senses,” and returned home to be reconciled with his family, he expected nothing more than to be a task manager on the family farm.  But his loving father, who had been deeply hurt by his son, wanted his son to serve from love.  And therefore received his son by serving him with hugs, gifts, opportunity, and reconciled relationships. He recreated a loving environment in which his loving son could be a servant leader.

 

The “elder brother” needed his own love conversion.  He was caught in the mire of doing service acts with a gotta, oughta, shoulda attitude.  Consequently he did not feel his father’s love, nor his own love for his father - as he served.

 

But new love was being born in the family.  A love born from God … where all service has meaning when it is done with love.   Jesus says to us as He said to Peter, “if you love me, then feed my sheep.”

 

This God-sized love changes the world.  Let’s be world changers through servant leadership.

 

Pastor Les Hollon

 

 When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”  Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me?”  He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”  Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”  Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”  Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.

- John 21:15-17 (NIV)

 

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’  “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

- Luke 15:11-32 (NIV)

 

This article was written by Les Hollon, Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church.  For more information about God and your place in His world, contact Dr. Hollon, click over to Trinity Baptist Church.

 

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