We can serve the Lord only after allowing Christ as the Servant of Jehovah to serve us

Wow, what a revelation! I have never seen this fact as clear as now as we got into message four of the Crystallization-study of Isaiah(2), entitled, Christ as the Servant of Jehovah. May the Lord Spirit serve us right now as we read this portion by opening our mind and heart, to reveal something of Himself – may there be a change of mind and no lasting resistance in our concept! The Lord Jesus came to serve us, and in His whole ministry He saved sinners, He served the disciples, and eventually He served us all by laying His life down as a ransom. Today, He is still serving us and He will serve us in the kingdom age and in eternity! The natural concept we all have about serving is that, even as soon as someone gets saved, “we need to do something for God”, that is, “we need to serve God”. Yes, we do need to serve God, but let me ask you this question: Are You Able to Love the Lord Your God by Your Natural Life? We definitely cannot! Our love towards the Lord is a BECAUSE LOVE, as seen in 1 John 4:19 – we love Him because He loved us first! In the same principle, we serve Him BECAUSE He served us first! Yes, as soon as we are saved we need to serve Him, and we are saved TO serve Him; but before we can serve Him, we need Him to serve us!

Have you ever asked the Lord, – Lord, serve me! – in your Christian life? How can we serve God without having been firstly served by Him? Here are some main portions talking about this principle in the Bible:

• Mark 10:40-45 shows that the Son of Man came not to BE SERVED, but TO SERVE, and to lay down His life as a ransom for many. Whoever wants to “be great” among us needs to be the servant of all… The Lord began His ministry in Mark 1 with teaching the truth by shining out light, healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, casting out demons… He bore our infirmities – He who had no sin, no illness of His own, He bore OUR infirmities. When in Luke 7 He met the convoy leading the only son of a widow to be buried, He was moved with compassion and raised him from the dead. Then, a sinful woman came, when He was in the house, and she washed His feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair… In John 13 He laid aside His garments and washed the disciples’ feat. Even after His resurrection, in John 21, after Peter’s unsuccessful fishing expedition, the Lord served His disciples breakfast… Especially in Mark 10:45 we see that the Lord came to serve. Later in the chapter, when a blind man heard the Lord is passing by, he shouted out until someone brought him to the Lord. The Lord asked him, What do you want me to do for you? – this is the question He is asking us again and again today. He is unchanging – He has the same grace, the same heart, the same humility, kindness and compassion for humanity… He knows the feelings in us, He knows the frictions, and He just wants to come and serve us!

We cannot serve Him unless we allow Him to serve us first, and then He will reproduce Himself into us and make us the same as He is in life, nature, and FUNCTION – He will put His serving heart and Spirit in us, and we will serve one another in love!

• Luke 22:25 – who is the greatest among the disciples should be like the youngest, and the one who leads like the one who serves – yet the Lord is among them as the One who serves! He is the greatest, yet He serves them! The greater you are, the greater is your capacity to serve. You can serve all kinds of people when you are first being served by the Lord. But, how many people enjoy Christ in His serving of them? Do you think that now after Christ became the life-giving Spirit He is no longer serving us? This is His heart, to serve us forever – actually now after His resurrection He can serve us universally and continuously, even serve us all at the same time! As the pneumatic Shepherd He is in our spirit as whatever we need! We eventually will become conscious of our need for only what HE can do for us. Certain things He has reserved for Himself alone – only Christ and our direct contact with Him can solve certain matters. God may allow us to be in perplexing situations, so that we may sense the need for Him to serve us. He may put us in all kinds of situations and environments that we never even dreamed of – so that He would come in as the God of all comfort – and we may turn to Him and be comforted by Him, and we in turn would comfort other brothers and sisters with the comfort with which we were comforted by God… All His dealings with us are a sign of His love, and He does this for us to be enlarged and reconstituted with Christ as the Servant of Jehovah, and that we may minister the very Servant who has served, is serving, and will forever serve us!
• Luke 12:37 – after the prudent slave is being praised by the Lord, the Master Himself will gird Himself and have them reclined and serve them… Before He died, Christ laid aside His garments and washed the disciples’ feet; after He died and resurrected, after He returns to obtain the kingdom, in the wedding feast He will still gird Himself to serve us. In the New Jerusalem, as seen in Rev. 22: 1-4, we will serve God as a result of His serving us: we eat the tree of life and drink the water of life, and as a result, we serve God as His people! Our serving will still be a respose of Him serving us forever!

Christ as the Servant of Jehovah is this kind of a person – and He is here to unveil Himself as the servant of Jehovah especially in His person so that we may know Him, treasure Him, love Him, open to Him, and let Him do toward us what is in His heart for us. Just as we care for every part of our body, we are parts of His universal mystical Body, and He’s aware of the need and condition of every member all the time. He feels what we feel, He intercedes always for us, and He’s our shepherd.

May the Lord impress us that He wants to do this – He wants to serve us – ALL THE TIME! The deepest experiences are just between you and Him, when He can impart Himself into you… – and you can serve Him by saying, I am not, Christ is everything! I would like to serve you with the very Christ that has served me… – when we in love practice this towards one another, that is the church life!

Lord, today we just want to allow You to serve us! We stop anything else, Lord, all our good intentions to do something for You, and we just come to You to allow You to minister to us! Serve us today, Lord, with all that You are! We love spending time with You before doing anything for You! Lord, reproduce Yourself as the Servant of Jehovah in us!