Servant Ministry: Gentleness and Humility
"Our goal is to become more and more Christ-like." This is a very common statement. It's my guess that nearly all Christians would agree with it. There are certainly many aspects to being like Jesus. Jesus' invitation for us to come to him emphasize the qualities of gentleness and humility.
Our Captain, our Leader, invited us to follow him with these words: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light," (Matthew 11:28-30 NIV).
Why should we accept Jesus as our Master, as our Teacher? He answers the question like this, "for I am gentle and humble in heart." What do gentleness and humility have to do with leadership? We need to be open to God's Holy Spirit to receive everything He has for us, but the meanness and roughness of our friends and families teaches us not to trust anybody. If you want to lead people the way Jesus led people, you must be gentle and humble.
The lessons we learn in "the school of hard knocks" is that "life is tough, and then you die," "only the strong survive," and "do unto others before they do unto you." It is usually not safe to trust people. They will betray your trust. They will "thoughtlessly cut you and laugh while you're bleedin'." He'll say, "Jump and I'll catch you," let you fall on the floor, then say "Never trust anyone."
No, there's too much roughness in the world. Jesus needs us to be gentle with one another. We are God's hands and feet, we are His Body on the earth, we are Jesus to one another. But if we turn against one another and devour one another, none of us will get the care and nurture we all need. We'll be too busy protecting ourselves to let anyone get too close, lest someone else crush us with their words of criticism and rejection.
Gentleness and humility are essential qualities for Christian leaders for two reasons. First, people need some single place where they don't have to be afraid of having people hurt them and make fun of them--they need gentle people as friends. Second, people need to know that they aren't alone in feeling unworthy of God's affection because of how much they blow it--we need to be forthright and honest about our own failings. Otherwise people enter our fellowship thinking, "These people have their lives so together. Me? I'm just a miserable wreck."
"He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness," (Hebrews 5:2 NIV). Jesus felt his own sense of weakness when he was tempted. But instead of being afraid of admitting weakness, the experience of weakness gave him understanding and empathy. Instead of strutting around trying to impress everyone with his superiority, he loved people with sympathy. He didn't come trying to convince everyone that he was "Mr. Perfect" (which he was!), and thus make everyone feel like worthless scum in comparison.
"He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him," (Isaiah 53:2). We need--I need--to stop trying to impress people, and take Christ's yoke on us and learn from him. Learn to love humbly, living to live in kindness and patience with one another.
Our Captain, our Leader, invited us to follow him with these words: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light," (Matthew 11:28-30 NIV).
Why should we accept Jesus as our Master, as our Teacher? He answers the question like this, "for I am gentle and humble in heart." What do gentleness and humility have to do with leadership? We need to be open to God's Holy Spirit to receive everything He has for us, but the meanness and roughness of our friends and families teaches us not to trust anybody. If you want to lead people the way Jesus led people, you must be gentle and humble.
The lessons we learn in "the school of hard knocks" is that "life is tough, and then you die," "only the strong survive," and "do unto others before they do unto you." It is usually not safe to trust people. They will betray your trust. They will "thoughtlessly cut you and laugh while you're bleedin'." He'll say, "Jump and I'll catch you," let you fall on the floor, then say "Never trust anyone."
No, there's too much roughness in the world. Jesus needs us to be gentle with one another. We are God's hands and feet, we are His Body on the earth, we are Jesus to one another. But if we turn against one another and devour one another, none of us will get the care and nurture we all need. We'll be too busy protecting ourselves to let anyone get too close, lest someone else crush us with their words of criticism and rejection.
Gentleness and humility are essential qualities for Christian leaders for two reasons. First, people need some single place where they don't have to be afraid of having people hurt them and make fun of them--they need gentle people as friends. Second, people need to know that they aren't alone in feeling unworthy of God's affection because of how much they blow it--we need to be forthright and honest about our own failings. Otherwise people enter our fellowship thinking, "These people have their lives so together. Me? I'm just a miserable wreck."
"He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness," (Hebrews 5:2 NIV). Jesus felt his own sense of weakness when he was tempted. But instead of being afraid of admitting weakness, the experience of weakness gave him understanding and empathy. Instead of strutting around trying to impress everyone with his superiority, he loved people with sympathy. He didn't come trying to convince everyone that he was "Mr. Perfect" (which he was!), and thus make everyone feel like worthless scum in comparison.
"He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him," (Isaiah 53:2). We need--I need--to stop trying to impress people, and take Christ's yoke on us and learn from him. Learn to love humbly, living to live in kindness and patience with one another.
posted by Ron Goetz | 11:25 PM
1 Comments:
I think experience teaches us many things. It's unhappy that some people derive such negative lessons from life, while others can be taught such positive ones.
Fellowship communities usually aim for the improvement of their members. Since we are all wounded, we come to our faith communities with things to contribute as well as areas of dysfunction. A problem sometimes arises because a needy person comes into the fellowship (or has leadership in the fellowship) who interferes with nurture and growth because of their dysfunction.
The obvious problem is this: the person is in need of healing, but is so wounded that they seriously interfere with the healing of others.
Fortunately, different people have different gifts, and different capacities for loving and nurturing the severely wounded.
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