Servant Leadership

March 7

Leviticus 27

Psalm 31:9-18

Proverbs 7:9-12

Mark 9:30-41

Servant Leadership

“Sitting down, Jesus called the twelve and said, ‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.’ He took a little child whom He placed among them.  Taking the child in His arms, He said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in My name welcomes Me; and whoever welcomes Me does not welcome Me but the One who sent Me.”  Mark 9:35-37 NIV

The disciples just didn’t get it.  Over and over, Jesus told them to humble themselves, to be like little children, to serve others and to consider others as more important than themselves.  It must have been frustrating to Him that after all the time He had spent with them, they were arguing about who was the most important among them.  They were still waiting for Jesus to set up an earthly kingdom and put them in charge.  They weren’t really listening to His words.  

Before we are too critical of the disciples, let’s evaluate our own lives.  We have the benefit of the whole picture.  We know what He meant because we can read about His sacrificial death on the cross and how He willingly submitted to being beaten, spit upon, mocked and humiliated to pay the penalty for our sins.  We know what the plan was and that the reason He was willing to humble Himself was because of His amazing love for us.  We see over and over in scripture the dramatic, life-changing results of putting the needs of others first and serving others in love.  Yet how different are we from the disciples.  We want to be important and for others to recognize and acknowledge that.  We get our feelings hurt when we are not treated with respect.  We are more concerned with being served and having our needs met than we are with the needs of those around us. 

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage, rather, He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death---even death on a cross!”  Philippians 2:5-8 (NIV)