The key to all Christian service

Any person who claims to gain power through a different process without first going through God's formative process is an illegitimate servant, not a true servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We see in Scripture that many times men and women of God went through sufferings and sufferings before accessing greatness. The most eloquent case for me is the case of Moses who spent forty years in the Egyptian court and then the Lord took him, through a very painful process, to the desert and he spent forty years in the desert serving there in a humble way as a goat herder, something totally humiliating for a Hebrew, lonely, in silence in the desert, and then only after those forty years of preparation does the Lord call him to the third part of his life, the last third part that was life of a statesman, a great prophet, a servant of God who was to lead all of God's people from Egypt to the Promised Land, but first he had to go through that process.

The same thing happened with the apostle Paul. Saul, a great man, full of spirits, strong, a great scholar who had studied at the feet of the most exalted rabbinical teacher of his time, Gamaliel, and Paul is symbolically lowered from the horse on the road to Damascus as an idea that first God has to knock us off the horse. We have to fall flat on our pride, our personal pretensions and be humiliated.

And after that in another passage, the apostle remembers that he was a time he says, hidden, he had a time when nobody knew him and we believe and we know that that time was a time of brokenness for the apostle Paul, God was treating him, working, forming. And only after that preparatory time does Paul then go to the disciples.

The disciples do not even know what has happened in his life, so they have to convince themselves that the former Saul, persecutor of the Church is now a servant of Jesus Christ, and then they install him little by little in his new ministry through a prophetic declaration from the Holy Spirit, but first Paul had to be hidden, worked.

We see that same treatment in Peter when he denies the Lord and is humiliated in his false value, and then God uses him, and we could be here all day talking about how important that suffering process is. And that is why the Lord tells him: If you are not willing to go through that baptism of the cross and your children also do not pretend to access a position of power.

And then the passage says in verse 24, Matthew 20 that: "When the ten other disciples heard this they were angry with the two brothers." Why were these ten disciples angry? because they were also ambitious, because they were also seeking personal glory, because perhaps many of them were serving the Lord for the loaves and fishes, and for a privileged position that they thought the Lord would give them once they agreed to the Throne. What they did not know is that first before the Lord reached that position of power he was going to go through the cross.

So as they did not understand this, they thought that when the Lord spoke to them about a crucifixion they thought it was merely a metaphor, when the Lord is finally crucified they are surprised and leave the ministry because they could not conceive that this great and mighty Jesus was treated as a mere slave and a mere criminal, they were not prepared for that part of the process.

And then they get angry with these two because they think: hey they are trying to "saw us off the stick" as we say in our country, in other words they are trying to get ahead of the line and take away the place that we most deserve; carnality was rampant there among all those disciples.

After that, the Lord gives them a very powerful image of what Christian service is and says: "You know that the rulers of the nations rule over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them." How are things done in the world? As we saw in the parable of the useless servant: the owners send their servants and do as they please, they rule over them, they exercise their power and authority. That's the way the world deals with servants.

But the Lord clarifies them and says: "But it will not be so among you, but whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be your servant; as the Son of man did not come. to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. "

Here we have brothers who are the key to all Christian service. In the Kingdom of God things do not happen as they do in the world. In the Kingdom of God, Pastors, Evangelists, Teachers, Prophets and Apostles have to behave as Christ behaved, in a humble, simple, kind way, with a mentality of serving those who are under his spiritual authority.

Any model of ministry that you see out there that does not reflect that attitude of extreme humility and service to others does not deserve to be called a Christ-centered ministry. The ministries of the Kingdom of God are characterized by an attitude of extreme humility, of serving others, of giving for others, of not claiming any glory, of truly understanding what the word minister means.

Minister does not mean potentate, worthy of all praise and all service, and all reverence, but minister means: servant, that is what minister means from the original Latin in which he comes; to minister is to serve, it is to give oneself to others. Let's rescue again the true meaning of the word minister and include in it the idea of serving others instead of using others.

May the Lord bless you and may our life be possessed by that desire that God deal with us, pass us through the crucible of Christian formation and then put us in positions of authority that allow us to serve others in the same spirit with that Christ Jesus served. May the Lord bless us and may this be a blessing for their lives.

See Video: http://youtu.be/kgK2pLUOmGM