God Is the Center of Service
God Is the Center of Service
Service contains many things, but what is important is that God be in it — what is important is that God be the subject of the service, and the center of the service, and the reason for the service, and the goal of the service…
Because many servants speak to you about many topics except God. You do not see God in their words… And in their words they do not bring God into your heart, nor into your love, nor into your thought, nor into your life.
All they have is speech and information that increase your knowledge, yet they are not of theology. Therefore it was well said of Saint Gregory (the Theologian).
Are we, then, in our service theologians? Service is humility from God and not a work from you.
God is able to turn the whole world into saints. He is able to accomplish all the work without you, and without me, and without servants. By His Holy Spirit He changes hearts and leads people to repentance. But from His humility, He makes you a partner with His Holy Spirit in the work, so He works through you and with you.
Service is also a calling from God:
It is God who calls and chooses: “You did not choose Me, but I chose you” (John 15:16). And He appoints “those whom He foreknew” (Romans 8:29). And no one takes this service to himself, “but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was.” Therefore service cannot be separated from God, because it is a mission from Him and a calling.
Service is a word from God that He places upon the mouth of the servant in order to deliver it to others:
God is “He who gives a word to the evangelists with great power.” He is “the One who speaks in the prophets.” Therefore the Lord says: “It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father” (Matthew 10:20). And therefore the Apostle Paul prays that a word may be given to him when he opens his mouth…
The servant is merely a good transmitter of the word of God.
He takes the word from the mouth of God and places it in the ears of the people and in their hearts.
If you have not received anything from God, it is dangerous to speak, to fill people’s ears with human expressions that are not divine…
Moses the prophet was not a man of words, but God was a mouth for him; he took the word from God and delivered it to the people.
† Service is power from the Holy Spirit.
The apostles did not serve except after they were clothed with power from on high. The Spirit of God who came upon them granted them power by which they served. The Spirit of God was working in them with His power, with His word, with grace; therefore their service succeeded.
If you have not received power from the Holy Spirit, by what ability do you serve?
For this reason, preparing a person for service means that he be filled with the Spirit of God.
For this reason it was required of the servant to be “full of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 6:3). Thus your work in preparing the lesson is to invoke the Spirit of God, to grant you power, and to grant you a word, and to grant your word an effect in your hearers, so that the word may be “living and effective,” piercing the mind and the heart, and carrying the power to fulfill it.
† There is a difference between service and mere teaching:
The servant is not merely a teacher, not simply an intelligent person who has information, well-versed in reading, eloquent in speech, and trained pedagogically in teaching. No, rather he is a spiritual person in whom God works. Therefore I say to you:
Among us in church education there are many teachers, but not all are true servants…
Many among us are filled with knowledge, educated, capable of making the students understand, organized in their preparation notebooks. But this is not service. This is merely teaching. What then is service?
† Service is to transfer to others the Spirit of God who is in you, as a servant bearing God.
Therefore we cannot separate service from God, since service is the transfer of God from one person to another, or it is giving people the Spirit of God who is in you…
† The servant is a person who conveys to people the power that is in him.
He does not give them merely spiritual principles, but spiritualities that carry the power to practice them. By his words he fills them with holy desire and with the ability for a life of righteousness, just as happened on the Day of Pentecost. Peter’s sermon, being filled with the Spirit, did not carry mere persuasion and influence, but carried power by which three thousand joined the faith.
There is a difference between a person who preaches to you and convinces you while your will remains unable, and another person who grants you by his words both conviction and ability, and grants you the Spirit who is in him, who convinces and strengthens.
The servant is a person who brings God with him into the service.
† He enters the class, and brings God with him. Then he lets God speak. He disappears and God appears.
And the students feel that God was with them during the lesson, and that He was the One speaking to them. And that through the lesson He dwelt in them, moved their feelings, and granted them His love. And they all cry out:
It was a lesson in which there was the Spirit of God…
And from where did the Spirit of God come? From the servant who bears Him…
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