The Life You’ve Always Wanted.
Week #5: Servanthood & Freedom.
Spiritual disciplines for ordinary people.
It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then? My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus
Galatians 5: 13-17
Philippians 2:3-5
In addition to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, can you think of other times in the Gospels that Jesus served others in humility and put aside self-interest?
What do we learn about Jesus’ mindset and attitude from these examples?
In his book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster writes, “The grace of humility is worked into our lives through the Discipline of service.... Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service but screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for honour and recognition.”
Why do you think our flesh sometimes whines and screams against service, particularly when it’s done in hiddenness?
Can you share about occasions when you found serving in hiddenness hard? Why did you find it hard? What did you learn from the experience?
Why does Galatians 5 say that serving others in love is an expression of our freedom in Christ, and can actually increase our freedom? What’s the link between serving others and freedom?
John Ortberg writes that “humility gives us the freedom to stop trying or pretending to be what we’re not. It allows us to accept our ‘appropriate smallness’ so we can cease being preoccupied with ourselves and instead focus on, and serve, other people as Jesus would if he were in our place.”
Why or how does humility free us from trying to be what we’re not? In what ways has the growth of humility in you personally had this effect on your life?
What is the role of service in your life? Do you need to find more ways to practice the discipline of service? Share any ideas or intentions that you have to grow in this.
Pray for one another.
Take time to pray together (in pairs or small groups) for each other, in response to the above.
