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Deutsche Version | Wiki Start | Topics Collection viii
A Serving Attitude ...
Friday, May 20, 2016. True leadership is the ability to serve. That is an important and deep insight, which not all leaders of this world have understood. Yet, it is the key to true life, and the key to peace, and the key to community. Once, Jesus was with his disciples, and he realized their fight for being the first. He took them and told them: who wants to be the first among you, shall be the servant of everyone!
Spirit of Service …
The Holy Spirit is a spirit of service. It is the spirit of Jesus, and he was the first to serve everyone - up to the death at the cross. It is both a historical fact, as well as a powerful event, changing the human history. It is an event for history, but also for you personally. Jesus shows service, and he invites us to become truly free and independent - by developing a serving attitude. Let us again look at the text we had two days ago:
8 For I tell you that Christ became
a servant
to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, 9 and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.” 10 And again it is said, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” 11 And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.” 12 And again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.” 13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Romans 15, 8-13
What Jesus has done, came from his attitude to serve. He became a servant of all. God himself, through his son, has this attitude to serve. He is, in himself, service, love and dedication. How could true love develop, if you would not serve each other, all the time. We have a very twisted idea of service, too often. But true service is a joy. It is the joy of being of help, of developing someone, of healing, of supporting, of guiding - but to give him or her freedom!
The invitation to be the first - in service …
There is a fantastic and exciting invitation for you and for me: to be the first in service. To develop a serving attitude. To do, what is needed, and discover that joy is there in this type of approach. Even leadership, when you take responsibility and when you need to move ahead … it can only be good, when you do it as a service. Our ministeries got their name from “to minister”, that means “to serve”. But our political szene forgot their origin, and they forgot that leadership is a service, nothing more!
We often have a strange idea of service: that someone else is living a good life and we need to do the dirty shit work. But when you ever see a baby with clean nappies, you get a sense of what service means: the joy on its face, its laughter, its smile, its curiosity … Even the shit work on this planet has the dignity to be the work of true kings! And the true king of the world did not consider himself too good to do the most dirty shit work and die at the cross.
God invites us to a human life, in full and true humanity. It is a life which knows freedom in dignity, which knows how to serve, and which is connected with him through his Holy Spirit, in all what it does. And when we get into responsibility, there is this basic guidance, which Jesus told us, to do well: true leadership is the ability to serve. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts