Servants

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“Servants, obey in all things those who are your masters according to the flesh, not just when they are looking, as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God.”

We are not talking here of being sycophants who acquiesce to all requests and try to be people-pleasers. We are to be sincere in our work and do it properly at all times, when we are being observed and when we are not. We are to carry out the duty requests of our managers and bosses with a good heart, thoroughly and with a happy spirit. We have one purpose in all things, to please the Lord. When we do our work well, the Lord is glorified, whoever sees it or not. In all thing we set out to be honest and sincere and that includes when we work at a job we do not like or for someone who is oppressive. The Lord refines our attitudes as we do His will and obey the Scripture whether we feel like it or not. 

If we are asked to do something which is against our conscience, we can speak up, even when is costs us, or puts our future in jeopardy. God will honour what we do and will protect us. If we have been honest and true at work, then it is easier to speak up, because it will be known that we are not trouble-makers but sincere. Sometimes it will cause suffering to us and sometimes we will see the delivering hand of God in our circumstances. In all things we trust Him and stick closely to the holy commandments. 

We may not be actual servants, but we all serve in some capacity, even if it is family and friends. We serve gladly and with a good heart to ensure the comfort of those we serve. We all serve each other in Christ and no one is above another. Indeed, the more recognition we receive, the greater the servant we become. 

“In that hour the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” Jesus called a little child to himself, and set him in the middle of them and said, “Most certainly I tell you, unless you turn and become as little children, you will in no way enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever therefore humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Matthew 18:1-4

To be great in the eternal kingdom of Christ we must become the servant of all. This goes against our human and fleshly desires and we find it difficult to put ourselves in the low position and keep ourselves there. We prefer to be recognised and lauded, and made to feel we are important. But the way of Christ is very different to this world, and if we are to live for Him we need to be prepared for that. We gain all our confidence and encouragement from Him and those we know who also love Him and are His servants. 

Don’t

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“Fathers, don’t provoke your children, so that they won’t be discouraged.”

The perfect follow up to the preceding verse. Children should obey, but parents must not put unnecessary burdens in their children. It is easy to allow the weight of legalism to infiltrate our families and we construct all kinds of perfunctory rules and regulations, which are really just a tool to control. It is an ungodly mindset and undermines the ability of children to choose the right things for themselves. It makes them dependent on the parent and takes away their own sense of themselves and the prospect of a personal relationship with God.

The innate human desire to tell people what to do, can overcome us in various roles in our life, and none more so than in parenting. To be over-bearing toward the child in the upbringing of that child causes insecurities and lack of personal confidence. It encourages dependance on us as fragile human beings, and not on the living and true God who is searching for His children. To be too light-handed in the upbringing of the children, can encourage lawlessness and rebellion, which can also come from being too dictatorial also. 

We work out the upbringing of our children with fear and trembling and dependant on the grace and mercy of the Lord to direct our paths, and bring our children safely into the heavenly fold. We should be more encouraging of them rather than the constant correction and punishment that some families follow. This is not helpful to the child. It could also tip quite easily into abuse and taking away the fundamental rights of the child. 

We aim for godly, faithful, sincere relationships that guide our children into all truth, but realising that we cannot dictate their final characters or personalities, but leave that in the loving hands of God. Perhaps less is more. Perhaps a lighter touch is better than the heavy hand. God lets us make mistakes so that we can learn from them, and in all things leads us into all truth. Families should operate in this way too, and make independent and confident learners, who know the Lord and will walk with Him in courage and obedience, as we also should as clear examples of God’s  handiwork. 

Obey

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“Children, obey your parents in all things, for this pleases the Lord.”

Children in the family must resect and obey their parents, as commanded by the Lord.

“Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.”

Exodus 20:12

It is for the peacefulness of the family and the development of the character of the children that they regard their parents and do what they are asked. It is a blessing to be brought up in a godly household where the law and God and the love of God are worked out in the life of the family. It is more difficult if you are outside that experience, but the grace of God calls all kinds of people to Himself. 

It is important that we learn to respect our parents so that we can have some semblance of understanding of what it is to regard the Lord and obey Him. Obedience is pleasing to the Lord and was the defining feature of the life of Jesus Christ. He was obedient to the Father and obeyed all the commandments and the pathway that was set out for Him, that all righteousness might be fulfilled. 

“And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross.”

Philippians 2:8

There was no other obedient like Him, that He might be our example and advocate before the Father. We put on the robes of His righteousness because we have none of our own. We learn to obey the Lord, whether we had an upright beginning in life or not. Obedience pleases the Lord, so we must teach our children obedience and to conform to the authority over them. We also encourage each other to confirm to the obedience and image of Christ, that we also will be righteous people who please the Lord. 

Love

“Husbands, love your wives, and don’t be bitter against them.”

Love holds all things together, but it must be real and sincere. There is a godless Stoicism that will just doggedly keep on going, grit the teeth and carry on. It is not love or devotion and is hiding the real situation that can never be sorted out. It makes a marriage into a lie.

Husbands are especially targeted here in this verse for especial reminder that they must truly love their wives and not descend into the bonds of duty in marriage. If marriage is to last it must be true. We must make up our minds at the start what we want and we must work to ensure that our relationships stay honest and righteous.

It is too easy to become bitter and to become a hyper-critical spouse and men seem to be more prone to this. The Apostle Paul is reminding the men in the marriage relationship to pay close attention to being sincere and genuine in their love relationships and to truly love their wives as they love themselves.

Women can do many things that men find difficult and it is easy to sideline these skills and ignore the relational aspect of life and focus on the practical. It is too easy to denigrate someone who can do the things you cannot and to put our spouses down and sideline their abilities and gifts. If marriage is to be rich and successful, it must have the full love and devotion of both parties. Without this love, the marriage will eventually die. A person can hide and pretend but it will not last the ravages of life and the pressures put on relationships by the outside world. Love will conquer all and will overcome all obstacles and shine brightly as something everyone can look to and gain strength from. This is also what builds families and helps our children and grandchildren to grow. Fake devotion can never succeed because it is dishonest. True hearts will stay together and win the day with true devotion and faithfulness. Love wins.

Fitting

“Wives, be in subjection to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.”

It is really important who we marry. We must choose a partner prayerfully and with great wisdom. It is a one time choice and should reflect the love relationship between Christ and His church. Our behaviour in marriage should be fitting in the Lord and reflect the love relationship between the persons of the godhead and the love of Christ for His redeemed people. 

Wives are to be in subjection, that means they are affected by their husbands and will live closely with them for the rest of their lives. Women especially must be careful who they marry, since many interpret this word as women being underlings and must do what the husband says. There are still too many who treats their wives as chattels and as housekeepers giving special privileges to them, and not as people with dignity and purpose and a personal life with God. It should be a loving relationship with both parties willing to acquiesce to each other for we are yet sinful people and not infallible. 

The Bible teaches mutual submission and the living and constant respect for each other as people and as individual people at that. The wife is not the same as the husband and decisions should be made together and with mutual consent. Where there is no consent it is oppression and abuse and worse. 

“Subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”

Ephesians 5:21

We are to practice submission as is fitting in the Lord, not a craven fear of one party or the other, or of one lording it over the other. Marriage is not a chopping block or a pity party for the man to be bolstered up in his psyche and ego and given Carte Blanche to dictate the terms of every discussion or decision. There must be sharing. Without sharing there is no caring and the oppressed party will eventually give way in disappointment and will give up on the “relationship” which can turn out to be no relationship at all. 

Marriage is very difficult and should not be entered into lightly. Both parties should be sure that God is directing them and decisions should be made prayerfully and with due regard for each other in each other’s life. 

Women should be thoughtful about whether marriage is for them at all, since many are very able and have their own life ideas and desires. It is very difficult to give this all up to be a pick-up person for a man, who requires a stultifying submission and complete acquiescence. It should not be like this but it often is, or works out that way in practice. 

This will not work for many women and many spend life under achieving and miserable about their state. The man ends up abusing the wife and putting down her wishes and desires and so how can a marriage be happy and fruitful? This will affect the children and cause a lot of difficulties and develop bad thinking and feelings. We must consider the long term view of marriage and not the short term gain of having a companion. 

Marriage means giving all and we become a part of each other. Women have to decide if they want that kind of authority over their lives, or whether they would be better off alone. There are many ways to have family and friends and marriage is only one state of being. 

There are plenty of examples where subjection is not fitting in the Lord, and we should consider this in all our doing and being. Putting people down and ruling over free people with impunity is not godly and blaming others for what goes wrong and not examining ourselves, is a skills we all need to learn. Marriage is a learning experience and we need to be sure we choose someone who will learn with us and be prepared to change and grow. The way I personally have observed marriages in churches is not heart warming and I see a lot of rejection and neglect against women. This is not pleasing to the Lord, and the dirth of responsibility for the elements in the marriage is woeful. Something must be done, for women are suffering and are staying out of church because of toxic relationships. 

We must learn mutual submission or all is lost and the beautiful picture of marriage on the Scripture will be lost for future generations and we are left with a cultural equivalent that damages women and also men in the long term. 

All

“Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father, through him.”

Everything we think and say and do should be captured to Christ. It is a great regulator of our words and deeds to know we do them all in the name of the Lord Jesus. We can find ourselves rehearsing our griefs and failures and getting ourselves in a bad spiritual state by forgetting what God has done for us and in us. We forget that we are redeemed people, and the past is all forgiven by the Lord and we have been given a new start. Every time we fall, the Lord is there to correct us and pick us up and set us on our feet again. What a loving Saviour and Companion He is! He loves us with no regard for our past sins. They are forgotten in the sea of forgetfulness. He has paid the price already and we are free people. But our thoughts and words can bind us again in the bonds of blame and confusion. Let us put away the words and deeds that would separate us from the Lord our God and walk worthy lives for His glory and our own good.

We can be so cruel to ourselves and we can allow others to call the shots in our thought processes. We must cling to the words of the Scripture and not the lies of the enemy. We look to our Saviour and are so thankful for all that He has done for us. He has set us free, and we must never forget that.

Everything we do is for His sake, and remembering that His yoke is easy and His burden light. He is not a taskmaster nor is He harsh in His treatment of us. Unfortunately we are often harsh on ourselves and sometimes on each other too.

“The merciful man does good to his own soul, but he who is cruel troubles his own flesh.”

Proverbs 11:17

We must remember our own flesh and its limitations and weaknesses and not be unkind in our judgment of ourselves. We avoid sin and fight the unrighteousness that is in us, but we must not make our lives harsh and difficult and full of misery. The Lord gives us all things to richly enjoy, and all His things are ours in Christ. A cruel person is cruel to themselves, and this should not be the case, because the Lord is not cruel to us. Too many rules and regulations about life and a tight and unyielding legalistic spirit can make us so dull and restrictive. We stop enjoying life and start to pile on the blame and guilt. Christ our Lord has set us free from all that, so let us stand fast in His liberty and enjoy the life He has graciously given us to enjoy. We give thanks to Him for it and express our gratefulness to Him for all He does in us, by living our life for His glory and praise.

As we praise and thank our Father in heaven through the Lord Jesus Christ, so we give the glory to the right cause and set our priorities right, and our minds are focused on the right things. God will reward us and give us peace and the felt sense of His presence with us. We will find we have the strength to say and do the right thing when the time comes for us to act and speak.

“Settle it therefore in your hearts not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to withstand or to contradict.”

Luke 21:14-15

If we give Him all, words and deeds, we will reap a rich harvest…

Singing

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“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord.”

It can be much easier to remember words when they are set to a tune. The rhyme structure in hymns is very helpful to remember and the words can be a great comfort to us as we say them in our head or sing them. It is wonderful how they come to mind at the right time and how God can bring words to our remeberance to help us in the situations of life. 

The practice of learning Scripture by heart is also extremely helpful for it will come back into the mind at the right time. God will bring these things to our mind, so that the Holy Spirit can use them for our glory and encouragement. We also encourage each other with these words and bring them to our memory and rehearse the truths of God in Scripture and in verse. 

Singing is such a great activity. It exercises the mind, the heart and voice to the glory of God. It lifts the spirits and cheers the gloomy days with the joy of the Lord. We can sing or listen to Christian music which lifts our mind to the Lord. 

Should we listen to Christian music only?

This is a delicate issue. We should listen to what is helpful to us and encourages us in the Lord. Sometimes secular music can be helpful and it soothes the troubled mind and soul, but much of it has unhelpful lyrics that can make our heart cold and divert our attention to something else rather than the truths of God. Too much of it will affect our mindset and divert our thinking into ungodly ways and thought patterns. The secular words will drown out the Word of God and we will find ourselves singing and reciting the words of the godless sentiments that are not helpful to our soul. 

We encourage each other in the Lord and put His truth first and foremost in our lives and we will reap the harvest of comfort and good cheer. This will reinforce the grace of God towards us and be a constant reminder of our dear Saviour and friend and all that He means to us. If we entertain the ungodly words and music it will not benefit us much and will indeed take us away from thinking about the Lord and all that He is and has done for us.

The constant sound of romance songs is very unhelpful and will divert out thinking to things we don’t need to consider or rehearse. They can take us away from the reality of the love relationships in our life and concoct a false kind of thinking about what love is. We can find ourselves thinking falsely about love and live our thought life in a fantasy land, which is detrimental to our psyche and the reality of love in our life. We rehearse the things of God and the realities of the spiritual life, which will strengthen our soul and fill us with good thoughts and the remembrances of the truths of God. This bolsters up the mind and heart and will help us to fight temptation and sin that would overtake our life and cause of hurt. 

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly..” 

We do all we can to propagate the Word deep in our soul and keep our mind as the mind of Christ.

Peace

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“And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.”

We are to give way to God and allow Him to rule our hearts and lives and to be thankful to Him for all His provision. No matter how difficult it gets He is in control and will provide for all our needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus. Sometimes we are not able to have all the things we think we need, but God knows what is best for us and will supply them as so that we are sustained in our lives. Our emotions can be rather raw, but His loving kindness is always there for us. Let us rest in Him and enjoy the delights of His presence and power. He will come to us at the right time. 

Where does this peace come from? 

It comes from the comfort in the Word of God. We remember His word to us and rehearse it in our minds and He blesses it to our hearts. The words of other people can be comforting, but the Word of God is full of the sure and certain promises of the Father and He will help us to grasp them and hold them close.

It comes from a thankful heart that is grateful for all the provision of the Lord. The circumstances and situations of our lives may not be ideal, and we might lack things that we feel we need, but the Lord has provided for us and will help us. The lack of emotional support can be the most difficult to bear as we can become isolated and cut off from people we love, but the Lord is able to make it up to us and to draw close to us and let us know His comfort. 

God does this through the Word of His power. To know and remember the Word of God is such a blessing and the Holy Spirit who dwells within us will bring the words to our remembrance when we need them. God will not leave us comfortless but will come to us. He will make up the lack of other people and the sweetness of His love will surround us. We are thankful for the Word of God and all His provision, in our temporal lives too. 

We are called to peace in the body of Christ also. There should be family love between sisters and brothers in Christ and the support of each other in our needs. It can be difficult to find a church where there is the family feeling and the friendly support we all need, young and older. To find it is precious, and also the faithful teaching of the Scripture so that we are comforted in it and grow up in Christ. 

Beloved, let us dwell in peace at all times and not fret, for it disturbs our peace and takes away our faith in the Lord. Let us live quietly and peaceably and know His support each day and have loving hearts full of devotion to Him and full of faith. 

Complaint

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“bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, if any man has a complaint against any; even as Christ forgave you, so you also do.”

We are bound to forgive as we also have had need of great forgiveness. 

As Christian people we are to bear with each other in our weaknesses and failures and help each other to overcome in the name of Christ. Even when other people do not understand our lives and blame us for the things that have gone wrong, we are to bear with them in love. When other people do us out and out wrong, we are to forgive them and not hold grudges against them. 

If there is a situation where we have a complaint against someone we are to forgive and not make a big issue of it. There are plenty of examples where people have had to bear with us and forgive us, even things we know nothing about. It is easy to offend and be offended and it is common to want to be exonerated for situations out of our control. But often we must bear with outcomes a best we can and turn our minds to the Lord and not to the outside forces around us. We can find ourselves in impossible situations and find ourselves at the receiving end of the ill-will of other people, but we must bear with it in love and forgiveness.. 

Sometimes it is possible to sort out our situation and make relationships better, but sometimes it is not. People follow the way they want and often do not think about the effects of life on other people, and so many get left out and sidelined. We rise above all the foibles of human nature and trust in the Lord to see us through and give us the strength to live as He would want us to live. 

Speaking personally, I am so glad to be forgiven by the Lord and for the redeeming sacrifice of Calvary, and would wish to be like Him in His character and motivations. This is my prayer for all those who love the Lord and and wish to be like Him. 

Beloved, cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you. There is no one like Him and in reality, only He can know the inner workings of your heart and mind. He will bring you through the deepest of trials and make your light so shine before men that they will see your good works and glorify the Father in heaven.