Serve One Another, Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Reading: Galatians 5:13-15 - 13You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. 14The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." 15If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

Imagine being locked away in an old medieval prison. You look around and see countless men locked up in the same room. You hear cannons and gunfire outside. All of a sudden a man appears at the door of the cell. He pulls out a key and unlocks the door. He looks straight at you as he walks into the cell and right over to you and unlocks your hands from the chains. A big explosion rocks the cell, and you see the prison is on fire; but you also see that the explosion blew a whole in the wall outside the cell which revealed a huge room where the captures had been storing their treasures. The man who unlocked your shackles handed you the key to unlock the rest of the prisoners. You are torn. The prison is burning. You only have a short period of time. You could spend the time getting enough treasure to last you a lifetime or you could spend it freeing other prisoners to save their lives. What would you do? Really! What would you do? That is exactly what these verses are saying. Jesus has broken into the prison and has cut your bonds of sin. Now that you’re free, you could be spending your efforts in freeing and serving others or indulging yourself in selfish ambitions and sinful nature. I wonder how many enticements that we would have from the TV, the internet, magazines, etc. if we simply busied ourselves in serving each other, instead of letting our freedom and comfort give us the “rights” to sit in front of distractions.

Challenge #1: Today, serve at least one of your brothers in Christ. Ask God to direct you who you should serve today.

Challenge #2: Instead of “biting and devouring each other”, go out of your way to encourage as many brothers as you can.


REVIEW

Were you able to serve a brother today? What did you do and how did it go?


How did the service and encouragement of other brothers affect your day?