This is Pastor Tim’s article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, Dec 16, 2025
The third in our series of Spiritual Disciplines we are going to discuss this Advent season is the most misunderstood of all: service. Part of Christian commitment is about serving the world around us. Jesus was very clear about how important it is to serve.
However, there is one part of serving the world that just about everyone gets wrong and that is the question of why we do it? At first glance, the answer seems obvious, we are called to serve because our world has so much need. But the problem with this mindset is that is not the reason that Jesus ever gives for serving. In reading Jesus’ words, something becomes very clear: at no point does Jesus ever use need as a motivation for serving. Not one time does Jesus tell us that we are to give according to the needs of anyone. I know this sounds wrong, but if you go back and read Jesus in the Gospels, you will find that Jesus based giving on something other than just the amount of need the recipient had.
For Jesus, his encouragement to serve was always about the transformation of the giver, it was never about the amount of need there was in the world. Three of the four Gospels record Jesus reminding us that we will always have the poor with us (Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, John 12:8). That seems to suggest that no amount of giving will solve the problem of poverty. What Jesus is encouraging us to do is give not because of the needs of others but give to express our own faithfulness. We are to give in response to the love we feel toward the person in need.
This obviously seems counterintuitive because it would seem that it is the recipient who is benefiting from the giving, but that is not what Jesus says. He teaches that we give because in the act of giving, our hard hearts are softened and our own faith grows in response to what we give.
Any type of serving that you may be considering as an expression of your faith, one of the considerations that Jesus would ask you to weigh heavily is whether or not you are going to be personally impacted by what you are planning to do. Yes, the benefit to other people is amazing, but that result is in the hands of the Lord. What you need to be considering is how what you are doing is going to grow your faith, extend your witness, or warm your heart. This is not about turning all your focus on yourself, this is about serving the Lord in the exact way He has asked you to serve.
We put our faith in the Lord through the faithful service we provide and in turn, God blesses it to other people. That way He gets the glory and not us. He is the great dispenser of blessing, both to us and to the people who will benefit from the service you are considering.
Let’s take something as simple as attending a worship service this coming Sunday. Yes, everyone who gets the chance to see you and interact with you is going to be blessed by your being there. That is great, but your primary consideration needs to be how that act of faithfulness is going to be an expression of your faith. If you believe in Jesus and you go to church on Sunday, how are those two things going to interact? If you are going to church because so many people will be happy to see you there, that is great, but that is not an expression of faithfulness.
The much better option for any kind of service you want to do is how are the people going to experience Jesus through you. It is a far less selfish way for us to consider serving and it is well in line with how Jesus encouraged us to understand what it means to give.