When you are in school, you strive to make good grades. If that was not your desire, at least the teachers stressed for you to do that. After graduating from school, you settled down in a job. As you work, you do what it takes to get that increase in your yearly salary. Your life revolves around doing what it takes to get more money.
That mentality can easily carry over into your spiritual life. You can try and do more to become more spiritual. Therein lies the rub. Being more spiritual is not a matter of you doing more. It is a matter of serving more. You are never more like Christ, than when you are a servant. Gordon MacDonald has some enlightening words on this subject: “You can tell whether you are becoming a servant by how you act when people treat you like one.” Ouch! You want to be a servant of the Lord, but you just do not want other people to treat you that way.
The Lord’s disciples struggled with that very same thing. When two of the disciples wanted to be on the places of authority in heaven (one on the right and one on the left), the other ten disciples were outraged. Why? Because they wanted those places of authority. Jesus responds to their attitudes by saying: “It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:26-28). Jesus tells his disciples, that to be in authority in His kingdom means being a servant, not a lord over other people.
So, to go up in God’s kingdom means that you must go down. You must become a servant of others. You know how well you are a servant by your reaction to the way others treat you as a servant!
