What if my goal — my “one word” — for 2019 were to go “lower?” To addict myself (as Spurgeon puts it) to tasks that most resemble a foot-washing Savior? To research, seek out, and strive for avenues of service that are the most menial and least noticed?
What would the holy work of “lower” look like in my life? Where can I serve in secret so that the work of my right hand is obscured from my left one? How can I go lower in 2019?
“Addict yourselves to the holy work of caring for the feeble and despondent.” (Spurgeon)
Keenly aware of my propensity to pride, I am quite sure that if anyone could do it, I could most definitely turn “lower” into a navel-gazing-activity fit for a cymbal-clapping-Pharisee. So clearly, the goal of quiet service isn’t secret work for the sake of secrecy, and the goal of humble servanthood isn’t “lower” for the sake of topping the labors of someone else.
But if “lower” is where Jesus is, then “lower” means joining him in the real kingdom work. “Lower” is where rubber meets the road in my Christian life. “Lower” is where I’m trusting God to do miracles — miracles like changing hearts (mine and theirs), being a means of spiritual blessing to others, and producing eternal fruit to the glory of Christ. Because it’s only by the work of the Spirit that these miracles will happen simply by offering sippy cups of water and fresh apple slices in Jesus’s name. To my human way of thinking, chasing after “bigger” and “higher” is the way to God-glorifying, earth-shattering, “real” kingdom work. But it’s not the example Jesus shows me in his Word.
When I read about Jesus in the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), Jesus’s work doesn’t look like what I think of when I dream of bigger and better, when I imagine what it looks like for me to chase after God-sized dreams and ambitions. Should I seek to rise above my Master? Certainly not, for what could be more God-sized than Jesus’ example on earth?
I encounter Jesus’s instructions on the heels of washing feet, as he is in anticipation of tomorrow’s crucifixion:
“You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” (John 13:13-17)
Following Jesus is always going to involve going “lower.” And going “lower” looks like my not deciding I’ve graduated on to Christianity 2.0, not assuming the methods and humble work of Christ are for the newbies. Going “lower” means submitting myself to the commands and model of Jesus and looking for reward from the One who sees in secret. Going “lower” will look like using all my life (including my best, strongest, healthiest years) for a Philippians 2 kind of life:
counting others as more significant than myself,
looking to the interests of others,
having the mind of Christ, who didn’t count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant,
humbling himself to the point of death.
Which leads to my motivation for a life of servanthood: Jesus does not separate a life of going “lower” from its coming reward. “He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him…” (Philippians 2:8-9). Jesus endured “lower,” the shame of the cross, “for the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12:2).
We, too, look for the reward. Our life of “lower” is a life of joy and hope, because we’re storing up riches in heaven, reward from the One who notices our faithful obedience and simple labors. Jesus said, “If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him” (John 12:26).
So, what does going “lower” look like in your context? Where can we be faithful in the smallest matters? How will we use our “best” to serve in the most humble of capacities? How can we addict ourselves to the attitude of a foot-washing Savior?
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