“Shaped for Serving God” Please Read:

A Sermon preached by R. Scott Herr Ephesians 2:8-10

First Presbyterian Church, Fort Collins, March 21, 2004 Matthew 20:20-28

I don’t know if you were there or not, but last year the Elvis Presley made a
surprise appearance at our University Ministries Talent Show. I’ve never seen so many of
our members, well …go crazy! Did you know that Elvis’ album of greatest hits went
three weeks as the number one album in the nation… 25 years after he died??
In spite of his enormous success, Elvis, according to friends, was an unfulfilled
and unhappy man. He died of obesity and drug dependency at age 42. In an interview his
wife, Priscilla, said this, “Elvis never came to terms with who he was meant to be or what
his purpose in life was. He thought he was here for a reason, maybe to preach, maybe to
serve, maybe to save, maybe to care for people. That agonizing desire was always with
him and he knew he wasn’t fulfilling it. So he’d go on stage and he wouldn’t have to think
about it.” He didn’t have a clue where to begin looking. In a sense, he was lost.
Today we’re continuing our 40 Days of Purpose series, and we’re going to look at
God’s fourth purpose for your life…you were Shaped to Serve God. Elvis felt like he
was here to do something with his life, but according to his wife, he just couldn’t quite
figure it out. I don’t want you to make that same mistake.
Paul writes in Eph. 2:20, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to
do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”. You were made to make a
contribution, not just to consume. God made you to make a difference. And what
matters is not how long you live, but how you live. What matters is not the duration of
your life, but the donation of your life. Throughout Scripture we read again and again
that we’re created to serve, we’re called to serve, we’re saved to serve, we’re gifted to
serve, we’re shaped to serve. We’re commanded to serve.
And whenever God gives us an assignment to do something, He never gives it to
us without equipping us first. Job says, “Your hands shaped me and made me.” (Job
10:8). Consider that God uses five things to shape you: Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities,
Personality, and Experiences. That spells ‘SHAPE’. Those five things make you, and
God uniquely shapes you, different from anybody else in the world, for a purpose. And
that purpose is to serve God. You can read more about your shape this week in the
Purpose Driven Life, or sign up for a SHAPE workshop. For now, I want you to notice
this, that God made you unique and your uniqueness is not for your benefit.
1 Pet. 4:10 says this, “Each of us should use whatever gift he’s received to make
a lot of money”. …That’s not what it says? Oh, it says we’re to use whatever God’s
given us to what? Serve others! Do you remember? “It’s not about you.” Your purpose
in life is to be what God made you to be. And God gave you gifts and talents and
abilities and background and experiences and all these things for the benefit of other
people, to be used in serving others.
So, “My fourth purpose in life is to serve God by serving others.” The word in
Scripture for this is simply translated “ministry”. Like worship and fellowship and
discipleship, the words we focused on the last three weeks, ministry is a misunderstood
word. When I say the word “minister” most people think of a priest, or a pastor. They
think of somebody who wears funny collars, or a robe, and talks like… “Almighty God,
we beseech Thee…”! Even the PCUSA Book of Order uses this word incorrectly…
 The Scriptures teach us that every believer is a minister. Not every believer is a
pastor, but every believer is a minister. Ministry simply means using your shape, your
talents, your abilities, your background, your experiences to help somebody else.
In the Greek, the word “service” and “ministry” are the same word (leitourgia).
And in the Bible “servant” and “minister” are the same word (leitourgos). Etymologi-
cally, the word carries the sense of “discharging a task for society” (Kittel). Now what’s
interesting to me is the fact that when we do corporate worship together we are working
through the “liturgy” printed in the bulletin. At the top of your bulletins, you see the more
traditional way of titling the bulletin, “The Service (or Liturgy) of Worship.” As we
worship here, we are serving God, and in a real way we are engaging in service for our
whole society! You are all by virtue of participating in the liturgy of worship, performing
a service for God and for the world.
But it doesn’t stop here, of course. All of us are called to ministry in all of life.
Any time you use your time, talent or treasure to help somebody else, you are
ministering. You are serving. And it’s the fourth purpose of your life. All women are
ministers. All men are ministers. Young or old, if you’re believers, you’re all called to
serve Jesus Christ. And so, God’s going to talk to you today about your ministry. I want
you to turn to the person next to you and say “You’re a minister”. Go ahead, just say that
right now... Now, unfortunately I can’t get you all tax deductions on that! …
The good news is that God not only created us for service, He gave us a model.
He came to earth in the form of a man, Jesus Christ, and He said, “This is what I want
you to do with your life”. You were created to be like Christ, and what did Christ do
while He was here on earth? He served. “Jesus said, ‘Your attitude must be like my own,
for I did not come to be served, but to serve’” (Matt. 20:28).
You know a lot of people spend so much of their time searching for self-esteem,
for self-worth, and significance. They want to feel good about themselves. But they’re
looking in all the wrong places! You don’t get your self-worth from success, because
there’s always somebody else who does a better job. You don’t get your self-esteem
from status. You don’t get your self-esteem from sex. You don’t get your self-esteem
from your salary. The Scriptures teach us we get our self-esteem from service. Jesus
said to give your life away in order to find it. The greatest thrill in the world is to serve!
So what does it take to be used and to learn to serve like Jesus? Well it takes
three things. Number one, serving like Jesus means being available. One day Jesus was
walking down to go to Jericho and some blind men start yelling at him. And Matthew
writes (20:30-32): “Two blind men shouted ‘Lord, have mercy on us! Jesus stopped and
called them. ‘What do you want me to do for you?’”
Jesus stopped. If you want to be used by God, if you want to serve God, you must
be willing to be interrupted. Most of Jesus’ ministry and most of Jesus’ miracles took
place during interruptions. En passen in the French… “In passing…” Think about it. All
the people Jesus healed – the blind man, the lame man, the sick people, the paralyzed
man, the bleeding woman, the dead child – all of them were interruptions. Almost all the
ministry He did, He did it because He allowed Himself to be interrupted.
John Wesley’s motto in life was this: Do all the good you can by all the means
you can by all the ways you can in all the places you can and at all the times you can to
all the people you can as long as you ever can. That, my friends, is greatness.

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 So what is it that keeps us from being available to serve? Let me give three
common barriers. Number one: self-centeredness. Paul teaches, “Forget yourself long
enough to lend a helping hand.” (Phil. 2:4) Whenever you see a need right in front of
you, guess what? God is giving you the opportunity to practice serving. The number one
enemy of compassion is busyness. We just get too busy! And because I’m so busy, I
don’t have time to serve. I’ve got my agenda, my plans, my dreams, my goals, my
ambitions. You know what the problem is? We hang a little “Do Not Disturb” sign on
the door of our hearts. I would guess all of us struggle with some degree of self-
centeredness that gets in the way of our service.
A second barrier to being used by God…is perfectionism. This is my barrier of
choice! You know, wanting every thing to be perfect. “When it’s all just right, when
things settle down, then I’ll serve.” Eccl. 11:4 says “If you wait for perfect conditions,
you’ll never get anything done.” That is so true! Christ-like servants do the best they can,
with what they have, today. I think in America we have a made an idol out of the pursuit
of excellence. We’ll say “Well, you know if you can’t do it first class, don’t even try.”
Well, there’s a Greek term for that too…hogwash!
I think we should remember what’s called “The Good Enough Principle”. The
Good Enough Principle is this: it doesn’t have to be perfect for God to bless it. That’s the
truth. If God only used perfect people, what would get done in this world? Nothing!
We’re all a bunch of misfits. We all have weaknesses. We all have faults. We all have
failures. We all have handicaps. But guess what? God can do great things through us all.
Materialism is the third barrier that keeps us from being available to serve. Jesus
said, “No servant can serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Lk.
16:13). Note that Jesus didn’t say, “You should not serve both God and money.” He
said, “You cannot serve both God and money.” One of the most important decisions
you’re going to have to make in life once you become a believer is, “Am I going to be a
kingdom-builder or am I going to be a wealth-builder?” Now if God wants to give you
wealth, that’s great. That’s wonderful, but it is not the number one goal of your life.
Friends, if your career and is keeping you from having any kind of service, you need to
re-evaluate and make some mid-course corrections.
So serving means being available. But serving like Jesus also means being
grateful. To serve like Jesus, we serve gratefully, grateful that we get the opportunity to
serve. Jesus had an attitude of gratefulness in everything that He did. He started with
gratefulness. That was His attitude in ministry. Now you might think, “I’d be grateful
too if I could turn water into wine, walk on water, and raise people from the dead.”
However, Jesus was grateful in the tough times. Jesus was grateful when He was
criticized. Jesus was grateful when things were not easy in ministry. That was his
attitude in His ministry. This morning we are called to “Serve the Lord with gladness.”
Paul writes in 2 Tim. 1:9: “It is He who saved us and chose us for His holy work,
not because we deserved it, but because that was His plan.” He saved us, and out of the
gratefulness of what He has done for us, we serve Him.
As human beings, we tend to trip over ourselves on the way to serving God, with
an attitude of gratefulness. There are some things that get in the way. One of the barriers
is comparing and criticizing. When you compare yourself to others, when you criticize
others, it’s hard to be grateful. Paul writes in Rom. 14:4, “Who are you to criticize
someone else’s servant? The Lord will determine whether His servant has been

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successful.” We’re all His servants. Competition with each other in service just doesn’t
make sense when you come right down to it. We’re on the same team! We have the
same goal. We’re called to tell the world how good God really is. Let’s not c or c !
The second barrier to gratitude is wrong motivations. In Matt. 6:1, Jesus said,
“When you do good deeds, don’t try to show off. If you do, you won’t get a reward from
your Father in heaven”. Self-promotion and servanthood don’t mix, but it’s easy to get
them mixed up. A lot of our service, let’s just be honest, can be self-serving at times. We
need to be honest with ourselves about that. We serve to get others to like us. We serve to
be admired. We serve to achieve our own goals. We serve as sort of a bargaining chip
with God. “God, I’ll serve and You take care of me here.” We’re serving, but all the time
we’re serving, we’re thinking about how noble we are. We’re humble, but while we’re
humble we’re thinking proudly about how humble we are! That’s the struggle of service.
When you lose a sense of gratefulness, of gratitude in your life, you know right
away there’s something wrong with your motivation. And wrong motivations sooner or
later will get us caught up with the wrong things. So if you want to learn to serve like
Jesus, you have to learn to serve gratefully with a generous heart. You make yourself
available. You serve with a thankful heart.
But there’s one more thing. Serving like Jesus means being faithful. Being
faithful means you trust God come what may! You keep on going. You don’t quit in the
middle of your assignment. At the end of Jesus’ ministry on earth, Jesus said in John
17:4, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work,” “completing the
work”, “that You gave me to do.” I want you to be able to say that when you get to
heaven. You completed the work God gave you to do. Jesus was faithful in fulfilling His
service. He didn’t give up. He didn’t give in. He was persistent. And if you’re going to
be like Jesus it means you’re going to serve as long as you’re alive. You may retire from
your job someday, but you’re never retiring from ministry. You’re never retiring from
service. Because God wants you to serve the rest of your life. Paul wrote to the church
in Corinth, (1Cor. 4:2) “The one thing required of servants is that they be faithful.”
Now let’s be honest folks, most of what we do in life doesn’t matter. It isn’t
going to matter next week much less next year or next decade or in eternity. But any
time you’re serving in Jesus’ name, no matter how small, it matters. Paul writes in 1Cor.
15:58, “Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for
Him is a waste of time or effort” Notice “nothing”: that means it all matters, even the
little stuff. Why? Because in God’s book, there is no little service. He said, “Even if
you give a cup of cold water in my name to a child, that counts.”
Never mistake anonymous with insignificant. Don’t mistake anonymous with
insignificant or even unnecessary. Just because it’s not known doesn’t mean it’s
unnecessary. Let me give you a little quiz. Let’s see if you know these. Do you know
the name of the person who welcomed you at the doors this morning? Do you know the
name of the people who are teaching your children right now? Do you know the names
of the choir members (musicians) who are here today? Do you know the name of the
people who printed the bulletins for you this morning? (are producing the video images
for our worship)? Do you know the people who restocked the restroom before you got
here? You should thank God for them! Do you know the people who stuffed the bulletin
you’re holding? Do you know the person who got the pews all in order and the

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information packets re-stocked before you got here, or who lit the candles? The truth is,
all of them were done by anonymous volunteers. Servants do every task as if it matters.
Look at the last verse on your outline (Matt. 25:21). “Well done good and faithful
servant! You have been faithful with a few things so; I will put you in charge of many
things. Come and share your master’s happiness.”
I started this message talking about Elvis. A curious fact about Elvis…the only
Grammy award he won for an album out of 250 million albums sold, was for a religious
album he recorded called, “He Touched Me”. A song on that album expresses this very
verse. It says this: After the lightening and thunder, After the last bell has rung, I want
to bow down before Jesus, And hear Him say, “Well done, my son.” He is my reason for
living, He is my King of Kings. I long to be in His possession. He is my everything.
Question: Is God going to be able to say “well done” to you? “You spent your
life in serving Me. Well done!” Is there anything in your schedule where you’re giving
back unselfishly, or are you too busy? Are you waiting for things to slow down? Or do
you have other priorities? …Napoleon pointed at a map of China and he said, “There lies
a sleeping giant. If it ever wakes up it will shake the world.” I look at our First
Presbyterian Church family and I say, “Here is a sleeping giant. If everybody who came
here served here, what kind of enormous, spiritual, nuclear reaction would we see in Fort
Collins and Colorado and the world?” I make no apology in saying to you that the most
important thing you’ll ever do with your life is serving God in ministry. Serving God
will transform your marriage, your friendships, your career, your hobbies. Serving God
will transform you, and change the world! You were put here on earth to serve the Lord!

Pray with me: Father I realize that I was shaped to serve You by serving others. Forgive
me for the times I’ve put a “do not disturb” sign on my heart. Help me to see the
interruptions as opportunities to serve. Help me to make time for what matters most.
You’ve been so good to me. I want to give something back. I want to serve You freely
and gratefully and faithfully, and I want to serve in such a way that one day I can hear
You say “Well done, good and faithful servant”. In Jesus’ name, Amen.