Serving Love
Suffering for Doing Good Part 10
1 Peter 4:10-11		3-3-2013
Summary: Serving is essential to Christian love. To improve as a servant requires knowing what others need, having the means to meet it, and having adequate motivation to meet it. We make excuses for not engaging in ministry because we lack motivation. The motive is love. Paul is a good example. He was unstoppable because he saw his ministry as a stewardship of grace and loved the people (saw himself as a debtor who owed them grace because of the grace he had received from God). Serving love provides the grace that powers forgiving and welcoming love.
     You don’t need to know what your gift is to use it. Just do ministry and it will be colored by your gift. There is value in discovering it though, so you can work on developing it. Discover it by asking what comes easier to you than to the rest of us, what energizes you, and what do you care most about?
Introduction: Improving Your Serve
Serving is Essential to Christian Love
Need #1: Knowledge of Need (They Need Grace)
Need #2: Means of Meeting the Need (Your Gift)
Come to Church to Get Grace
Come to Church to Distribute Grace
Need #3: The Motivation (Love)
The Problem: Lack of Motivation
The Solution: Love
The Example: Paul
The Debt of Grace
Debtor to Men because of Grace from God
Stewards, not Masters
Serving Love Powers the Other Loves
How to Discover Use Your Gift
Using It without Discovering It
Discovering Your Gift
Conclusion
1:25 Questions

1 Peter 4:8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's multifaceted grace. 11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
Introduction: Improving Your Serve 
Back in 1986, Chuck Swindoll wrote a great little book titled Improving Your Serve. It is about how to live a life of servanthood. If you know anything about the gospel you know that servanthood is fundamental to the Christian life.
Serving is Essential to Christian Love
The greatest command is love, and the most basic expression of love is eager serving. Where there is no serving there is no love, which means servanthood is right there at the core of the Christian life. You could even go so far as to say loving servanthood is the opposite of sin.
Galatians 5:13 do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another in love.
That is what following Christ looks like.
Mark 10:42  Jesus called them together and said, "You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them …  43  Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,  44  and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.  45  For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve 
We are walking in Jesus' steps when we serve one another. And that is exactly what Peter is calling us to do in verse 10.
10 Just as each of you has received a gift, use it to serve others
The term translated serve there is the verb form of the word deacon. It is a very broad term. To deacon means to do something for someone else's benefit. It is used many times of serving a meal or waiting on someone at a meal. Sometimes the word is used of providing financial support. It is a broad, general term that includes any kind of meeting of someone's needs. In Matthew 25:44, Jesus used that word to describe serving food and drink, providing clothing, inviting a stranger into your home, and visiting someone in prison. Jesus sums all that up with this one word, serving. Our primary activity in the household of God is to serve one another.
And that is unique to Christianity. No other religion has the primary purpose of waiting on one another. In fact, even in the Old Testament you don't really see this. Jesus introduced this idea, and it is something you only see in His Church. The servanthood model in the church is a mark of the character of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So Swindoll's title - Improving Your Serve - should pique every Christian's interest. Every one of us should be very eager to know, How could I become a better servant? Peter answers that question in today's text. What we are going to find is that if you want to become a better servant in the kingdom of God there are three things you are going to need: knowledge, resources, and motivation. And you have to have all three. If you know what the person needs, and you have it, but you are not motivated, it is not going to happen. If you are motivated, and you want to meet the person's need, and you know what that need is, but you do not have the resources to do it, it will not happen. And if you do not even know what the person needs, obviously it won't happen. So we need all three: knowledge, means, and motivation. 
Need #1: Knowledge of Need (They Need Grace)
The first one we covered last time. We know now what people need - grace! That is the greatest need people have because no matter what their spiritual problem or spiritual goal, the solution is grace. So we have the knowledge about what they need.
Need #2: Means of Meeting the Need (Your Gift)
We also talked about the second point: Means. If you are going to improve your serve - become a better servant - you have to not only know what the other person needs, but you have to have the means to provide it. If the person needs grace, what are the means for getting them that grace? What are our resources in our effort to get grace to people? Answer: Your spiritual gift. If you want to improve as a servant, the best service you can give is the kind that is colored by your gift, because your gift is the main way God desires to deliver grace through you. 
Come to Church to Get Grace
Where there is faithfulness in the use of the gifts, there is an avalanche of grace that results in the church. That is one of the main reasons you should come to church every week. In fact, it is two reasons. One reason you should come to church is to get in on all the grace that is being dispensed. Sometimes you hear someone say, "I didn't feel like getting up and going to church, so I just watched a church service on TV. I sang along with the praise music, and I got the sermon, so I got what I needed." No you didn't. You got some grace from the sermon, and that's great, but what about all the countless forms of grace that come through the various spiritual gifts of all the various members? You need all those forms of grace, and if you were not at church, you missed them. There is a certain variety of grace that flows from heaven through Tracy, with her particular gifts and abilities - different from the kind of grace you get from anyone else. There is another form of grace that flows only through Doug as he serves with his gifts. Another form comes only through Linda, and another from Ruth and Jerry and Bob, Steve, Neil, Lauri and about three hundred others - each one, a different form of grace flows in a unique way. Such an amazing variety. There is a massive feast of grace to be had here in this church. It is just right there for the taking. But it's here for the taking. If you cut yourself off from fellowship, you cut yourself off from a huge amount of the grace that you desperately need. And the closer your relationship with the people, the greater the opportunity for the grace to flow. That is why there is so much more to being a part of a church than just attending. And I realize you cannot be close to every person in the church. With four services over two campuses there are probably some folks in this church you will never even meet. But you don't have to meet all of them. Pick any fifty - at random - pick any fifty people in this church, get close to them, spend time with them, and I promise you will have grace upon grace washing over you.
Come to Church to Distribute Grace
So that is one great reason to come to church - to get the grace that only flows through the various gifts. But that is not Peter's main point. Peter is looking at it from the giving side rather than the receiving side. I mentioned there are two reasons to come to church – come to get grace and come to give grace. Sometimes someone drops out of church and says, "I'm not really getting anything out of it." A person who says that probably does not understand grace and how it is delivered. He is probably getting way more than he realizes. But even if we accept what he is saying - even if it were true that he does not get any grace at all from coming to church - still, he should come anyway because he has the responsibility to distribute grace to others. In fact, if your church is so bankrupt of grace that you are getting nothing out of it, not a single person in the church is serving with his gift, that makes it even more important that you be faithful to use your gift, because if you are the only one, then without you there is no grace at all. We are all counting on receiving the grace that comes only through your gift, so don't let us down. Don't cut us off. Don't deny us our weekly ration. Don't be a bad steward of God's grace - be a good steward of it and distribute it freely and generously.
Need #3: The Motivation (Love)
So we have the knowledge of what people need - they need grace. We have the means of meeting that need - because each one of us has a gift that is a stewardship of grace. But how about the motivation? There are a lot of people in the church who are not really involved in ministry and have no intention of getting involved any time soon or ever. And they have a lot of reasons for that.
The Problem: Lack of Motivation
In some cases it is pride. We get so puffed up with pride that we decide, "I'm waiting for someone to ask me." We want someone to just see our potential, and be so blown away at our abilities that they come to us and beg us, "Please, would you help with this ministry?" We don't want to step forward and volunteer because what if we are turned down? There is always that risk of failure, so pride keeps us from even trying.
Another common excuse is the structure of the way the church is organized. There is some procedure or policy or way of doing things that you don't like, so you say, "I'm not going to serve. I can't work under those conditions. If we have dimwits running the church I can't be part of that."
Or maybe the excuse is, "I tried serving, and no one cooperated. I made an effort, it didn't work, so I'm done."
Or maybe it's, "No one appreciated my work. No one thanked me."
Another excuse is time - "I don't have enough time to serve God's people. I'm busy." Evidently those people only have sixteen or seventeen hours in their day while the rest of us have twenty-four. Those people only have about four or five days in their week, and the rest of us have seven. Is that it? No, we all have the same amount of time. The statement, "I don't have time," is a statement about priorities. We all have exactly the same number of hours each day to work with. When you say, "I don't have time,” what you are really saying is, "Everything else in my life is more important. All my time is already being used up, and so for me to serve in ministry I would have to let go of something else, and there's nothing in my life I'm willing to let go of in order to do ministry."
We have all kinds of excuses. And sometimes we have no excuse at all. We are just lazy. We just don't want to do hard work.
Whatever the reason, whatever the excuse, if God calls every Christian to ministry and someone is not doing ministry, it is a motivation problem. If you are motivated enough you will find a way around the obstacles. So what kind of motivation will be powerful enough to get us off the dime and get moving in ministry? Scripture offers several. The promise of reward if we are faithful in ministry, the threat of punishment if we are not, the prospect of having a meaningful life that makes a difference for eternity, our desire to be in the will of God and join Him in His work - there are plenty of motivations Scripture gives us. But the one Peter is talking about in this context is very simple: love. We see that from the context.
The Solution: Love
As you read through the book of 1 Peter, you notice that he has a habit of periodically reminding us about love. He will be discussing some topic, and then without warning he will just suddenly stop and remind us to love one another in the church, and then he will go back to what he was talking about. And right now, in our progress through the book of 1 Peter, we are right in the middle of one of those love interludes. Peter has been talking about how to deal with unfair treatment and persecution from the world, and he is going to return to that  topic in the rest of chapter 4, but verses 8-11 are one of those interludes where he stops and says, "Oh, and by the way - love one another in the church." This house can withstand any kind of hurricane of persecution on the outside as long as the walls are reinforced with the strength and stability that comes from love.
And he specifies three kinds of love: forgiving love, welcoming love, and then in verse 10, serving love. If you love someone you will 1) be forgiving and patient and cover over a multitude of sins, 2) you will warmly welcome that person and draw him in close to your circle of love, and 3) you will serve him with your spiritual gift so he can receive grace through you. So love is our motivation. Once you realize how valuable that grace is that you are a steward of, it will be impossible to hold you back from dispensing that grace to people you love. There is no way you can have something of supreme value that I desperately need and not give it to me if you love me. So anyone who is not tireless and zealous in ministry either does not understand the value of the grace he or she is a steward of, or they do understand it and they just don't love us enough to be willing to do what it takes to overcome obstacles to ministry and find a way to use their gift so we can get that grace that we so desperately need.
This is why you always see spiritual gifts being discussed in contexts of love in the New Testament. Peter is discussing love in verses 8-11, and so he brings up spiritual gifts. The greatest statement ever written on the topic of love, 1 Corinthians 13, appears right in the middle of an extended discussion about gifts. That whole section of 1 Corinthians  - chapters 12 through 14 - are all about the ministry of the spiritual gifts. And right in the middle of that is the most famous statement on love ever written - "Love is patient, love is kind, etc." We read that at weddings all the time, but it is not in a section about marriage, or about relationships – it is in a section about spiritual gifts.
One of the most crucial expressions of love is the ministry of your gift, because when you love someone, you want to give them something of value. And the most valuable thing you have to offer is the ministry of your gift. So if you are going to love people, that is the main thing you are going to give them. You cannot claim to love the saints if you are not serving us with your gift. There is no way your love for us is real if you are withholding from us something that is both the most valuable thing you have to give and our greatest need.
The Example: Paul
And if you want a great example of this, just look at the Apostle Paul. Was Paul zealous for ministry? Ha! Just try to keep him from ministry. I dare you. He was unstoppable.
Acts 14:19 They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead.  20 But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city. The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe.
The point of stoning is to put someone to death. They throw you down into a pit, find the heaviest rocks they can lift over their head, and drop them on the person. And they just crush the life out of them. They drop them on you head, crush your bones, etc. So they did that to Paul until finally they said, "OK, he's dead." But they didn't want a dead body in town, so they dragged his broken, bloody body outside the town and left him there for the buzzards. But somehow Paul survived. And when he comes to, he gets up and makes his way back into the town. And then he goes off to Derbe, twenty miles away - the next day! I hope you don't think I'm a wimp when I admit this to you, but the honest truth is - I think if I got lynched, and they stoned me until they thought I was dead, I think I might just maybe take a day off before traveling on foot twenty miles to preach in the next town where I'll probably get beat up again. Just one day off - a little twenty-four hour sabbatical to recover from the PTSD that comes from being stoned by an angry mob! Paul was absolutely unstoppable. How did he get that way? How could he be that motivated? Well first, he understood that his gift was a stewardship of grace.
Ephesians 3:2  Surely you have heard about the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you 
He knew the value of what he had to offer, and combined with that was his deep love for people.
The Debt of Grace 
In that verse Paul makes an interesting statement about the way he thought about himself. Basically he says, "I'm in debt."
Romans 1:14 I am a debtor both to Greeks and Barbarians, both to the wise and the foolish. 
"I owe them."
Owed them what? What kind of payments did he need to make to them to pay off this debt?
Romans 1:15 That is why I am so eager to preach 
What did Paul owe them? The ministry of his spiritual gift, which was preaching.
Debtor to Men because of Grace from God
Now here is where it really gets interesting. How did Paul get into debt with them? Typically you get into debt by borrowing from someone, but Paul did not borrow anything from them. So how did he get into debt? The answer to that is back up in verse 5.
Romans 1:5 Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith
Paul received grace from God. His gifts and ministry were grace from God. Not only does your gift enable you to distribute grace to others, but your gifts and calling are gifts of grace to you as well.
Ephesians 4:7 But to each one of us a grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8 This is why it says: "When he ascended on high… he gave gifts to men."
The spiritual gift you have been given, and the ministry God has assigned to you is a grace. And when God gave you that that gift of grace, that put you in debt. But notice, Paul does not say it puts him in debt to God, but to people.
Mark this: grace does not put you in debt to God. And if you think it does, you do not understand what the word gift means. If I walk up to you on your birthday and hand you a nice gift, and you reach for your wallet to pay me back, I'll say, "No - it's a gift." And you say, "I know, it's wonderful. That's why I need to pay you back." I'll say, "No, gift - G..I..F..T - gift. Look it up! Don't you know what gift means? You don't owe me anything." A gift - if it is really a true gift - does not put you in debt to the giver. Grace does not put you in debt to God.
We do owe a debt to God. Jesus taught us to pray, "Forgive us our debts." But the thing that puts you in debt to God is sin, not grace. Sin puts you in debt to God; grace pays that debt.
So grace does not put you in debt to God, however grace does put you in debt to people. And how do you pay that debt? How did Paul pay it?
Romans 1:11 I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong
The thing we owe one another is the strengthening grace that flows to them when we use our spiritual gift. That debt gets mentioned again in chapter 13 of Romans. 
Romans 13:8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another
When God gives you grace, that puts you in debt to me and to her and him and all the rest of the people seated around you right now. What do you owe us? Love. How do you pay it? By covering over a multitude of our sins, welcoming us into your life with hospitality, and through the ministry of your spiritual gift.
And you owe that to all of us. Paul says, "I'm a debtor to Greeks and Barbarians, wise and foolish." Everyone. Are some people disqualified from being served by you because they are fools? If so, what do you know of grace? Were you qualified for Jesus to die for you? Receiving grace from Him makes you a debtor to all, without discrimination. Whether or not you serve us or love us has nothing whatsoever to do with how worthy we are to be served or loved.
When Paul discusses gifts in Romans 12, his main point is very simple - Use your gift! Whatever God made you able to do - do it!
Romans 12:6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.
Whatever gift you have, use it. And use it by faith, generously, diligently, and cheerfully. Don't cut us off from your stewardship of grace. You owe it to us. You are a steward.
Stewards, not Masters 
All too often we slip into thinking we are masters instead of stewards. We do that with our money and possessions. We slip into thinking that the money in our bank account actually belongs to us, rather than remembering that it belongs to our master and we are just stewards who are charged with using it for His purposes. And we make that same mistake with our gifts. My ability to encourage, my ability to help, my ability to show mercy - I start thinking it is mine to do with as I please. We think we are the masters of our gifts and we start using them for our own purposes and according to our own preferences.
But if there is anything that is clear in Scripture it is that your spiritual gift is not for you. It is for us. All spiritual gifts are given for the edification and building up of the rest of the body.
Serving Love Powers the Other Loves 
So when Peter talks about love in the church, he points to three kinds of love. Our love must be tenaciously forgiving - love that covers over a multitude of sins. Our love must be warmly welcoming - love that draws outsiders into our circle of love. And our love must be generously serving - distributing grace through the ministry of our gifts. We are to express love to one another by waiting on one another. That is what will make the grace flow that enables the other kinds of love.
How to Discover Use Your Gift 
Using It without Discovering It
Now I know many of you are troubled whenever you read in Scripture that you are supposed to be using your gift, because you don't even know what your gift is. There are all kinds of books and surveys and inventories and resources designed to help people discover their gift. And yet even with all those resources people still don't seem to know. Why is that? And why is there nothing in the Bible on how to discover your gift? Every passage that talks about gifts just says, "Use your gift to serve others," but not a word about how to discover what your gift is. Nor is there any passage I can think of that tells us to try to discover our gift. If discovering your gift is so difficult that hardly anyone in the church can manage to do it, you would think there would be something in the Bible telling us how, or at least urging us to work hard at it. But you don't find either one. All the passages about gifts just assume you know what your gift is and they say, "Use it to serve the body."
So, if 70% of the people in this church do not even know what their gift is, is it possible for those people to obey the commands in Scripture that call us to use our gift? I believe the answer is yes. 
"But if I don't know what my gift is, how can I use it?"
I believe you can’t help but to use it whenever you do any ministry. I'll give you an example. I believe I have the gift of teaching. I figured that out in 8th grade. One day it just dawned on me that explaining principles to people came easier to me than it did to most people. That was the first time it occurred to me that I had that gift.
Now rewind a year - back to 7th grade - one year before it dawned on me that I had the gift of teaching. I go to youth group one day, and I am talking to a friend who is confused about some doctrine in Scripture. But just the week before my pastor preached a sermon about that very doctrine, so I knew the answer to my friend's question. So I explain to him what I learned. Now, keep in mind, this is a full year before I actually figure out that I have the gift of teaching. I don't realize that I have that gift. I am just doing my best to explain a biblical principle to a friend. Isn't it true that I am still using my gift, even though I don't know what it is?
Everyone with the gift of leadership used that gift before discovering the gift. In fact, how else could you discover your gift? You discover it by realizing, “Hey, I’m doing this and it comes naturally to me.” You cannot know if something comes naturally to you unless you’re doing it.
So the question is not so much, "How can I discover my gift?" It is "How can I use my gift?" And the answer is this - just do ministry. Do the things the Bible tells us to do. Carry out the one-anothers - love people, serve people, encourage people, rebuke people, instruct people, pray for people - do all those things, and when you do, you will naturally do them in ways that utilize your gift. When you encourage people, you will do it a little different from the way I do it. The way I do it is shaped by my bent towards teaching and leadership. The way you do it will be shaped by your bent toward whatever your gifts are. And that will tend to happen weather you have a label for your gift or not.
Look around - see what needs to be done in the church. And of all the things that need to be done, pick the one that fits your desires and passions and schedule and abilities the best, and just start doing it. And when you do, you will be using your gift to serve the body, and we will all receive that unique form of grace from God that flows only through your gift.
So if you have the gift of encouragement and you don't realize you have that gift, what will happen?  You come to church come to your prayer group somebody shares a prayer request, and like everyone else, you do your best to encourage that person. Then you volunteer to help with the building maintenance ministry and you show up and replace some light bulbs or whatever, and while you are doing that you are having a conversation with someone else who showed up to help, and as you are working side by side the person seems a little down so you do what you can to encourage him. And in both cases that person gets grace from God through you, because that is something you are gifted at even though you don't realize it.
That is how it looks if you do not know what your gift is. But suppose you have the gift of encouragement and you do know what your gift is. So now what happens? You show up at prayer group and everyone is trying to encourage the person who just spoke, and you say to yourself, "I have the gift of encouragement; I will use that to try to encourage this person." And you do the exact same thing that you would have done if you did not know you had that gift. Then you sign up for the maintenance ministry, and you encourage someone who is down because the Bible says to do that, but this time you know you have the gift – either way what is the difference? There is no difference. Either way you are going to try to encourage the person because God’s Word commands all of us to encourage one another. Gifted or not – it is everyone's responsibility. 
Discovering Your Gift
Now, is there value in knowing your gift? Yes, I think there is. I don't think you have to know what your gift is in order to use it. You will use it whether you know what it is or not.  However there is still an advantage in figuring out what it is because once you know what your gift is, the more you understand your giftedness, the more you can focus your attention on trying to make the most of those abilities and major on the ministries that allow you to use that gift more. So you start reading books on that kind of ministry, paying attention to people who are good at that, doing everything you can do to fan into flame your gift. You are going to have more success in that area then most of us so it makes sense for you to pour yourself into trying to really build up that area of strength.
Most people think they need to put all their energy into areas of weakness.
"I'm terrible at evangelism, so I need to get better. I'm bad at this, so I need to work on it."
And obviously there is a place for that, but why not put most of your effort into developing your gift - the things that come easy to you. That is what God wants you to major on, and that is what you will be most effective at.
So how can you discover your gift? Your gift is that ability that comes more naturally to you than to the rest of us, but how are you supposed to know how naturally it comes to the rest of us? Just because it comes a little easier to you doesn't mean it is easy. It still requires hard work, so to you it might not seem like a gift at all, because you don't realize that for the rest of us it requires even harder work. So how do you know which things are harder for the rest of us than they are for you? One way is by asking yourself this: "What annoys me about the rest of the church?" Whatever annoys you about the rest of us – that is probably your gift. For example, if you think, "Why is everybody so reluctant to serve? It's like pulling teeth to get anyone to serve. I just don’t get it. It's not that hard!" Chances are you have the gift of serving. You don't think of yourself as having any special ability in that area, because you don't realize how hard it is for the rest of us. Or maybe you think, "I can understand why people don't serve - people are busy and serving is hard work. What I don't understand is why people are so tight-fisted with their money. God promises over and over that you can't out-give Him. Don't people realize the incredible rewards of giving? God gave us the model of 10%, the average giving in the church is less than 2% - I just can't understand that!" Chances are you have the gift of giving. Or maybe you think, "I can see people struggling with giving or with serving, but what bugs me is the fact that people worry so much. God has promised to take care of us! He's never once let anyone down - ever. He's always faithful. He loves us - what is there to worry about?" You probably have the gift of faith.
So one way you can get an idea of whether something comes more naturally to you than to the rest of us is by asking, "What bothers me about people in the church the most?" Other questions to ask are…
•	Which ministries do I feel most passionate about?
•	Which things bother me the most if they go undone?
•	Which activities are most fulfilling and satisfying to me when I work to meet spiritual needs of others?
•	Which things seem to bless people the most spiritually when I do them?
"I don't know - I don't think I'm gifted at anything."
Okay, does that mean you have the exact same amount of skill at everything? Your ability is exactly the same in every area? 
"Well no - I'm terrible at everything, but some things I'm really, really, really bad."
Okay - then those areas where you are not really, really, really bad - those are your gifts!
And for some people, taking a spiritual gift inventory helps. We have one of those on our website, and a number of people have found that very helpful. Do what you can to figure out your gift so you can develop it, but don't think that you have to know what your gift is in order to use it. 
Conclusion
Look around at the people in this room. Do you love us? We are in desperate need of something you have. We need grace - that kind of grace you are a steward of. Will you please, please, give it to us? Will you find a way? Even if you have tried ten ministries and none of them worked out, will you try an eleventh? 
If we are going to be a loving church then we are going to have to also be a serving church. If we have tenacious love that covers a multitude of sins, and we have welcoming love that draws outsiders close, that's great. A church that does a great job with forgiving each other's sins, and that does a great job drawing outsiders in and making people feel welcome and loved - you would think that would be a great church. But if that church stumbles in the area of serving, then grace will be choked off and eventually those first two kinds of love will die out.
So for our sake, out of love for us, and for Christ’s sake, out of love for His body, would you find a way to serve? We have several ministry openings on the back of your bulletin. Any one of those ministries – if you did it, your gift would color the way you serve and we would receive more grace. Those are not the only kinds of ministries. Most of the ministry you do does not even have a name. It just happens in your prayer group, at fellowship meals, on the phone, in the hallway. And we will talk about that next time. That kind of ministry is crucially important, but these service-type ministries that are listed in the insert are also important. We do not ever want to become one of those churches where 10% of the people do 90% of the work. We need more grace than that.
In the early days when John MacArthur first took over the senior pastorate at Grace Community church, the church was doubling in size every two years. And yet everyone was involved. In 1971, Moody Monthly had a feature article in which they referred to Grace Church as “The Church with 900 Ministers.” And still even now, as big as they are – you go there for a conference and you are just swarmed with lay people from the church who just serve you in every possible way. That is God’s design for every church. Not everyone is a pastor, but everyone is a minister. Everyone is to do the work of the ministry.
Ephesians 4:11 So Christ himself gave … the pastors and teachers,  12  to equip the saints for works of ministry, so that the body of Christ may be built up
Let’s be what God designed us to be. Out of love for one another, let’s be the church of four hundred ministers, and then just sit back and watch the tidal wave of grace.
Benediction: Hebrews 6:10 God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. 11 We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure.
1:25 Questions
1.	Do you believe that God wants you to serve more in the church? Less? Or do you believe you are close to the right balance?
2.	Which kinds of ministries are most difficult for you? When you hear the others in the group answer that question, were any ministries mentioned as being especially hard that don't seem that hard to you? Perhaps that is your gift.