Strength is for service, not status (Romans 15:1)

SCRIPTURE: Romans 15:1 (TM)

Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status.

STORY:

Dore Schary writes:

A person who calls himself frank and candid can very easily find himself becoming tactless and cruel. 


A person who prides himself on being tactful can find eventually that he has become evasive and deceitful. 


A person with firm convictions can become pigheaded. 


A person who is inclined to be temperate and judicious can sometimes turn into someone with weak convictions and banked
fires of resolution . . .

Loyalty can lead to fanaticism. 


Caution can become timidity. 


Freedom can become license. 


Confidence can become arrogance. 


Humility can become servility.

All these are ways in which strength can become weakness.

OBSERVATION:

Give thanks for a grateful heart

Give thanks to the Holy One

Give thanks for he has given Jesus Christ his Son.

And now let the weak say I am strong

Let the poor say I am rich

Because of what the Lord has done for us.

We are strongest when we rely on him. Strength is not found in body but in attitude. It is not about bench-pressing large amounts of weight, but in bending down to lift someone else up. It is not about reducing the amount of fat our body carries around (although that wouldn’t be a bad idea). It is neither about the ability to run unbelievable distance nor about endurance. Strength isn’t about developing more knowledge, stuffing more “stuff” into the gray matter in our heads.

All of the ideas that I have mentioned are good and healthy, but it must be asked as to the purpose in building muscle, endurance, a better body, more knowledge. Why? Mark 8:36 states: What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?

As the Roman passage states, “Strength is for service, not status.”  A healthier person can serve others and the cause of Christ better. We can do more, help more, and change the world around us. In short, we can run the race and win the prize… the joy of the Lord.

Shouldn’t we be as healthy spiritually as we are physically? Are we ready for the race of our lifetime? Is there any thing that will hinder us from running the spiritual race set before us? That spiritual race is not about our soul, but about the poor, the hungry, the naked, those in prison, the sick and dying, the homeless … the disenfranchised of the world.

Let us give thanks with a grateful heart for the abilities that God has granted unto us to do more for those who are around us in this old world … that is running the race and that is REAL strength!

PRAYER:

Grant us the strength of endurance, the fitness of body, the commitment of spirit to run the race.