Alistair shares his thought for the week; a servant’s heart.

The theme for this thought for the week is on servant-hearted leadership or what it means to have the heart of a servant. I want us to cast our minds very quickly to what this world may look like or what this world would have looked like if everyone carried the heart of a servant; if our leaders were servant-hearted, how would the world be a kinder place? Would it be a place where people feel valued, listened to, heard and seen?

These are all valid questions and Jesus answered every single one of these questions through an act of service that he did in his few last hours or few hours left as a free man before being caught and crucified. In John 13 Jesus wrapped a towel around his waist, prepared a bowl of water and washed the feet of his disciples. This was an incredibly significant act because he did this in his last hours as a free man and what made this act so significant was the context in which he was doing it. In ancient times when you were walking on roads, they were not paved, they were dusty and everyone wore sandals and there weren’t socks! In fact, it was too hot to wear socks so you were picking up dust and bringing it into the house. So it was customary that you would wash your feet before eating and you wash your feet before going to bed.

The other context was that priests would make themselves ceremonially clean so it was explicitly it was an explicit act that they would make themselves clean by washing their feet and washing the rest of themselves before carrying out their act and their duties toward God. So as you can see there are these sorts of contexts that are running around in the disciple’s mind as Jesus has wrapped his towel around his waist and he’s now performed this act of washing their feet.

Now Jesus did this to demonstrate his love, devotion and commitment to his disciples and to show them something even more important; that as a leader it was important to carry the heart of a servant and carry humility with you. So that’s something that he shared with them and he said two things to them that are very important to us now in this in this modern time. So the two things that Jesus said to his disciples that he’s also said to us through his word was thing one if I do not wash you then you have no share with me and the second thing that he said to them was if I then your lord and teacher wash your feet then you should do that for others.

With thing one Jesus was making it explicitly clear that he was making them ceremonially clean to be priests to take their feet and to go out there and spread the gospel and the other thing that was coming with that was the fact that Jesus didn’t want any room for questions they didn’t there shouldn’t be any questions when it comes to the humility that comes from a leader who wants to serve his people so he didn’t want them to have to think twice about it. He didn’t want them to think that it was weird, he wanted them to just do it not even let their right hand know what their left hand is doing just jump into service and serve those that they love and then number two where Jesus is speaking about doing this for others he was making it very clear once again that this should be a mark of Christianity, a mark of our call as Christians just going out there and being able to serve those that we are leaders over, or being able to serve those that we are around that should just be a calling card to us.

Those acts should point towards him in the modern world we may not get the opportunity to wash one another’s feet but we are given a unique and endless set of opportunities to leverage our privileges to help and serve one another. There are so many examples of ways that we can do this for example being able to open up our home to serve a couple or serve a family dinner and then pray over them, actually ask them questions about their life and pray over them. It’s what it’s one of the ways in which we can actually wash someone else’s feet by making them feel heard listening to and serving them to give the grace of God an opportunity to work in someone’s life and to demonstrate his love through our action.

There are so many ways that we can do this and actually, this week’s thought of the week is thinking about ways in which you could do that so shall we pray together in the name of Jesus we pray may the fruit of love compassion and humility grow ever bountifully in our lives and point others towards the love of our Lord Jesus Christ in the name of Jesus we pray amen have a blessed week everyone.

Every week one of our members shares a short thought aiming to inspire you for the week. You can watch previous Thought For The Week videos by clicking here.