What Does It Mean to Serve God?

Ask Pastor John

Desiring God

John Piper, Unknown, 163859, Pastor, Ask, Theology, Desiring God, Religion & Spirituality/christianity, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Questions

4.8 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The command to “serve the Lord” appears all through Scripture — but Scripture also assures us that God has no needs. So, how do we serve an all-sufficient God?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the podcast. Today we have a trio of interesting emails to work through
0:08.1	the next three weeks. Pastor John, as I look ahead on the calendar of questions on what's
0:12.6	on the table to come, what does it mean to serve God? That's today. What does it mean to
0:17.5	serve God? Next week, as we serve God, what do we give Him? Are we giving Him anything
0:24.7	that He doesn't already have? Does He need us? That's APJ 1956. And then a week after
0:32.7	that, what does it mean to be spiritual? Spirituality, of course, is a squishy concept in the world
0:37.9	today. And we're going to work towards a definition in APJ 1960. Interesting trio of topics,
0:44.2	all at the foundations of what it means to be a successful Christian, living another Christian
0:49.1	life over the next three weeks. Some important questions ahead. So today, what does it mean
0:53.0	to serve God? The question is from a listener named Amy. Pastor John, hello. I was discussing
0:59.5	the phrase, serve the Lord with a fellow believer the other day. And I was wondering if you
1:04.1	could clarify something for us. All over scripture, we are told to serve the Lord. And Psalm
1:10.0	100 verse 2, it says to serve the Lord with gladness. Good, Ronomy 10 12 says, serve the
1:15.9	Lord with all your heart and all your soul. Joshua says, as for me in my house, we will
1:21.4	serve the Lord. That's Joshua 2415. And Paul in Romans 12 11 also tells us to serve the Lord.
1:28.4	But then in Mark 1045, Jesus says, the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve.
1:36.4	Christians throw around the phrase, serve the Lord so often. But I'm not sure I know what that
1:42.7	phrase means. Can you clarify this for me? I think this is one of the most important questions.
1:50.4	A Christian can ask about living the Christian life in a way that glorifies God and does good to
1:59.4	other people. It gets at the utterly crucial issue of a right way of serving God that honors
2:08.4	him and blesses people in a wrong way of serving God that dishonors him and doesn't help people.
2:17.4	This is not a marginal issue. We're talking about what it means to be a Christian moment by
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