God's Servant or Man's Slave?

There can be a fine line between being a servant and becoming someone’s slave: in one instance you run the race set before every Christian, in the other you run yourself ragged.

As Christians, we serve God by serving others. It’s God’s way of allowing us to be used of Him through the gifts He’s put inside of us, and it’s also a means of extending His grace and love to others. But when that service becomes a burden which over-extends and exhausts us, takes us away from serving our spouses and families, causes our health to suffer or pulls us away from God, we may have crossed the line of servant-hood and gone into slavery.

If you’re in this type of situation, here are few things to consider:
-get extra help – a person in dire need often can’t be helped by only 1 person – you don’t have to do it all
-let the Lord show you what you CAN/SHOULD do, then stay within those limitations
-check your heart to see why you are compelled to help past the point of normal assistance (is there a pride issue, or a need for recognition, or hope of being promoted in some way?)
-are you catering to the whims of another person (and perhaps enabling them) or are you providing for a need?
-have you become overly enmeshed or entangled in the emotions of the person you’re helping – so much so that you’re thoughts are about him/her constantly?

Over-extending ourselves can also lead to bitterness; we see that in the case of Mary and Martha. If Martha had set her priorities and sought God about her responsibilities, she wouldn’t have taken out her frustrations on someone else (Luke 10). Jesus told Martha that she should be focusing on God first while she was exhausting herself in the busy-ness of ‘serving others.’

Besides extending the love of God to others, our purpose in helping is to show them how to serve Christ through serving one another. Remember Jesus’ healing of Peter’s mother-in-law (Matt 8:14)? Once healed, she rose up and began to serve Jesus Christ. For those who will always need assistance, it takes a team of loving hands to care for them, and God has to give the game plan for their long-term care. But for those who are able to help themselves, we need only to get them going in the right direction and give them continued encouragement; otherwise we may do more damage to them in the long run.

For our own health, the sanctity of our homes and the witness we bear to our families, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate our servant-hood and make sure we’re first serving God, then others, as He leads.