This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) This is day three together of our look through 2 Corinthians
chapter 13. We're going to look at verses eight to 10 today. We're talking about
three specific actions that keep you healthy as a servant, that keep you going
as a servant, not just for a week or a day or a month or a year or even years,
but for a lifetime.

And one of these attitudes is the attitude of reverence. Trusting God's strength
like a servant. The second action that we take is the action of testing.

A humble testing of my life or I'm evaluating myself as a servant. But the
reverence and the testing have to result in a third thing and that is action.
You can't be a servant unless you're acting like a servant.

You may say I feel like a servant or I have the philosophy of a servant. You're
not a servant. How could you be a servant unless you act like a servant?

By the very definition of servant, you have to be doing something, you have to
be serving. Now the way to survive is not to start with the action. You start
with the reverence, trusting in God's power.

You regularly test to make sure you're connected to his power. But then you act
like a servant. You do the things that a servant does today.

Now if you're like me, you don't always feel like doing the things that a
servant does today. You often feel like doing the things that you want to do
today. But the truth of the matter is, in the end, that's not what's going to bring
you joy.

Satan tells you it is. Your own selfishness leads you along that path. But in
the end, it's serving that brings the greatest joy.

So what do servants do? We're going to look at that the next couple of days. In
fact, three specific things today that servants do that Paul talks about in
verses eight to 10.

First, in verse eight, he says, what do servants do? They do the truth. They do
the truth.

Verse eight says, for we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the
truth. You do the truth. Whatever truth you see in God's word, you go and you
act upon that.

So you sit down in your quiet time in the morning and you read a verse or you
listen to drive time of oceans and you hear a verse about serving someone else
and then you look for opportunities through the day to do that. How can I bring
somebody a cup of coffee that I wouldn't usually have done that with? Or how
when I walk past somebody who is poor and struggling on the street corner, how
can I serve them and maybe go and buy them a meal and bring that meal to them?

Or give them a cup of water or a bottle of water that I even have in my car. How
can I serve somebody that I wouldn't usually have served today? How do I do the
truth?

You do the truth and then it gets into your life. It becomes who you are. Now I
understand there's no doubt about the fact that first you have to know the truth
before you can do the truth.

First you have to sit down with God's word, read God's word, hear God's word in
your life. But you have to be careful not to stop an intellectual knowledge of
the truth. Reading the verse and knowing what it says is very different than
reading it, knowing it and then doing it.

So how is God challenging you to do the word, to do the truth today? That's one
of the things that servants do is they do God's truth in daily life. Second
thing that servants do that Paul talks about in these verses is you pray for
growth.

You pray for spiritual growth in people's lives, growth in their character. In
verse nine he says, "We are glad whenever we are weak but you are strong. And
our prayer is for your perfection.

" That verse in the Living Bible, that last phrase, our greatest wish and prayer
is that you will become mature Christians. The word perfection here has the idea
of maturity, of growing, so you pray. You pray for growth.

You pray for your own growth as a follower of Jesus Christ, growth in character,
growth in love, but you also, in fact here he encourages us, you particularly
pray for others to grow. You don't just pray for yourself. You pray for others.

We live in a culture where, let's just be honest about this, prayer is too often
a selfish pursuit. We just pray about the things that we need or we want. One of
the best known prayers of the last 50 years is by a theologian by the name of
Janis Joplin who sang, some of you might remember it, "Oh Lord, won't you buy me
a Mercedes Benz?

My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends. Work hard all my lifetime, no
help for my friends. Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

" That is the selfish prayer. That's the I want, what I want, what I want at
prayer. Now your prayers might not be that selfish, they probably aren't, but
one of my questions is do they always focus on you?

Do they always focus on just getting things better today? Or are your prayers
deeper than that? Are they broader than that?

What about a different kind of prayer? A prayer for my heart to change and other
people's hearts to change? There's a theologian by the name of Dallas Willard.

You may not know his name quite as well as Janis Joplin, but I would say he's a
much better theologian. And he said this once about prayer. What is prayer?

One definition among many is a means of forming a character fit to reign with
God. Dallas Willard's definition of prayer is it is a means of forming a
character fit to reign with God. So through our prayers, God is growing us.

What I'm saying is don't only pray for circumstances to change. Now you should
pray for the circumstances in your life. Should you pray for God to meet the
daily needs of your life?

Absolutely. You should talk to God about your needs. Should you talk to God
about your need for daily bread?

Jesus taught us to. Give us this day our daily bread. Should you talk to God
about the hurt that you're facing right now in a circumstance and your need for
comfort?

No doubt about it. But the problem is sometimes that's where we stop. We don't
continue and ask God to not only work in our circumstance, but also to work in
our character.

And Paul is saying here, I'm praying for your character. I'm praying for your
perfection. Not just your circumstances, but your growth.

I need to talk to God not only about my own circumstances, but also about my own
growth. I need to talk to God not only about other people's circumstances. God,
would you help them in this illness?

God, would you help them through this struggle? But I also need to talk to God
about their character, about their growth. God, would you grow that person's
heart even through this?

I need to talk to God not only about the circumstances of life, but also about
the character of life. Because the truth is, circumstances are not going to
last. The longest they'll last is a lifetime.

And that may seem like forever to you, it is not. We're going to be with God
forever, forever, for an eternity. Most of the time, our circumstances last just
a few weeks.

Your character, it is going to last for eternity. So talk to God about your
circumstances, but also talk to him about your character. Talk to God about
other people's circumstances, but also talk to God about their character.

Pray for people's hearts to grow. That is a specific prayer that you know God
will answer, 'cause he is working to grow our hearts through any and every
circumstance that we face. How do you act like a servant?

You do the truth. You pray for other people's growth. Number three, what do you
do?

You build others up. That's what servants do. They build others up.

Why are you serving? What's the purpose of your service? One of the reasons Paul
says here is because God's using you to build other people up.

Verse 10, this is why I write these things when I am absent. That when I come, I
may not have to be harsh in my use of authority. The authority the Lord gave me
for building you up, not for tearing you down.

Authority for building up, not for tearing down. Let me just say to you, it's
easier to tear down than to build up. It's just easier.

It takes a lot less energy. And the truth of the matter is, for some people,
it's even enjoyable to tear down. We take a sort of a perverse joy in tearing
things apart.

I'll never forget, years ago, a house that we were in was flooded and the house
was completely destroyed and we had to tear out all the sheetrock walls. We had
some volunteer teams that came in and by God's grace helped us to rebuild that
house. But there were some embarrassing moments for some people on these teams
when they would go into a room and we'd give them all sledgehammers and they had
to tear down the walls of the room.

Shondella and I, my wife and I, would be outside of the room and we'd hear them
having the greatest time in the world tearing our house apart. When we walked
in, they'd look embarrassed like, oh, we shouldn't be having fun doing this. But
the truth of the matter is, who doesn't like to tear something apart?

There's something about us that takes this joy in it. But tearing something
apart doesn't, in the end, result in any good thing happening. It's not that
God's given you His word to tear people down but to build people up.

It's not that God's given you His Spirit to tear people down but to build people
up. And yet, it's easier and for some of us, we can even take an enjoyment in
tearing down. But God has given this servant heart to you in order to build
people up.

And I know some of you listening to this right now, you look at your
relationships and all you see is rubble because all you've done is tear down. A
sledgehammer, a chainsaw, they're great tools but it's a good idea to be careful
with them. I'm not saying there's never a time in life when you have to tear
something down in order to build it up again but the reason you would tear it
down is only to build it up again.

If you just start swinging around without looking, without caring, then all of a
sudden all you have is rubble. I'd say the number one place we see this, this
power of building up or tearing down is in our words. Words are the
sledgehammer, are the chainsaw in our lives.

They are the single most important tool given to man by God. Just look at the
Tower of Babel. Remember that story from the Old Testament.

When God wanted to keep them from building the tower, He didn't take away their
hammers and chisels, He took away their words, their ability to communicate. So
if you want to build people up today, you look at how can I encourage someone?
How can I start to use this great tool, my words today to build someone up
rather than to tear someone down?

To build someone up in their ability to trust in Christ. I'm not talking about
building them up in their pride. I'm talking about building them up in their
trust in Christ and their love for Christ and their dependence on God's Spirit.

How could you use your words today to do that? Jesus says we pray, would you
show us how today? Show us how in one specific place we could do the truth.

Show us how in one specific place, maybe even right now in our minds, we could
pray for someone else's growth. We bring them to mind right now. Lord, help them
to grow.

Help them to grow even through this circumstance and their character, their
trust in you. And Lord, would you show us one specific place today where we
could build someone up? With our words, with our encouragement and encouragement
from your word.

Help us to serve you today by doing these things, we pray. Help us to serve your
people today by doing these things. We ask it in your name, amen.

Tomorrow, Paul's going to continue this list for us of the daily actions of a
servant.