Can God Count On You?
Matthew 24:45-51
To offer an acceptable service your heart must be involved in it. God expects all His children to use every Gift talent or resource that He has endowed them with to serve Him. That is why service is important to God. You cannot afford to be a Christian who just consume without contributing. If the world is going to hear about Jesus then every child of God must ensure that they are not out of service.
You cannot be outside His service network area. God is interested in quality service. He does not accept anyhow service. If you believe that He is a wonderful God and that He Himself gave His best for us so that you and I will leave eternally with Him. What an awesome sacrifice. This is why Jesus died. That is why you and I must ensure we given Him our best. We must ensure that we are serving with all that we have. How then would we serve Him and know that we are serving well?
Who then is a wise and faithful servant? Who really is serving God faithfully? A wise servant: whom the Lord will make ruler over his house. In other words every faithful servant is a giver. When we say give we do not mean just money but your time, your potential, your intercessions to others, your wise counsels to others and by warning other who are straying away from the path of righteousness.
Every faithful servant is a life giver. He giveth meat in due season not postponing. If you are going to serve God you cannot pick and choose. You just serve Him. Sometimes we miss it when God presents a situation and sometimes we miss and judge what God wants to do by the magnitude of it or sometimes the one people see. But sometimes the very little that seems so inconsequential can open the greatest door to an individual.
Remember Namaan who had leprosy. Access to his supernatural healing came through a slave girl. The girl could have ignored it because she had no right or say or position but she set aside her condition of slavery. She saw a solution that someone needed and she offered that solution. And the story ended in praise. As the counsel was taken and the head of the army of Syria took the counsel he got his healing and because of the faithfulness of the slave girl’s service someone was healed.
Joseph is another example. Joseph was a prisoner and was in prison with people who had issues but he never turned them down. Joseph didn’t think that he too had issues and what business does he have interpreting dreams for others. He just interpreted dreams for the butler in prison and they experience what he interpreted. Joseph did not refuse to serve. Some of us sometimes just refuse to serve. May be we are waiting for an angel to appear and speak to us before we can serve. Something is wrong you’re your heart.
A good heart will always be willing no matter the time and the consequences because they know it’s a service unto God and not unto man. Do you see what you do as a service unto man? How you see it matters. Is it a service unto God? Check yourself and ask yourself. What I am doing, am I doing as unto man or unto the Lord?
MRI is a medical procedure to check a man’s medical condition. God is also doing an MRI now but it is for those who are mission-ready: mission readiness identification. Are you mission ready? So what God is doing now He is doing for those who are faithful. May be you think you have time. Time is not even in your hand. If it was nobody would die. You don’t even know what your allotted time-span is. Some of us have spent more than half our allotted time span. And this life you are leaving is not a dress rehearsal. So if you are truly going to serve God you better start now.
From our text we can see that there is a day of visitation and nobody knows the day the master will show up you. But I know that God is set to bless His children that are serving Him faithfully. So he is gong round now to know who are in service and those who are not. And there are those who are not even connected to any network.
You know there is a principle of life in inhaling and exhaling. And when there is problem with breathing the person would collapse and this may even lead to death. So there is a principle of you inhaling and exhaling to be alive. If you breathe in you must breathe out. So when you are eating and eating and eating the bread of life there is need for you to exhale it. So that you feed others with it. The Word of God you have been hearing and the testimony you are sharing who is profiting from it? If you are feeding and not going to the toilet there is problem. Feed people.
There are many things we are killing ourselves over meanwhile the only thing that will perform it is service. You cannot serve God without sacrifice. God gave sacrificially and there’s no way we can service without sacrifice.
You Are Evil If You Are Not Serving
If you are not faithful in your service you are evil. That is what the bible say. Do you know how many evil people are in church? If you are not serving God faithfully you are evil. If someone called you evil on the road you’d fight. Fight God now who says you are evil if you are not faithful servant.
Characteristics Of A Faithful Servant. Ways to identify one.
- The faithful servant are always willing to pay the price. It means that serving God is going to cost you something. For example if you join the choir to serve now it’s going to cost you time for practice. You have to invest time to learn the song and sing with others so there will be harmony. So you have to make time for it. Therefore it will cost you something to be a faithful servant. So you cannot serve God based on your convenience. You go to church to be delivered from trouble and when you get delivered you are not seen again. Why? Because everybody is inclined to want to be served and not serve. This is not the spirit of Christ. If you do not pay the price you will not get the price. Some of you here today I believe God is just waiting on you to offer quality service so God can now open the windows of heaven. Give is what God said and I will then give to you. So check yourself. Whether you are really serving God. Many of us don’t even see our workplace as our pulpit. The only work you have is the work of the Kingdom. God never calls any man for a job. He calls them for work. Wherever you are is your own pulpit. Your neighborhood or workplace is your pulpit. Serve God there. In your school or your shop. Serve God there. Ask yourself what has been happening to your pulpit? How many of your customers have you spoken to about Jesus? When I practiced as a lawyer, because of the smallness of the staff there was usually no appraisal. But it was different when I entered the bank where you are given a form to appraise yourself and then be asked to defend it. It’s a difficult thing to do. I needed to ask myself what is required of me and answer whether I am even dong them at all. So if God gave you a form now how will you appraise yourself? We take these things lightly thinking that it does not count. But it does count. Like the choir song everything is intentional. That person that came to you is intentional. You have to work for God first before you can work for man. I remember one morning years ago I had a tearful morning devotion as I was asking for God to give me a word on some personal challenge someone knocked on the door and it was a person with a personal problem. I was saying Lord you have not solved my own problem you are bringing someone with problem. The Lord prodded me to go and attend to the person. So I went to see the woman. I counselled her and told her what the bible says and prayed with her. I forgot my own problem feeling so fulfilled and before the end of that day my own problem was solved. It is in serving others that you get served. When you trust God with everything that’s when you’ll be able to serve Him faithfully. The problem is we don’t trust God. It is in serving others that you serve God. Jesus says if you give food or water to this or that person you have given it to me. If you have said God can count on you in this area then I know that I can leave the people in that area to you that they will know me. Appraise yourself.
- They are willing To Get Out Of Their Comfort Zone. They are willing to leave their comfort zone to serve others. Imagine Jesus being nailed to the cross and under intense pain still attended to the thief who asked to come into the kingdom. Jesus didn’t fret or take out his pain on the guy. He just served him. Jesus in fact told him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Faithful servants serve others while they are bleeding. Nobody knows the number of his days. So what have you done that have impacted other lives or impacted your church?
- They have a deep Love For God. Acts 20:24. Service is the key to abundant blessing. Paul said he counted his life as nothing so that he might testify of the gospel of Jesus. This is the work. The reason we are not sacrificial in service is because we count our life as important. But a day will come when the master will come to see whether we are deserving of the reward. The devil does not want people to hear this kind of message. He wants people to just drift by and be seen without serving. In Acts 26:19-20 Paul said he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision in speaking that all men should repent. You have to see everywhere you are as your service area. That is why any accomplishment is not by your intellectual accomplishment. That is why everything is intentional. It is not by chance or luck. Galatians says as we have all opportunity we should do good to all men. In fact big opportunities will come in small packages. That is why God says if you are faithful in little things I will commit bigger things into your hands. Are you faithful? God is watching. 2 Timothy 2:4. God is saying to be a good soldier you will not entangle yourself in the affairs of this life. The things of God becomes more important.
The Reward
Verse 47 of our text says the reward is that you will be made ruler over all his goods. That is a position of dominion. That means you have authority with God over the devil and his cohorts and over all human and material systems. God will spare such servants whom He finds so doing. The anointing is for doing. May the Lord find you doing. May you do what you are supposed to do within the time you have been given. The evil servants will be full of regret.
John Wesley says “Do all the good you can by all the means you can in all the ways you can at all the times you can to all the people you can as long you ever can.”
What can you do? There is something you can do. Do it faithfully
