Happy to be a servant

Paul said he was a servant of Christ…a slave of Christ. He not only claimed to be a servant of Christ, He said he was a servant by the will of God.

In just those few words He showed that he belonged to Someone higher than he was. He clearly said he belonged to another and that it wasn’t by his will but by the will of God.

Our society balks at the very thought of belonging to anyone but ourselves. I heard a preacher say that women today want nothing to do with marriage because feminists say it is prostitution. Can you imagine…being a wife is equated with being a prostitute? That’s how far we’ve come. It’s how depraved our society and the sin filled minds of people have come. We now take a holy state…a God ordained state…a state that was, in fact, the very first human relationship created…and equate it with the sin of sexual immorality.

If women in our society can’t even stand the thought of belonging to their husbands…how can they stand the thought of belonging to God?

I have a relative that has said many times that she isn’t impressed with marriage, that she has no desire to get married, that after seeing marriage up close she doesn’t want to become her husband’s slave. This was said in a conversation about my marriage. Has in fact come up in several conversations about my marriage. I have never felt in any way as if I’m a slave to my husband. He in no way treats me as if I’m inferior to him or as if I’m here to do his bidding. I do things for and with him out of my love for him and my enjoyment of doing those things for him, not because he requires me to do anything.

Being his wife is actually…an honor. So much so that I can’t even put into words what a special honor it is to be my husband’s wife.

Where this relative got the idea that I’m a slave to my husband I have no idea but it’s an idea that she is holding strongly to.

For her, marriage seems to somehow represent a loss of freedom and of self and the gaining of nothing. I can think of so many things that we become slaves to that most people don’t think of as our being a slave. Sin tops the list. Then the government and the taxes we must pay…even on our food. Anyone that works becomes a slave to their employer. They must show up at a certain time, do what they’re told, stay until they’re released to go home. Some aren’t even allowed to take sick days. Others are required to go to the doctor if they miss a single day of work. They may bring home a paycheck but that sure sounds like an institution of slavery to me.

So many people in our society see that as normal but balk at the idea of belonging completely to the Lord. Paul had no such problems. His very identity was that of a servant of Christ. It was how he introduced himself, how he defined himself. He started his letters with…I am a servant of Christ.

How much more profound could he have been?

What else could he have said that would have told who he was and Who he belonged to?

I belong to Christ because…I am His. It’s that simple and that complex. He created me and therefore what is created can’t help but belong to the one that did the creating. But I’m His…because my very soul longs for Him. It is within the depths of me that I feel Christ.

I once told someone that I can feel the Lord ‘in here’ with my hand lying on my chest. That person said simply…I can’t. I knew that even as I told them I could. Deep within me lives the Lord and because He lives there, He is everything that I am. Or I am everything that He makes me to be.

I am happy to be a servant to Christ. I am happy to belong to Him.