Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves. Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to his edification. For even Christ did not please Himself; but as it is written, The reproaches of those who reproached You fell on Me. Romans 15:1-3
When Serving Is Hard
God has really called us to a simple task...It is simply to serve each other in love. It can be a simple task, yet the thing that seems to intervene in our service to others is ourselves. Selfishness can get in the way of our serving others in obedience to God. We don’t want to give the time to serve. We don’t want to give money to help. And often, we just don’t want to deal with people. Jesus knew we would have these struggles. We can find countless scriptures that speak of the attitude that must be present for us to love and serve others in an attitude of selflessness.
Serving others not only requires the right attitude, it requires us to develop some patience. To "bear the weaknesses" does not mean to solve their problems. God never made us responsible for another person’s burden. To "bear" in this passage is a word that means to endure patiently.
The cry here is for us not to demand the spiritual perfection of others that we have not achieved ourselves...OR even to demand what we HAVE achieved. God is dealing with every individual at their personal pace of growth. The fact that someone does not agree or does not act properly does not mean they are less than you. It merely displays a place that may need temporary indulgence and understanding until God changes them…or you. When someone says, “that is just the way I am", they may be sharing a place of weakness rather than personality.
A Word about Porcupines
Realize that accepting an individual is foundational to serving them. If it doesn’t feel like you accept them, chances are that you are not going to be able to have an impact on their life. Accepting a person – or loving a person – doesn’t mean you have to accept/love their behaviors or decisions. We are to see them with the eyes of Christ and serve them with the love of Christ.
· We are called to love them as Christ loves us – with mercy and grace.
· We can ONLY love and serve them with the strength of Christ. In our humanness we cannot love and serve like He loves us, but through Jesus Christ we can!
We all come across people like that in our lives, and some of them might even be a relative. People that are hard to be around and hard to love make it even harder to serve them. They are like porcupines because if you get too close, you may get stuck. Some people deal with the hard to love people by simply just ignoring them or shutting them out of their life altogether. But God has called us to be his hands and feet to all people.
What does serving look like? Servanthood means lots of things. Opening the door for someone, helping someone carry something, checking in on a neighbor and doing yardwork for them, and much more.
Set self aside, grow some patience and love the lepers in your life. You don’t know what seeds you are planting or how God is touching their hearts. He uses us to change people’s lives and we may not even be aware. Serving others in love will change lives – ours as well as those we serve. Someone may be one kind word away from the possibility of knowing God’s love through his people serving.
Accept one another…Just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. Romans 15:7