Put Your Hand To It

Neither is He served with men’s hands, as if He needed anything Acts 17:25

Served – Now it hits us! Paul uses a word (therapeuetai) that means “to attend to, to minister to, to wait upon or to render voluntary service to”. Wait a minute! That sounds just like all of our activities in the church. Well, maybe not all. Prayer probably doesn’t fit the definition. Praise sometimes might not fit the word. But most of the religious activities we perform are classified under therapeuo. It’s not wrong to do them but it’s a theological blunder to think that God needs us to do them. That is just a sanctified version of arrogance.

Let’s be really clear about this: God doesn’t need me to do anything. He is perfectly capable of running the universe without me. As soon as I start believing that I am indispensable to God’s plan, I will probably find myself eliminated from the action.

God doesn’t need me, but He certainly wants me. He invites me to join Him in what He is doing, not in what I think I need to do for Him. He is far more interested in my devotion than my duty, in my submission than my service. If I think that worshipping God is a matter to performing service to appease Him, I am greatly mistaken and seriously disturbed.

The thought goes even deeper. The root word here is a noun that means “a faithful friend to a superior who carefully regards the superior’s interests and looks after his affairs”. That certainly seems to describe that proper attitude toward God. We want to be faithful stewards in God’s purposes. Then we see that it is not the action that Paul highlights but rather the attitude. It is always a question of motive, isn’t it? Jesus penetrated the motives of all who sought his approval. God the Father is no less observant. It is why we serve, not how we serve. When we fulfill our religious activities with a sense of spiritual credit, we might as well be the Athenian pagans, worshipping gods that needed their subservience.

The God we serve, the God that we give our faithful stewardship to, does not need our hands.

Find out where God is working and join Him. He loves volunteers in His cause. But He doesn’t have any openings for management.