HUMILITY IN SERVICE: Secret of Kings and great Leaders revealed!

Posted by John Okiyi Kalu | 10 years ago | 3,143 times



 

Today, I wish to share this secret with my readers and friends. Since am not a pastor or professional speaker, I won't be asking for offering or seminar fees. But if my message moves you, do something for someone right where you are today. Something good o.

Do you want to be successful in life or desire God's help in times of trouble? There are two things you must learn to do better than others.

1. Learn to serve God and others. 

Nothing beats service to God and man in attracting heavenly and earthly favors. Those who dedicate their lives to one form of service or another usually end up at the top. Amazingly their rewards or blessings are also irreversible and continues to even generations yet unborn. To add to that, God's blessings are irreversible once given.

Name one person you consider great in the Bible or Nigeria and I promise to share with you what I know about his personal record of service to God and others that may not have been known to the world. Just remember than those who serve others are actually serving God. In the book of Matthew 7:12 the Bible talked about doing things for men that you want others to do for you. Jesus Christ declared it "the law and the prophets" which means it is a universal truth. Also in Mathew 25:40 the Bible said that those who serve others are actually serving God Himself. 

If you want to get to the top, serve others without complaint and/or expectation of reward from them. But you have the right to serve and expect reward from God because the Bible says that God is "a rewarder of them that diligently serve him". If you want suggestions on how you can serve God and/or man, please ask me here and I will suggest to the best of my knowledge. I will also share one personal life secret with you here. The person you know as John or JOK is too error prone and gets into trouble every now and then. He is by no means the wonderful picture of him you have formed in your mind. But each time I get into trouble or make a mistake, I pray to God to intervene by simply reminding Him of one service or another I have rendered to Him or men and demand a reward as promised. That has never failed to elicit God's intervention in my life hence I adopted a strategy of service renewal to ensure there is a service to God and man I can refer God to in times of need. Simply put, when I serve you in any form I am doing it for myself by extension.  

While we are all entitled to numerous benefits from God regardless of whether we are Christians, Muslims, Atheists, Buddhists, Native doctors etc, special gifts and favours from God are reserved for those who serve God and man. Do you know that Obasanjo served at the Baptist Church as a young man and was actually given as offering by his father to rescue the local church in his hometown from shame, disgrace and closure? Well, I have just hinted you on why even with all his human weaknesses God did not allow Abacha to kill him but rather permitted him the rare privilege of being the only man to lead Nigeria at 2 different times with three and half years as military and 8 years as civilian president in a country of 160m people. Time will not permit me to share with you IBB's record of service. In scriptural terms, he is in the mold of Cyrus as recorded in Isaiah 45:1-3. He led this country for 8 years even though he was an orphan for most of his life because he served God and man at critical times in his life. 

Whatever service to God and man cannot give you nothing can give that to you.

KEY: Serve without expecting reward from men or complaints. If people abuse or mistreat you while you are serving others or God,  the better for you. It normally attracts bonus reward from God. If Samuel's mother was not abused by her co-wife we possibly wouldn't have had the great Prophet Samuel in the Bible.

2. Humility is one attribute and key to success that I find extremely difficult to deal with. I must confess my failures as a person with regards to humility. Not that I have not tried and wish to continue trying but it is just tough. Yet it is so crucial an attribute that if you have it, service to others and God will come naturally to you. 

Humble men and women are the most difficult to beat in any competition in life. The Bible says that God gives grace to the humble and yet many people waste their time praying and fasting for God's grace. Why not just humble yourself and receive grace from God?

In scriptural terms, aside from Jesus Christ I doubt if there was a more powerful prophet and leader than Moses. Yet Moses was recorded as one of the most humble men ever. Interestingly, Jesus also had an abundance of the same attribute-humility. Do you remember when he washed his disciples feet? Can you cast your mind back to the events around his baptism and crucifixion? Humility should have been Jesus' name. May be being a carpenter's son helped in humbling Him the way being a shepherd boy humbled his forefather King David.

Yesterday in Lagos, a senior friend of mine who is also a chieftain of an opposition party and one of those I carry bag for told me something about our incumbent President Jonathan that made me smile quietly. He said the worst part of the problem his party is having is that the more they attack the President the more the man gets sympathy from Nigerians. He also said that the idiots dropping bombs and kidnapping school children have virtually ensured that the president will be re-elected in 2015. I suggested to him to recommend to his party that they start showing sympathy to the president each time a bomb is dropped and then tell Nigerians their party's alternative programs instead of attacking the President and continuing the line that they will end boko haram when elected as that has led Nigerians to believe that they are actually the sponsors of Boko Haram. According to him, he used to think that it was only in the south that sympathy for the president is increasing with every attack until his last visit to the north where he observed that even while many people were abusing the president over the state of the nation they still feel those carrying out the attacks are enemies of the president and our democracy who want to force him out by all means. According to him, most educated middle to top level northerners actually will die for Jonathan because they see him as a "nice" man in the midst of hawks. When I left our meeting after discussing the main thing that took me to his place, I smiled inwardly because I knew what my oga didn't know-God gives grace to the humble and President Jonathan is a humble man. That was exactly the attribute that attracted me to him in 2010.

If God is pleased with the ways of a man He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. That's the work of Grace. I know because all my life I have enjoyed  reasonable quantities of God's grace. But I know people like Moses and President Jonathan enjoy unlimited grace because of humility. It pays to be humble.

You can't fake humility. 

It must come from the heart and soul. While most of us can see humility in President Jonathan, many observers know that same can't be attributed to his spouse. That means humility is not contagious. I don't know the President's children so I can't say exactly if humility can be inherited. But I know from Biblical records that while King David was a humble man to the core, King Solomon was not associated with humility. Neither was Absalom his brother. Humility appears to be a personal attribute only.

A humble man necessarily believes that whatever he is must have been the hand work of God and others. His successes are unmerited, in his eyes. He sees himself as no different from others and non deserving of any special accolade. He also believes that what God has done for him he can also do for you so he sees your glory in his glory and tries to treat you as he treats himself. A humble man can disarm armies without moving a leg. Moses demonstrated that against Pharaoh. Many other examples abound in contemporary leadership and I urge us to look around in our immediate environment to locate these powerful people called humble men and women. They are winners any day any time and you will do well to hang around them so that their glory wll rub off on you somewhat.

Can one learn to be humble? I should think so because if one stops looking down on others or attributing extra ordinariness to himself he will naturally seek to worship and serve the higher power responsible for our life on earth. It takes humility to serve a God you have not seen but know exists. Interestingly most pastors are not humble even though they purport to be men of God or serve God. But God himself is humble because it takes humility to come down and inhabit the praise of your hand work. We have Biblical records of God even enjoying fellowship with men he created. Just ask yourself if men were God how all of us would have been living here on earth. Yet God calls us sons and friends.

The best way to be humble is just to be humble. Know that you are nothing and on your own you can do nothing. Humility will confer on you the spirit of gratitude and thanksgiving which in turn will provoke God to bless you over and above your peers. Like Jonathan or not, he has been Nigerian president for 5 years whereas great men like Pa Awo, Soyinka, Achebe, Abiola, Ekwueme, Aminu Kano etc  didn't make it for one day. He is on course for another 4 years and if what I know about humility and grace is anything to go by, it might even be more than another 4. It doesn't matter how much you abuse him, criticize or even fight him, enormous grace is  available to him. I repeat again, God gives GRACE to the HUMBLE. It also takes a humble man to identify another humble man

KEY: To be humble, think not of yourself as being different or better than others but see God in your successes in life.

If you have been blessed by my short note today, just type these words of prayer as a comment below: "God help John Okiyi Kalu to serve you and men with humility".As you pray for me God will also help send you the spirit of humility to serve.

Happy Week Ahead. Remember to serve in humility this week.

 


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