The Heart of the Matter: Service

Have you ever been at friend’s house who was a man and found yourself picking up after everyone, washing his dishes or refilling his glass? Have you found yourself willingly following behind a man that you work with or being easily submissive, some would say overly submissive? Or maybe you have found yourself the opposite: completely despising the whole idea of serving a man at all. It makes you mad to even think about being submissive, whatever that means, or to get your brother a glass of water.

God made women to serve. He made us all to serve him, but he made woman for Adam because he needed help and because God’s image was not fully satisfied in Adam alone. There is another part to God that we continue to miss and that it the servant heart of God. God is a servant, that’s why He expects the same for us. God loves to do things for us; i.e. sending His son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. If that isn’t a beautiful picture of service, I don’t know what is. He didn’t have to do it, but He did.

So it is no surprise that our adversary, the Devil, has done all he can to destroy the servant heart of the woman. He attacks us in one of two ways. First, there are some women who are considered “overly submissive.” These are the ones that wait on a dog hand and foot. Bringing him soda while he sits on the couch playing video games all day on top of paying all the bills, cooking the food that she bought and servicing him sexually any and every way all with not much of anything in return. This is Serving Sally. She is the woman who “takes care” of her man, doesn’t speak a word and never challenges him to do something with his life.

Then we have Dominant Debbie. She is Serving Sally’s best friend who is always telling her that she is NUTS for serving a man like that. Deb gets mad at the mere thought of serving a man in anyway. Sure, she wants to be married, she desires to be in a relationship, but submission? What is that? She will not, and I repeat will not submit to a man. No man is going to think that he is better than her just because she is a woman. Biblical womanhood is awesome and everything, but for Deb there is nothing wrong with compromising on submission.

The enemy wants to tell us, as women, that serving a man means you’re a slave. So we take it to the extreme. When you don’t know the purpose of something it leads to misuse, neglect or abuse. –John Eisenring. So because we do not understand the purpose of our role as women to serve a man’s vision, we don’t or we serve men with no vision.

God gave us the desire to serve so that it could primarily be fulfilled by Him. Once we learn how to serve and submit to the Holy Spirit, then and only then can we submit to our brothers, fathers and husbands with complete humility and purity.