Who is Served in Servant Leadership?
When we get close to Christmas time, we often think about gifts. Take a moment and think of the best gifts you’ve ever received. Were any of them acts of service?
In reality, acts of service as a gift can be some of the most treasured things we get during Christmas, because it’s more than opening a present and using it. It’s someone’s time and energy to make that gift a reality.
This week, we’re talking about servant leadership through the lens of the wise men. They showed us how a seemingly small gift could have a major impact down the road.
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What non-material gift might God be putting on your heart to offer someone in your life right now as an act of loving servant leadership? Write the name and the gift down, and pray over that person as you seek to offer them this gift.
Who in your circle of influence—especially someone who may currently be more vulnerable than you—might God be calling you to advocate for? What might advocating for them look like?
What sources of evil, sin, or oppression are currently vying for your allegiance? How might God be calling you to stand against these sources as an act of servant leadership to those around you? Take a minute to name these sources and reflect on what it might look like to lead with righteous defiance in this area of your life.
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I am so excited because, for the month of December, our devotionals are all going to be about celebrating the people from the Christmas story. We’re going to look at a picture of leadership through the Christmas story and the various people we see in the Bible surrounding the birth of Jesus.
Each of them gives us a picture of what servant leadership looks like. I know. It might sound like I’m stretching here, but check this out. For today’s devotional, we’re going to reflect on Mary, the mother of Jesus, because it is the birth of Jesus that we celebrate on Christmas.
Jesus: fully God and fully human. He chose to come into this world through childbirth. I love that. God didn’t just show up coming down from the clouds full of splendor. He could’ve just popped into place and shown up. He could have just appeared out of nowhere. But he chose to come to the world to draw close to his people the very same way we do. We’re born. He was born. He became a baby. He went through the embryo development process and birth – the Creator of the universe. Let that sink in. Actually, it’s a bit hard for my brain. It’s a lot.
But when we look at the story of Mary and how she responded to the calling to be the mother of God’s Son, we see a beautiful picture of servant leadership. Let’s read Luke 1:26-38.
“In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you.’
But she was deeply troubled by this statement, wondering what kind of greeting this could be. Then the angel told her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Now listen: You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.’
Mary asked the angel, ‘How can this be, since I have not had sexual relations with a man?’
The angel replied to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. And consider your relative Elizabeth—even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called childless. For nothing will be impossible with God.’
‘See, I am the Lord’s servant,’ said Mary. ‘May it happen to me as you have said.’ Then the angel left her.”
I want to give you some basic background. The people of Israel, the Jews, had been waiting for hundreds of years for the arrival of their Savior. For 400 years, God had been silent. There were no new messages from the prophets.
By now, they’re probably discouraged, wondering if God would ever fulfill this promise. They were under oppression by the Roman Empire (heavily taxed and constantly scrutinized), so they were deeply stressed.
Here we have Mary, a young Jewish girl favored by God and chosen for this incredible honor. What God does is he chooses Mary. It didn’t begin with her. This was something that was planned long ago from the garden of Eden.
Now, the angel of Gabriel appeared to her, declaring that she would become pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit and that she would give birth to the Lord, the Messiah, the promised Savior of the world. Gosh, we have our plans, and God has his.
Mary’s response is key. She doesn’t push back, saying, “I’m too young. People are going to assume I was unfaithful.” She was engaged to Joseph, but she wasn’t yet married. So she could’ve complained, “Couldn’t you pick someone else? I’m not up for being the mother of God’s Son.” She could’ve said, “This is too much to handle.”
But she doesn’t do that. She responds with a willing heart. She said, “See, I am the Lord’s servant…” She understood her posture was to be a servant. In so doing, by submitting to God’s plan, by taking the path that God had chosen for her, she was used greatly by God to be a servant, to model for us what servant leadership looks like.
Here are just a few leadership lessons that I see from Mary’s story.
1. It’s not about us. Sometimes we get chosen for an important role, but the honor should not get to our heads as though we earned it or we deserve special treatment somehow by others.
2. God’s plans are much better than ours. Always. As leaders, we tend to think we have all the answers, and we don’t.
3. There’s sometimes a cost for our obedience. Indeed, if we follow God’s ways, we might come in conflict in some of the ways of the world.
4. Others will see God at work through us and be ministered to and inspired by servant leadership. Servant leadership is good. Mary demonstrated it to us by her willingness. Say “Yes” to God and trust him and be obedient to him. She put the needs of other people above her own. She became vulnerable to ridicule and rejection in her community and possibly even the end of her engagement to be married.
But see, nothing is impossible for God. Mary became the mother of our Lord Jesus. She goes through the labor pains and holds the tiny baby who needed everything, and he came to be the man who would give everything to save the world.
She not only cares for him as a baby, but she cares for him all his life, all the way through the crucifixion. The Son of God, the King of kings, came into this earth as a result of God’s great love for us. Mary was there, at the foot of the cross, when Jesus died for our sins.
As a servant leader, Mary led others to know Jesus by her obedience and her faithfulness. This is what it looks like to be obedient to God and pour out our lives for the benefit of others. Servant leadership is the foundation, as you can see, for the kingdom of God. There’s no other way to lead if you want to lead the way of God.
Self-serving leadership is just man-made. It’s made by humans. We can lead for our own benefit where everyone is there for our own flourishing. The main focus is the needs of the company or the organization. Sure – that’s the way the world leads. There are plenty of leadership examples like that. But when it comes to the kingdom of God, leadership is about service. Leading like Jesus led enables others to experience God, his presence, his love for us, and his love for them, and it points people to Jesus.
Mary was just a teenager. She was a great example that everyone who’s a follower of Jesus is called to lead. We are witnesses of the Lord Jesus, which means everything we do should lead people toward him. You don’t have to have a job with a big company to be a leader. In this case, this is a mother who was raising a child. If you’re a mom, and you’re working at home taking care of your children, you’re a leader. You’re leading the next generation. Thank you.
It doesn’t matter what kind of leadership you do. Servant leadership is the way of the kingdom. So today, I want to pray that the Lord would help us demonstrate the servant leadership is the true leadership we should all aspire to do. We’re all called to care for others and serve them well. That’s our heart. To lead is to serve, so let us pray.
Oh Lord, thank you for this beautiful example of servant leadership and a reminder of how you cared for us, Lord. Today, we are inspired by Mary to look at everything that we do through the lens of caring for others. Thank you for that. Remind us of this as we celebrate the Christmas season. We’re so grateful for you. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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