We Are Unworthy Servants, Deserving No Praise

Let us turn to the Word of the Lord, Luke chapter 17, verses 7 through 10, and we are simply going to read and go straight into the Word. These are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ—a parable, an illustration, an account the Lord gives to illustrate a profound spiritual truth that we would do very well to incorporate into our lives.

The Lord says, asking rhetorically: "Which of you, having a servant plowing or tending livestock, will say to him when he"—that is, the servant—"comes in from the field, ‘Come at once, sit down at the table’?" Incidentally, I say that it is a rhetorical question because the answer is already known. In this case, given the customs of the time, the answer was an emphatic: no one, not one person, nobody, not me—no one. The idea was that no one who had a servant, after the servant had done his work, would say to him, “Oh, come, sit down, come to the table, eat with us.” Those were the customs of that time, and the Lord uses those customs to point to something, a spiritual truth.

Then He says: "No, rather, he says to him: ‘Prepare my meal, gird yourself, and serve me until I have eaten and drunk; and after this—only then, after that—you may eat and drink.’ Does he thank the servant because he did what he had been commanded?" Again, the answer is what? No, right? No, he does not, given the customs of that time, when owners or masters treated the people who worked for them very badly.

The Lord says, “I think not”—in other words, from what I can see, that is not the case—and here is the conclusion, the spiritual truth this parable seeks to leave with us. It says: "So likewise you"—say there, “me,” okay?—"so likewise you, when you have done everything you were commanded, say: ‘We are unprofitable servants, for we have done what we ought to have done.’" One would expect Him to say, “For we did not do what we ought to have done,” but the Lord says: No, say, “I am an unprofitable servant because I did everything I was told to do.” There is irony there, but it is very instructive, isn’t it? Let us see what the Lord is trying to tell us and what we can learn.

I want to tell you that this is one of the attitudes—this is a description of one of the most fundamental attitudes—a Christian, a believer, must have. This is one of the most powerful and basic realizations we must have in our Christian life. This must be an attitude, a conviction, an essential perspective for every mature believer who knows the principles of the Kingdom of God. It is what I would call an attitude of extreme submission and surrender to the will of the Lord, and a complete recognition that, ultimately, from beginning to end, we deserve nothing from God and owe everything to Him. And although we may have done everything we possibly could, given money, served the Lord, and lived faithful, holy, and godly lives, at the end of the day and when all is said and done, we ultimately deserve nothing from God; we are unprofitable servants, and God does not owe us a cent or anything at all.

That seems unfair, but when we analyze the principles of Scripture, you will see that it is absolutely valid and just, and that it is from that position—of deserving nothing—that God’s blessings then come upon our lives. When a person is aware of their radical debt to God, then they can receive from God. We cannot approach the Kingdom of God with what in English is called a sense of entitlement—a sense of having a right, of deserving something, of thinking that God owes me this, that I have the right to expect this from God, or to expect this good treatment from God, or that He answer my requests. Ultimately, we have no rights when we come before the presence of God. If you have heard anything different, it is an exaggeration and a distortion of the Word of God.

Now, I am going to qualify that a little later, because we can indeed approach the Lord expecting blessing, but not because we deserve it, not because God has to give it to us, not because there is some formula out there which, if I use it, will force God to give me something. No, none of that—only because of the grace and mercy of God.

So this parable, as I said, speaks to us about the absolute lordship of God and the attitude of total surrender and submission to God’s will that should characterize our lives, our conduct, and our Christian outlook. Jesus uses a parable here and employs what in poetry and rhetoric is known as hyperbole. How many have heard the word hyperbole? If you have not heard it, I am going to enrich your cultural vocabulary this morning; look for an opportunity to impress your coworkers and your family by using the word hyperbole sometime.

Hyperbole, according to the dictionary description—I am translating a definition—says: "Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration." That is the key to hyperbole: it is something exaggerated, extreme, excessive. "It is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device"; that is, it is used in poetry, declamation, speeches, and writing. It is a device used to enrich what one says or writes. "A rhetorical device or figure of speech, which can be used to evoke strong feelings or create a strong impression, but which is not meant to be taken literally." That is very important. You are not supposed to take it literally.

When I say, for example, "I’m starving to death," you do not see someone say, “Oh, call an ambulance! Take him to the hospital!” People know it is hyperbole, an exaggeration, don’t they? I am trying to give people the impression that, wow, I am very hungry; they had better give me food quickly because I am starving to death. But people are not supposed to take it literally. If someone takes it literally, that person probably needs a psychiatrist or something like that. It is not meant to be taken literally.

And here, in these words of Jesus Christ, I see elements of exaggeration, of hyperbole, as He often used, right?—to illustrate a principle. For example, when He says: "If anyone does not hate his father, his mother, and his brothers, he is not worthy to be My disciple," that does not mean that you literally have to tell your father and mother, “I hate you, I do not want to see you, get out of my house,” in order to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. No. What He is saying is that if someone, for love of the Kingdom of God, does not detach himself from his father, mother, and siblings so radically that it appears as though he hates them, he is not worthy to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you understand? That is what hyperbole means.

And that is why the Lord is using an exaggerated illustration here of a master, an owner—and incidentally, the word servant is used here, but in the original Greek of this text the word is doulos, which means slave, rather. It refers to a condition very typical of the Greco-Roman world, where hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people lived in servitude. It was not the kind of exceedingly brutal slavery that we saw, for example, here in the United States, or in the Caribbean, or in Latin America, or in other European countries, where it was a completely—well, although that also existed there, understand.

But slavery in the Greco-Roman world was very prevalent and not necessarily so brutal, because there were slaves who were household managers, kept their masters’ accounts, and were even teachers and tutors of youths and children—many things. But they were slaves in the sense that they did not belong to themselves; they had no right to do what they wanted; they could not move elsewhere if they wished. Their owner, their master, owned them and, if they escaped or attempted to break the bonds of servitude, could even demand that they be imprisoned or possibly even put to death. In other words, that person had no freedom of his own.

And that is why, when Paul says, "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ," what he is saying is, “Paul, doulos of Jesus Christ, slave of Jesus Christ”; that is, he did not belong to himself but belonged to Christ Jesus, and he had no right to decide what he wanted to do or where he would go. No, he said, “No, I serve the Lord; I am a slave of Jesus Christ.” In other words, when you read the word servant in the Bible, understand that this is what it means: servant.

Nowadays, for example, our brothers and sisters often call the pastor “servant,” don’t they? And nowadays, for many pastors, that has almost become a title of honor: “Servant—oh, servant”—it is already like that. But no, if they call me a servant, they are right; they are calling me a slave of Jesus Christ. And I think that we pastors have often turned those labels into titles of honor and glory. May the Lord rebuke that pride, right? We are servants, we are stewards, we are simply instruments in the hands of the Lord. “Servants” has instead become something we use to glorify ourselves, but no.

So there is an element of exaggeration here that the Lord uses: the relationship between a master who has absolute rights over his slave and the slave who has no rights before his master. The Lord then uses this social condition, so prevalent in His environment, to illustrate the relationship between a believer and God, the Kingdom of God, and our life of service. But the Lord is not validating slavery here in any way—understand this. He is not saying, “Slavery is good; it should continue; carry on, fellows.” No. He is simply using the context in which He lives to illustrate a relationship between the Christian and the Kingdom of God.

Parables are always limited, aren’t they? You cannot apply every aspect of them. Generally, there is one essential truth they seek to emphasize, and that is the truth to which we pay attention; the other aspects may or may not be very fitting. In this case, what matters is that relationship of having no rights versus having every right: doing everything asked of you but deserving nothing, and having the right to demand everything from a person without having to thank them for anything.

In that sense, this parable is like the parable of the widow and the unjust judge. Do you know that parable? This widow wanted the judge to give her justice, but the judge was unjust and would not give her justice; he paid no attention to her. The woman came every day and appeared before the judge until he finally got tired of her and said, “Okay, I will attend to her because she is going to exhaust my patience; then she will leave me alone.” And he heard her and gave her justice. Through that hyperbole, the Lord sought to illustrate the truth that if we continually present our requests before the Lord, God has the power to answer them, and that we must pray continually, without ceasing, as the Word of the Lord says.

So there Jesus describes a situation of injustice to illustrate something that is almost the opposite as well: if the unjust judge finally granted the widow’s request because of her persistence, how much more will God, who is just and loves us, grant our requests if we ask Him consistently, amen? We often have to see the other side of the parable. And this parable also has a very beautiful and promising side that I want to point out at the end of my presentation.

The injustice of that judge makes the justice and love of God shine even more brightly. This parable, therefore, describes two dimensions for us. One describes how things are in the world and in human reality, and the other invites us to remember that it is not that way with God; rather, we have a God full of grace and mercy, who treats us with love and kindness even though He has every right to do the opposite if He so desires. Do you understand?

We must hold that dual, twofold mindset. On the one hand: I have no rights before God; I cannot demand anything from God. I cannot expect good things in my life as though they were owed to me; I cannot insist, demand, or take it for granted that everything will go well for me, that God will always give me everything I want, or that He will always thank me for everything I do for Him. I have no rights. When I entered the ways of the Lord, I signed a paper that says, “I have no rights before You.” That is one version, right?

But the other side is that God loves me, God forgives me, God appreciates what I do for Him, God blesses me when I serve Him, and God answers my prayers. God says to me: "Come, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much." God blesses the cheerful giver, amen? God gives us good things; God seats us beside Christ, as the Word of the Lord says. God has saved us by grace and has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, amen?

But we must continually maintain the tension between those two conditions: I deserve nothing, and God has given me everything. We must hold those two things in tension. The first interpretive level of this parable instructs us in many things, and do you know where this message originated for me?

In the last few days I found myself thinking about the connector, and I remembered that after we finished this construction project, which has required so much effort, so much investment, so much money and effort from all of us, we were celebrating like the servant who does everything his master asks of him, right? He reaches the end of the day tired and sweaty and says: wow, I deserve a nice Coca-Cola, I can take a good shower, and I’m going to watch the basketball game or whatever; now I can rest until tomorrow. Or the weekend has arrived, and now I have three days ahead of me, or two days of rest, right?

That was how we were. We had finished—glory to God! Now we could take off this donkey harness and celebrate, right? Now, as a church, I as pastor and the leaders of the congregation could devote ourselves to celebrating, resting, and enjoying the fruit of our efforts, couldn’t we? And I said: amen, how wonderful! I don’t have to build anything ever again or anything like that. But what happened? God had something else in mind. He said: No, no, you still have work to do; we still have work to do. Oh yes, you gave money, and you gave sacrificially, but you know what? Don’t boast about it, because you still have to give more.

Oh, now this parable hurts, doesn’t it? How beautiful—yes, glory to God, hallelujah—but when they jab you there in the ribs, then you buck like a horse when it is spurred, right? Because this touches all of us; it touches me. I find myself saying: wow, here one comes so happy; now we’re at ease, now we can celebrate and enjoy ourselves, and then the Lord says: No, you know what? Not yet. Gird yourself again, bring Me My food, bring Me My dinner, bring Me something to drink, get Me My slippers. God had something else in mind; we had to keep working. We had to gird ourselves with the towel and basin and wash our master’s feet even though we were tired. We had to begin the process of building that connector.

And that was, you know, a cause of great joy on the one hand because, as I’ve told you, we had resigned ourselves to the fact that it was not going to be done and that the natural condition of our church for the rest of time would be having to go down, come up, and go outside in winter, heat, rain, or whatever. But we celebrated. When God resurrected this possibility, we said: goodness, how wonderful. Our church will finally be able to complete everything it set out to do, and what a blessing. But it was also a source of great psychological and emotional strain for many of us, and many of us said: wow, but I already gave; now do I have to give more again? Do I have to do more? Do I have to start planning these meals and this whole mess, right?

And thanks be to the Lord, by the way, for the many brothers and sisters who have been working hard to make this reception upstairs possible. I heard Magaly’s laugh. Where is Magaly? I think I heard her distinctive laugh; the pastor has a good ear for hearing his sheep. And others have worked hard as well—Sofía and so many others; well, many people, Raisa and others of us who give to the Lord, people who donate money, time, and effort, have been working hard to prepare something very beautiful, something very good. Those who have donated various objects and items for the silent auction—glory to the Lord for all of that. How wonderful that there are people who were there even from the very beginning.

Just this morning a brother came with an envelope, apologizing because it was not a proper envelope in which to give me something for the construction. Glory to God for lives like those, brothers and sisters. And later we are going to ask you—I am going to tell you this. I will come before you, so prepare your heart and your spirit: you are not giving to me; you are giving to the Kingdom of God, you are giving to your heavenly Master, who tells you: gird yourself and give Me something to eat, put My slippers on Me, get ready.

Prepare your heart; we are a people who are strong in the Lord. To whom much is given, much is required. Oh, what a privilege it is to give to the Lord. I have nothing; everything belongs to God. Whatever God asks of me, I will give Him, because He has given me everything over there; He sent His Son Jesus Christ for me, delivered me from sin, death, and hell, and has given me eternal life. He owes me nothing more. I am eternally grateful to Him, and whatever I have, whatever He asks of me, I hope He gives me the grace to give it to Him with joy and gratitude.

Perhaps some feel a little resentful about having to continue working and giving. I confess to you that sometimes I have complained a little, but I know very well that after throwing two or three tantrums, I have to come and kiss the Lord’s hand and say: Father, thank You for allowing me to be useful to Your Kingdom. That’s how it is, isn’t it?

So what this parable says has to do with that attitude of ours, doesn’t it? We give and serve, and afterward we say: well, I have fulfilled my duty now; I have done this, I have done that, and so now let my reward come to me. In fact, many people work so that they will be given a reward, but this parable deals that attitude a mortal blow; it is a thrust to the heart of the sense of deserving that many Christians have toward the Kingdom of God.

That is why Jesus uses the image of a slave who had no will of his own, had no rights, and had to do everything he was commanded. Although the Lord was not justifying that horrible institution, He was using it as an illustration of the God who likewise has the right to demand in the same way and to treat us in the same way, but does not do so. Yet that does not mean that our real, legal, ontological condition, so to speak, before God has changed. That is what I truly am, even though God does not treat me that way; but I have to remember that this is what I am, that this is my true condition. I have to do everything my Master commands me, and I deserve no commendation or praise for what I have done for the Lord.

I am going to use another illustration that is a little easier for us to understand. It is like when you work for a corporation or a hospital: you are a doctor and are on call, and they can call you at any time in the early morning or whenever to perform an operation. Or you work for a law firm, a consulting company, or something like that, which pays you money and tells you: you do not have set hours here. If there is a contract to sort out, a construction project to complete, or a trial to prepare for, you have to prepare everything that is needed. If it takes sixty hours, if it takes eighty hours, that is what we are paying you your good salary for. And there you are, working until midnight on a Friday night or a Sunday night because there is a trial tomorrow and you are an attorney for that firm, and all the documents have to be ready; the case has to be presented very well before the judge on Monday morning.

And when you have done all that, it is not as though the corporation’s chief executive is going to come and say: ooh, thank you, employee, for doing so much work. No. You did exactly what we paid you to do; here is the next job. You are expected to do that; you are not given anything extra for it. The doctor who has to rush out while fastening his pants at three in the morning because he has to perform an operation after being paged, because he is a surgeon and he is on call—that day is his day of duty. He has to leave the comfort of his home, get there, operate on the patient, and no one says to him: wow, what a holy man; how wonderful; look how noble he was to get up. No, he is a doctor, he is well paid, and that is his condition. That is what he is supposed to do, even if it is sacrificial.

That is our condition, brothers and sisters. We are soldiers of the Kingdom of God. You are a servant of Jesus Christ. God redeemed you, bought you with His blood, and now you belong to Him; you are supposed to be available twenty-four hours a day so that the Lord may do with you and make of you whatever He needs. That should be the fundamental attitude of every believer. This should form the foundation of our mindset, our actions, and above all our understanding of what we are in relation to God and His Kingdom. We are servants; we are slaves of the Kingdom. God has every right, and we have no rights before God. God owes us nothing, and we owe Him everything.

I hope you are getting that into your mind and that you receive it. Receive it in the name of the Lord, and reject every sense of heroism or exceptionalism because you are trying to serve the Lord and do what God asks of you. Sometimes we believe that because we serve the Lord and give to Him, He owes us, don’t we? Although we do not say it that way, there is a subconscious expectation within us. We believe that God has to bless us, heal us, and provide for us. God does not have to do any of those things, brothers and sisters; He is under no obligation. It is important that we understand this.

Everything we receive after serving the Lord is by sheer grace and mercy, if He so chooses. Sheer grace—get that into your head right now—sheer grace. Say it a thousand times: sheer grace. That attitude of deserving nothing from God, owing everything to God, and being totally subject to His pleasure and His will is absolutely crucial in this time, when in very subtle ways, and sometimes not so subtle ways, people are taught that God exists to advance our interests, to please us, to give us the best life possible, and to meet all our needs; to ensure that we live a comfortable life, that we become everything we want to be, that we are, in quotation marks, “happy” and “prosperous” and healthy, and all of that.

Brothers and sisters, God does not necessarily exist for that, and you cannot come into the Kingdom of God expecting that to be your reward or your wages. The apostle Paul says that when a person works and is paid, that is not grace; that person is simply being given what he earned. But when it is by grace, then we cannot boast about it or demand it from God. We do not come into the Kingdom to guarantee ourselves God’s blessing or, in quotation marks, His “provision.” That is something added, and it is very important that this be clear in our hearts.

In fact, if you look, the Bible promotes exactly the opposite attitude and expectation in many passages. The believer’s fundamental attitude, his essential starting point, must be this: we deserve nothing; we are sinners; we have offended God; and we do not even deserve to be saved. The Bible says: “When we were sunk in sin, Christ died for us.” It was not when humanity repented, no. It was when humanity was most perverse and most deeply sunk in sin that the Lord said: This humanity must be rescued; I am going to send My Son to die for it, right?

God, in His mercy, rescued us and saved us—that is what this mindset says—and now, as a consequence, we owe Him everything, and we must serve Him with all our heart, living in complete gratitude, giving Him everything, knowing that we deserve nothing in return except to serve Him in everything He asks of us. Our honor lies in doing everything God wants us to do and, at the end, saying: what else do You want me to do now? That is what we must do, brothers and sisters.

The believer’s fundamental attitude must be this: we live for God. “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” Paul says, right? We live to serve Him, to advance the interests of His Kingdom. We do not live for ourselves; we belong to Him. What does the Word say again? “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” The problem is that we say that and recite it like a poet declaiming a poem to win a girl’s heart, don’t we? But we do not understand what that means in the practical terms of life: we are the Lord’s. That means that you belong to God, and when you belong to someone, it is so that person may do whatever he wants with you. God has the right to do with us whatever He wants.

Paul expressed this through his life there in Galatians. Let us see—Galatians chapter 2, verse 20. Galatians 2:20 says: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” The life I now live in the flesh—that is, the life I now live, everything I have, everything I am, my family life, my profession, my working life—I live it all in Him and for Him because He gave Himself for me.

And in James chapter 4, verse 13, the apostle James invites us to live with that mindset of total surrender and complete dependence on the will of God. There James says rhetorically: “Come now, you who say: today and tomorrow we will go to such-and-such a city and make a profit, when you do not know what tomorrow will bring; for what is your life? It is certainly a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes, whereas you ought to say: if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”

That is why I say that this mindset of surrender and submission—expecting nothing from God, knowing that you deserve nothing, knowing that you owe everything to God, being ready to serve the Lord, give to the Lord, do everything God wants, and advance His Kingdom—should be your fundamental mindset. It should always be in the back of your mind. Everything you do should be founded upon that recognition. That is the fundamental attitude of a mature believer.

That is why Jesus says in this passage that when we have done everything, when we have been perfect in obeying God, even then we will be unworthy servants. Say that word: unworthy. I am unworthy before the Kingdom of God; I am worth nothing except for what God has assigned to me, right?

The Greek; I saw some sisters there, wives who very enthusiastically said to their husbands: unworthy (laughter). I do not know why, but they seemed to get excited about it. I do not know what is in your heart, sister; be careful. No, I am joking (laughs). They took advantage of that little moment. May the Lord rebuke the enemy (laughs). I could not resist that cheap joke, all to get a laugh from the brothers and sisters.

Unworthy servants. The word “unworthy” is the word acreioi, acreioi, meaning: deserving of no praise whatsoever. That is also what unworthy means; the idea is that you do not deserve praise. You did what you had to do; that is your condition. You are an ordinary servant; do not boast about anything, okay? We did nothing heroic; we only did what we had to do. We deserve no gratitude from God.

So we have talked about that hyperbole, right? The Lord uses an exaggerated illustration. But you know what? I want to leave you with what Christ is saying between the lines; I am going to give you a little lollipop here, because I do not want you to leave with only the bitterness of this teaching, right? The beautiful thing is that there is good news for us, you know? That is the starting point, that is the legal condition, but you know what? God loves us and treats us as His children; He blesses us constantly. He rewards us and shares with us, hallelujah.

You know what? Listen to this. I have just told you that we are like slaves, but now I am going to tell you something that will complicate things in your mind: in one sense, we are no longer God’s slaves. We are adopted children; we are adopted children. We have all the rights of a member of God’s family.

Christ says that He will no longer call us servants, but will call us what? Friends. What a beautiful Word, isn’t it? John chapter 15, verses 14 and 15, says: “You are My friends if you do what I command you.” It says: “I will no longer call you servants.” Listen to me: that is why the Bible sometimes seems to contradict itself, right? But what happens is that things in the Kingdom of God are so complex that they sometimes seem contradictory, but they are simply paradoxical—an apparent contradiction.

On the one hand, we are servants, without rights, obligated to do everything God wants, deserving nothing; and when we have done everything, we deserve nothing. We have no legal right; we cannot demand anything from God. We cannot be surprised when something happens to us that seems to contradict God’s goodness, mercy, and justice. But on the other hand, the Lord tells us: “I will no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know what his Lord is doing; but I have called you friends, because all the things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.” Glory to the Name of the Lord.

The Bible says: “Do not be troubled, little flock, because it has pleased your Father to give you the Kingdom.” Glory to the Name of the Lord. God is my Father. God is not my barren, abusive, ungrateful master. God is the image of the merciful father who, when his son returns without any rights because he has sinned against him, has squandered all his riches, and deserves to be relegated to eating the carob pods given to the pigs on his father’s estate, says: Dress him in the finest robe; put the ring on his finger, because my son was dead and is alive; he was lost and has returned home. Glory to the Lord. Let us kill the fattened lamb and celebrate, hallelujah. That is the attitude of my heavenly Father. Although I do not deserve it, He says: Nevertheless.

I imagine that throughout his entire life, whenever that prodigal son saw himself well dressed and enjoying his father’s entire estate, he remembered that he had once squandered all his father’s money, that he had once offended his father by saying: Give me what belongs to me. Do you see? The prodigal son comes before his father and says: Give me what belongs to me, as though anything belonged to him, right?

That is the thing: nothing belongs to you, and many of us act as though: Yes, I am entitled to God’s blessing me, to God’s providing for me, to God’s giving to me; and I am also entitled to decide whether or not I will serve God with my possessions and my money.

I imagine that throughout his life, that young man remembered that he deserved none of what he had. He had it, but he did not deserve it, and I imagine that he must have been very, very humble before his father and always done everything he could to thank his father for having treated him so mercifully.

How many of us have offended the Lord in so many ways, brothers and sisters, huh? Do you think we deserve for Christ to have died for us? Do you think we deserve for the Holy Spirit to dwell within us? Do you think you deserve to know that, when you finish this life, an eternal life awaits you, with every imaginable spiritual blessing, where there will be no weeping, no pain, no sickness? A complete retirement, a first-class condominium up there in heaven? Clothes that will never wear out? Every comfort, natural air-conditioning? Light that does not cost you a penny, Wi-Fi, free internet? Trips wherever you want, to any part of the galaxy, free? Hallelujah! We have everything in the Lord, a merciful God.

But you know, the thing is this. Never forget: you deserve nothing, and you owe everything to the Lord; but God, in His mercy, gives you everything, blesses you, and loves you. Glory to God. Let us leave this place with that sense of profound gratitude. Bow your head this morning; give thanks to that generous God who has blessed you even though He is under no obligation to bless you.

Tell Him there in your heart right now: Lord, I deserve nothing from You. If one day I receive something that I think I do not deserve; if one day trials come into my life; if one day I ask You for something I ardently long for and You decide not to give it to me, I will not accuse You of being unfaithful. I will not complain against You; I will not reject You; my fervor for You will not diminish. I will serve You and bless You every day of my life, and I will be like that prodigal son whose father forgave him everything and gave him the status of a son even though he did not deserve it, and who probably lived his entire life grateful to his father, trying to make amends—even though he would never be able to do so—for all the offense and loss he had caused his father’s estate.

And that is how I will live, Lord; that is how I will serve You every day of my life. My life is Yours, Lord Jesus. I will serve You every day, and I will love You every day of my life.