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Key Bible Verse: Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins 1 Peter 4:8. Bonus Reading: 1 Peter 4:9-11

Since service breaks out wherever neighbor-love sees a need, its expressions are as boundless as our imaginations. "The ministry of service may be as public as preaching or teaching," notes Donald Whitney in Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, "but more often it will be as sequestered as nursery duty. It may be as visible as singing a solo, but usually it will be as unnoticed as operating the sound equipment to amplify the solo. Serving may be as appreciated as a good testimony in a worship service, but typically it's as thankless as washing dishes after a church social. Most service is like an iceberg. Only the eye of God ever sees the larger, hidden part of it."

Beyond church walls, serving could be taking a shift for a coworker so he can visit a gravely ill grandparent, running an errand for someone who gets paid to run errands for you, taking meals to needy families, providing transportation for someone whose car breaks down, feeding pets and watering plants for vacationing neighbors, and hardest of all, having a servant's heart in the home.

Serving is as commonplace as the practical needs it seeks to meet, which is why it has to be a cultivated habit, a discipline.

—Patrick Morley in A Man's Guide to the Spiritual Disciplines

My Response: Why are visible service roles easier to fill? What does that tell me about the motive involved?

Thought to Apply: The princes among us are those who forget themselves and serve mankind.—Woodrow Wilson

Adapted from A Man's Guide to the Spiritual Disciplines (Moody, 2007) by permission.

Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

You said, Lord, that as we serve those in need we encounter you. Allow me to experience your presence as I represent you.

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