Servanthood Quotes

Churches are the primary partners that work with Habitat in an almost infinite variety of creative overlapping circles. We cherish these partnerships with churches ... I have always seen Habitat for Humanity as a servant of the church and as a vehicle through which the church and its people can express their love, faith, and servanthood to people in need in a very tangible and concrete (literally!) way. ~ Millard Fuller

Leadership without servanthood is like an ocean without water. ~ Farshad Asl

Love may challenge and love may correct but love will never shame. Love may call us out to uncomfortable places but love will never cast us aside. Love may demand but will never demean. Love will never ask us to dim our light lest we shine too brightly. Love will never ask us to be less than we were created to be.
By this we know God. By this we follow Jesus. By this we serve one another.
Love.
Not fear. ~ Peggy Haymes

Like a lot of other bashful introverts, I discovered that I like teaching a lot because it's like acting. When I stepped into the classroom, I stepped into a role, one that allowed me to forget myself. ~ Maureen Corrigan

Your best servant is the person who does not attend so much to hearing what he himself wants as to willing what he has heard from you. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

We are to be generous not just in the results of our work, but also IN our work. ~ Matt Perman

Power is meant to be shared with the goal of empowering others. Hoarded power weakens others and exalts oneself. Power, when grounded in biblical values, serves others by liberating them. It acknowledges that people bear the image of God and treats them in a way that will nurture the development of that image. In so doing, we honor their Creator. ~ Duane Elmer

The church must not teach the submission of wives apart from the sacrificial love and servanthood required of husbands. ~ Gary L. Thomas

Radical servanthood challenges us, while attempting persistently to overcome poverty, hunger, illness, and any other form of human misery, to reveal the gentle presence of our compassionate God in the midst of our broken world. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Tied to the value of the person is the principle of servanthood. We value what we freely serve. ~ Douglas Groothuis

The chief means of resisting manipulation is humility – knowing who we really are and facing it. You can only serve by love. You can only love by choice. True love cannot be the result of decree, force or manipulation. Jesus always kept his strength to make loving choices. He calls us to make loving choices necessary to be the servant of all." "Humility permits me to own my feelings – and to admit them. Now I'm free to say, 'I'm angry'. I'm free to admit what I am reacting to. I am free to ask if anger is what the person wanted to produce in me, and to ask for help in changing if my reaction is inappropriate. ~ Gayle D. Erwin

Christmas was about understanding that servanthood would win the hearts of men for eternity, where raw power might win them only for a moment, if at all. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I concluded some time ago that a major part of success of a team, or of an individual, has a great deal to do with the intangible qualities possessed. The real key is in how a person see himself (humility), how he feels about what he does (passion), how he works with others (unity), how he makes others better (servanthood), and how he deals with frustration and success, truly learning from each situations (thankfulness). I believe those concepts are the essence of a good player, team, coach, or individual in any capacity in life. ~ Dick Bennett

Motherhood is a great honor and privilege, yet it is also synonymous with servanthood. Every day women are called upon to selflessly meet the needs of their families. Whether they are awake at night nursing a baby, spending their time and money on less-than-grateful teenagers, or preparing meals, moms continuously put others before themselves. ~ Charles Stanley

Faith isn't a position of favor
It is a posture of servanthood ~ Suzanne Eller

Above all, leadership is a position of servanthood. ~ Max De Pree

The most formidable way to lead is to serve. And while the perplexing oxymoron of such a grinding statement absolutely cripples us, it birthed a Savior. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The covenant of your servanthood is that you be a servant to God, not to someone else, and that you know that everything except God is a servant to God, as He Most High has said, "There is none in the heaven and the earth but cometh unto the Compassionate as a servant." ~ Ibn Ata Allah

If I am not a servant to others, by process of elimination I am then a servant to myself. And that serves no one. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

A faithful servant may be wiser than the master, and yet retain the true spirit and posture of the servant. The humble man looks upon every, the feeblest and unworthiest, child of God, and honors him and prefers him in honor as the son of a King. ~ Andrew Murray

We are not a voice for the voiceless. The truth is that there is a lot of noise out there drowning out quiet voices, and many people have stopped listening to the cries of their neighbors. Lots of folks have put their hands over their ears to drown out the suffering. Institutions have distanced themselves from the disturbing cries..

It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle. One of the verses I have grown to love is the one where Jesus is preparing to leave the disciples and says, "I no longer call you servants.... Instead, I have called you friends" (John 15:15). Servanthood is a fine place to begin, but gradually we move toward mutual love, genuine relationships. Someday, perhaps we can even say those words that Ruth said to Naomi after years of partnership: "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried" (Ruth 1:16-17). ~ Shane Claiborne

Acts 10:38 says, "See how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth who went about doing good." He just got up every day and did good. Everywhere he went, even though he had a purpose and he was headed somewhere, he let himself be interrupted by the needs of people. So often we study the steps of Jesus. Maybe we need to study the stops of Jesus. The things that he stopped for, the things that interrupted his plan, where he would alter his plan and help somebody here and there. ~ Joyce Meyer

Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps. ~ Brennan Manning

A leader takes people where they would never go on their own. ~ Hans Finzel

Some would define a servant like this: 'A servant is one who finds out what his master wants him to do, and then he does it.' The human concept of a servant is that a servant goes to the master and says, 'Master, what do you want me to do?' The master tells him, and the servant goes off BY HIMSELF and does it. That is not the biblical concept of a servant of God. Being a servant of God is different from being a servant of a human master. A servant of a human master works FOR his master. God, however, works THROUGH His servants. ~ Henry T. Blackaby

The price of greatness is servanthood, sacrifice and humility ~ Linda Davis

We have all been called to be foot-washers".

~R. Alan Woods [2006] ~ R. Alan Woods

And domestic aspects of life. That would be to forsake the universal claim of the kingdom of God. Newbigin looks to the pattern of Jesus who exercised the sovereignty of God's kingdom through servanthood. How is it possible for the church truly to represent the reign of God in the world the way Jesus did? The answer, he believes, lies in the local congregation. I have come to feel that the primary reality of which we have to take account in seeking for a Christian impact on public life is the Christian congregation. How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a ~ Tim Chester

Royalty is my identity. Servanthood is my assignment. Intimacy with God is my life source. ~ Bill Johnson

Don't we see that men's rightful task is to go out to work and wear themselves out trying to accumulate wealth, as though they were our factors or stewards, so that we can remain at home like the lady of the house directing their work and enjoying the profit of their labors? That, if you like, is the reason why men are naturally stronger and more robust than us - they need to be, so they can put up with the hard labor they must endure in our service. ~ Moderata Fonte

Serving your enemies is the fastest way to learn to love them. ~ Will Davis Jr.

Older forms of indentured servanthood and the bond-service of biblical times had often been harsh, but Christian abolitionists concluded that race-based, life-long chattel slavery, established through kidnapping, could not be squared with biblical teaching either in the Old Testament or the New. ~ Timothy Keller

[The] insistence on the absolutely indiscriminate nature of compassion within the Kingdom is the dominant perspective of almost all of Jesus' teaching.
What is indiscriminate compassion? 'Take a look at a rose. Is is possible for the rose to say, "I'll offer my fragrance to good people and withhold it from bad people"? Or can you imagine a lamp that withholds its rays from a wicked person who seeks to walk in its light? It could do that only be ceasing to be a lamp. And observe how helplessly and indiscriminately a tree gives its shade to everyone, good and bad, young and old, high and low; to animals and humans and every living creature
even to the one who seeks to cut it down. This is the first quality of compassion
its indiscriminate character.' (Anthony DeMello, The Way to Love) ...
What makes the Kingdom come is heartfelt compassion: a way of tenderness that knows no frontiers, no labels, no compartmentalizing, and no sectarian divisions. ~ Brennan Manning

True leadership is servanthood. Put the interests of others at the center of your decisions. ~ Dave Ramsey

Servanthood does not nullify leadership; it defines it. Jesus does not cease to be the Lion of Judah when He becomes the lamblike servant of the church. ~ John Piper

Sufism is the reconciliation of all opposites: the outer and the inner, the material and the spiritual, the finite and the infinite, the here and the hereafter, freedom and servanthood, the human and the divine. Enlightenment in this tradition does not prevent us from functioning in a practical and humble way in life, does not entitle us to special treatment, does not exclude us from the inevitable joys and griefs of life. The Sufi's union with God does not cancel servanthood. What I found through Sufism far exceeded my hopes. As an example, one poet said to me: "All of my reading, study, and creative writing could not have prepared me for the poetry of Rumi." And yet all Rumi's poetry is just the wave on the surface of the ocean of Sufi spirituality. Perhaps it is consistent with the idea of Divine generosity that it should exceed in actuality the gift we had foreseen in our imagination. The Source is not only infinitely generous, it is infinitely creative, and its gifts surpass human imagination. ~ Kabir Edmund Helminski