Secret Service // Flying Under the Radar, Part 3

While the rest of the world is off chasing recognition and success – one of the most wonderful things we can get involved in is –secret service – just flying under the radar into people's hearts. Sometimes in a quiet moment over a cup of tea in that comfortable chair in my study I get to thinking about my life and the people along the way who've really mattered. You know the people who've had an input into my life and whom I hold dear and special and amongst all those people there are just a few, just a handful who are so incredibly special to me. My wife of course, some close friends, my mentor of 20 years, Graham, the pastor of my first Church I ever attended, Phil. Less than a dozen of them, I'm sure you're the same, they're just a few really special people in your life whom you hold dear. Anyhow I was sitting and thinking over my cuppa, 'what makes them so special?' I mean, what's the common thread that runs through each of those relationships? Why is it that those people are so special to me? In a sense the answer to that question is not surprising but it is profound. You see the answer is that each one, in their own way, have served me so powerfully, they had an input into my life, a secret service hidden away that other people haven't seen. Jacqui is the most wonderful wife to me; she supports me in so many ways. I have to tell you; you would never get her into the studio, you will never get her to speak on a mic, you'll never get her up on a stage to speak, it is just not her but every time I get behind the mic she's part of that. See, her service is a secret service, her support and her encouragement and all the hard work and all the organising she does. It's hidden, you don't get to see that, it's secret. Pastor Phil, the pastor of the first Church I attended, served me so incredibly, so sacrificially. God used him to lay the foundations of my faith, not just through what he taught from the pulpit which was brilliant but just how the man lived his life, how he sacrificed, how humble he was to serve me and all the other members of the Church. Michael Graham my mentor of twenty years who came into my life when I was a very bright and precocious twenty something and moulded me and shaped me and imparted his wisdom to me. I could go on and over and over again it's the same with each of these really special people. They've done things to serve me in secret; they were instruments in Gods hand that God used to mould me and shape me and turn me into someone that was useful to Him. It's a service they performed in secret, no public recognition, no trumpets, no fanfare, no lights, no lime light, they just did it and they keep on doing it. They're people who are prepared to pay the price to serve me and to support me and to be honest with me and you know something; there was a cost to that for them. There's always a cost when we serve people in secret. See, let me tell you a little secret, I wouldn't share this with anyone else, just you, don't tell anyone. I am not always so easy to serve; you see I am a human just like you. I have my good days and my not so good days and when those people just get on and quietly and faithfully support me and encourage me and have input into my life and give me frank advice and care for me as a person, they demonstrate something. A kind of faithful love and they don't do it for recognition. See I really believe in our society, we are such recognition junkies. We're into success and reward and achievement. We set goals, we plan, we succeed, we reap the rewards. That is so at odds with this notion of, of secret service, flying under the radar of public recognition into the hearts and the lives of the people around us. One of the best known things that Jesus ever said was this: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Just about everyone has heard that: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And it sounds simple enough but what an incredible cost there is to that. My mum for a couple of decades now has been caring for my sister who suffers from schizophrenia. Now my mum is well into her 70's, what a cost, or a parent who persists faithfully with an incredibly difficult teenager or a work colleague who stands quietly up for someone who can't defend themselves or compensates for someone's failure, quietly without anyone noticing. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is such an easy thing to say yet such a costly thing to do. Isn't it just easier to step over the top of someone or get your own way or get the recognition and success and reap the rewards? I mean after all 'to the victor go the spoils'. The apostle Paul put it like this, he said: You my brothers and sisters were called to be free but don't use your freedom to indulge this sinful nature rather serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command, "Love your neighbour as yourself." If you keep on biting and devouring each other watch out for you will be destroyed by one another. See, that's why I just don't think this whole recognition junkie thing works at all. I know it's on just about on every TV program and every TV advertisement and the movies we watch, they all scream at us, "be who you want to be, do what you want to do, achieve, succeed. Be beautiful and wealthy and …" all that stuff but if I have a "me at the centre of the universe" attitude and you have a "you at the centre of the universe" attitude, well you don't have to be Einstein to figure out its going to be a pretty ugly world and it is out there. There are so many people who are into life for just for what they can get out of it, just for the success and the recognition and the reward and the fame. See my hunch is that this "zeit geist" (spirit of the times) of "me, me, me" just doesn't work, it's a con invented by human greed, it's insidious, it's something that grabs each one of us at times in our lives. My life was completely turned around by Jesus, the Son of God who said: I didn't come to be served, I came to serve. That was the most amazing revelation for me, when I became a servant, that all of a sudden my life was fulfilled, there was a richness and a meaning and all that time I'd been trying to fill myself up with stuff and success and recognition and I had all of those things, it just never filled me up, it always left me with that hungry empty feeling. See, my service is doing exactly what I'm doing now, not chasing the big dollars at the top end of town in my consulting practice but using the gifts that God's given me to serve you, today and tomorrow and the next day and I tell you, there is such an incredible joy for me in doing that. In flying under the radar of the big fanfares and the big conferences, all that stuff, into the hearts and the lives of people that God's called me to touch with His love, this secret service. It's so contrary to the fame and recognition that the world offers but you know something, it rings true doesn't it? It rings pure and true in our hearts, do unto others as you would have them do unto you no matter what the cost, it's exactly the kind of Jesus thing I think.