Quotes About Service

You're no good unless you are a good assistant; and if you are, you're too good to be an assistant.

Life is too short to do anything for one's self that one can pay others to do for one" W Somerset Maugham, British novelist

But gradually we learn something very precious under the tutelage of these wounds. We learn a compassion for others that replaces judging, self-loathing, and the compulsion to find someone to blame. We learn a reverent joy before our wounds that replaces the condemnation of and comparison of ourselves with others that used to fuel our anxiety. We learn that the consummation of self-esteem is self-forgetful abandonment to the Silence of God that gives birth to loving service of all who struggle.

French and Italian hospitality industries, food service employees take pleasure in being the best at what they do. They may be the finest oyster shucker, the most knowledgeable vintner, an expert cheese purveyor. Toiling in an American supermarket is widely presumed to be a stopgap job, seldom a vocation.

God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.

God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does.

A true Christian lives and labors on earth not for himself but for his neighbor. Therefore the whole spirit of his life him impels him to do even that which he needs not do, but which is profitable and necessary for his neighbor.

Although the Christian is thus free from all works, he ought in this liberty to empty himself, take upon himself the form of a servant, be made in the likeness of men, be found in human form, and to serve, help and in every way deal with his neighbor as he sees that God through Christ has dealt and still deals with him.

A man does not live for himself alone in this mortal body to work for it alone, but he lives also for all men on earth; rather, he lives only for others and not for himself. To this end he brings his body into subjection that he may the more sincerely and freely serve others.

Although we are all equally priests, we cannot all publicly minister and teach.

To an unbelieving person nothing renders service or work for good. He himself is in servitude to all things, and all things turned out for evil to him, because he uses all things in impious way for his own advantage, and not for the glory of God.

Hence the best service that anybody can render God is diligently to hear and read God's Word.

We also know that God is no respecter of persons. A plain factory hand who does his work faithfully pleases God just as much as a minister of the Word.

All Believers are Priests

Oh, if a man were so to regard himself and his position, and attended to its duties alone, how rich in good works would he be in a short time, so quietly and secretly that no one would notice it except God alone!

Behold, from faith thus flow forth love and joy in the Lord, and from love a joyful, willing, and free mind that serves ones neighbor willingly and takes no account of gratitude or ingratitude, of praise or blame, of gain or loss.

Every minister should make much of his calling and impress upon others the fact that he has been delegated by God to preach the Gospel.

No matter how insignificant the little office may be, they take a foot though they do not have an inch,73 and always want to be God themselves when they ought to be God's maid.

If I were emperor, king, or prince in a campaign against the Turk, I would exhort my bishops and priests to stay at home and mind the duties of their office, praying, fasting, saying mass, preaching, and caring for the poor, as not only Holy Scripture, but their own canon law teaches and requires.

As long as a person is in the world he cannot by his own efforts rid himself of sin, because the world is bent upon evil. The people of the world are the slaves of the devil. If we are not in the Kingdom of Christ, it is certain we belong to the kingdom of Satan and we are pressed into his service with every talent we possess.

Thus the Apostle commands us to work with our own hands, that we may have to give to those that need. He might have said, that we may support ourselves; but he tells us to give to those that need.

Here is the truly Christian life, here is faith really working by love, when a man applies himself with joy and love to the works of that freest servitude in which he serves others voluntarily and for nought, himself abundantly satisfied in the fulness and riches of his own faith.

The best commendation of any work is to know that one has done the work that God has given him well and that God is pleased with his effort.

For any work not directed toward the purpose of either disciplining the body or serving the neighbor (as long as the neighbor demands nothing against God) is neither good nor Christian.