IBS Application for John 12:26

“If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me the Father will honor him.”

Here, Jesus establishes what a life of service means for His disciples. In being called into a life of discipleship, we’re all called into the service of the Lord as well. And serving the Lord means following in the footsteps of Christ, even to the point of death, if need be.

While death by persecution isn’t necessarily a guarantee, the fact of the matter is that service to Jesus means giving up one’s own life in the same manner that He surrendered His for our sake. He lead His disciples by an example of self-sacrificial service to others. He says as much to all who were following Him around, asking Him questions. The purpose of the analogy about the wheat falling into the earth and dying was to show that all people must die to self in order to produce good fruit. If they don’t they stand alone, apart from God.

Again, death by persecution isn’t a guarantee for all disciples, but God expects us to lay down our lives for Him. Being whole in Christ means dying to self. It is by dying to self in regards to serving the world that we gain our lives; He says as much in verse 25. We are called to a greater life, apart from selfish ambition and self-service. We are called to follow Christ in the way that He lead His life.

Practically, our time here in training probably won’t see us facing anything too life threatening, and though the world may hate us, the persecution in America isn’t so great yet that we have to be concerned for our lives quite yet. Therefore, death to self for us all right here and now means following Christ’s example of a life in service to others, apart from selfish desires.

I feel as though God intended this verse to resonate in my heart with those verses of the past week, which had to do with mutual submission to one another for the purpose of building us up as a team. I feel compelled to continue one of the applications I felt led to make for myself last week, which was to pray both at the start of each day and before my meetings with Team Guatemala that I would lay down my own interests and desires in favor of serving the interests and desires of my teammates for a week. But I’ve been struggling with stepping up to the plate when God calls me to speak up or lead as a mediator in these group situations. So this time, I’m going to include a new application as well: I will also pray for the courage and confidence to speak up when I feel led to, and that God would start developing me into a servant leader, like Christ was, but that in any instance in which I step up, I would keep my eyes on the goal of serving my team first.