I was reminded of that principle recently in the Dominican Republic. Shortly after we arrived in Santo Domingo, we secured out luggage and headed for a bus that had been reserved for us. A young man, who spoke English, walked up to me and offered to help with my luggage ("insisted" is more like it; he jerked it out of my hand). At other places, people from local churches have sometimes helped with this task. At first, I thought he was a brother from one of the local congregations. I asked, "Are you with the church?" He said, "No, churches are bad." I don't know what his experience had been, but somehow he had decided that his experience with the church was not positive. Church activities had not borne good fruit insofar as he was concerned and his rejection was apparent. What kind of fruit convinces people of our sincerity? Maybe a good place to start looking would be in Galatians 5:22-23.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

If you look through that list carefully, you will notice how many of those nine components of spiritual fruit require positive action. You can't just sit at home, read your Bible and pray and expect to be a fruit bearing Christian.

SERVING PROMOTES PRAISE

For the first time in my lifetime, the church is beginning to wake up to the importance of praise. Suddenly, we have discovered the Psalms. A few years ago, I went through a hymn book and I noticed that very few of our hymns offered direct praise to God. We sang a lot about what we're going to do when we get to heaven and we sang a lot to each other, but we didn't sing all that much to God. Some of that is being corrected in some of the newer hymns. But praise is not something that will take place merely because we program it into our assembly time. Praise arises naturally when people see that God is doing something in the world and they will believe that God is doing something in the world when his people are motivated to participate in the spirit of sharing. That's the thrust of verse 13. Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, men will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else.

There are people who want to be recognized for their service. They render acts of service and expect to be honored or appreciated in some significant way. True service has a different motive. One of my wife's favorite sayings is, "You can do a lot of good in this world, if you don't care who gets the credit for it." That's true. One of the most impressive books I have read in the last few years is Richard Foster's book, Celebration of Discipline. In that book Foster makes the point that service flows out of the inner person. Real servants, serve because they love God and they love the people whom God made.

That's much different from the self-serving charity syndrome you see at Thanksgiving time when celebrities serve a meal to the homeless and forget about them the rest of the year.

Real servants delight in anonymity like the lady who decided to help a poor family out. She went to the store and bought groceries. She and her seven-year-old son quietly carried the grocery sacks to the front door and placed them on the porch. She drove around the corner, sent her son back to the front door with instruction to ring the doorbell and run.

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