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A recent newspaper article explored how people are increasingly finding solace at places of worship during the financial turmoil.  Shrouded by the spectre of pay cuts and layoffs, they want their prayers heard.  Please help my business succeed.  Please protect my investments so that I have enough to tide me through these hard times.  Please heal my mother’s illness so that I will not be left high and dry from her hefty medical bills.  The list goes on and on.

Christians are also guilty of such prayers.  Our prayers tend to be “gimme” prayers, not servant prayers.  Too often we pray in the way we might command a genie who has granted us 10 wishes.  It is not that “gimme” prayers are useless, but if we focus exclusively on “gimme” prayers, then we have our priorities structured wrongly.  After all, who is the servant and who is the master?  Shouldn’t our prayers be servant prayers, addressing God to whom we owe our life and salvation?

In Luke 17:7-10, Jesus told His disciples an interesting parable.  A servant comes in from the field after ploughing or looking after the sheep.  If the servant prepares your supper first and wait on you while you eat and drink – before he takes his own meal – would you thank the servant because he did what he was told to do?  When a servant comes in after a hard day in the fields, he cannot tell his master, “I had a rough day, so please get your own dinner.”  He is expected to serve his master and, at the same time, he does not expect his master to profusely thank him for his trouble.  That is not because the master is unkind or ungrateful, but rather, the master does not owe the servant anything, while the servant probably owes his very life to the master.

What about you?  Do you expect to earn credits with God by doing what God has asked you to do?  Do you gain some special hammer-lock on God if you obey His commands and do what He says?  To be His disciples we must dispense with the attitude of “entitlement” and instead see ourselves as “unworthy servants”.  We simply obey God’s commands and say of ourselves, “I’m just an unworthy servant who did that which I ought to have done.”