by John Grant
“But it is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Mark 10:43-45
One of the first questions people want to ask very wealthy people is, “How did you do it?” So, a number of years ago when I was just beginning my career, and had an opportunity to visit with the founder of one of America’s largest retail drugstore chains, I posed that question.
Jack Eckerd had been sharing with me about how he started with his first drugstore. He worked the cash register by day and stocked the shelves by night in his first store. By the time we were talking the Eckerd chain had expanded to more that fifteen hundred stores in thirteen states.
When I asked him that all important question, I expected him to talk about hard work, being lucky or all those other reasons people give. So, his answer both surprised and intrigued me when he said that he tried to see how many other people he could make rich. He told me about how people who held menial tasks in his stores were given incentives to acquire stock in the company. He said that he had turned a lot of stock clerks into millionaires and said that if you just spend your life helping to make others successful, you won’t have to worry about becoming successful yourself.
Jack Eckerd was a devout man of faith and understood and practiced servant leadership, by making sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being met.
There is a spiritual parallel here. Certainly God wants to help others, but he also wants us to focus on him. When we ask God to get us out of that financial hole, He responds simply by saying, “Pursue me.” When we ask for additional help, he responds again by saying “Pursue me.” A relationship between God and me and with you is His highest priority.
As I thought about that recently, it struck a chord with me. I was spending too much time on myself and not enough time pursuing God and focusing on the needs of others. It caused me to write out the following prayer:
Dear God: I confess that I have been too much about me and too little about Thee. Help me to be transformed and conformed to be more like you. Help me to put you first, others second and myself last. Help me to serve you more, be more aware and responsive to the needs of others, while trusting you to meet my needs in a way that you may be glorified and that your will, not mine be present in my heart and in my every action of my life.
May that be your prayer as well.
(a thought on life from John Grant)
John Grant is a former Florida State Senator and is a practicing attorney
You can comment on this devotional online at:
https://thoughts-about-god.com/blog/2012/09/28/jg_blessing-others/