Breaking Free From Self-Centeredness
By Dr. Brandon Steenbock, Family Minister
Matthew 20:28 – Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
A couple of weeks back, I was on the phone for an unreasonable amount of time trying to solve what seemed like a simple problem. I had been booked at one hotel and wanted to transfer my booking to another hotel in the same hotel family. I was even willing to pay a little extra if needed. Three different people, nearly an hour of explaining the situation, asking questions, proposing solutions—and in the end, nothing changed.
I was upset. Frustrated. Confused as to why this was so difficult. Absolutely sure that this should not be so hard. Convinced that if this company truly cared about me as a customer, they would make this work for me. Because I should be served.
Yes, that was the emotion. I deserve to be served, but they weren’t serving me, and it bothered me.
Now, for sure, I was technically correct that this should not have been so hard. Who could blame me for asking for some courtesy in customer service? But my heart was a problem. I wanted the rules and the hotel to bend around me. I wanted to be served.
You’ve been there, right? You’re at a restaurant, your order gets messed up, you tell your server, and then it takes forever for them to come back. And you feel that heat. Why is this so hard? I deserve to be served.
Or you’re in line at the grocery store, and you don’t have time for the person ahead of you to work things out. Why do they get to consume so much time? I deserve to be served.
This is the human heart—believing we deserve to be served. By other humans. By the world. By God himself? Our hearts live in the assumption that we should be at the center, even if our minds acknowledge that we aren’t.
I’m writing this during Holy Week, and one of the biggest blessings of this week is that it stretches our hearts and pulls out that self-centeredness. We sink into the story of what our Savior did for us, our hearts break at seeing his pain and his sacrifice, and we are brought to a place where we see more clearly what it means to serve and to be served.
We didn’t deserve this. We didn’t deserve to be served. Not by him. Not like this. He deserves our service, not the other way around. And yet he did serve us. He served us with his life, with his death, with everything—to take our guilt, to take our shame, to set us free from our selfishness.
I don’t need to be served. I don’t need someone in this world giving me the validation that I am the most important, that I’m at the center. Jesus already has. Not by putting me above everyone else, but by putting himself below everyone else, as a servant to all. By giving his life as a ransom for everyone. As a ransom for me.