When we come to Jesus to be his disciples we must love and desire him for his own sake; not for what we can get from him, whether it be help or comfort or anything else.  So also we must serve him for himself alone, just because he is our Saviour and our God.

And yet so much Christian discipleship is spoilt by the ignoble desire that it should be known.  Are we not all tempted to be dissatisfied if some piece of work, which we have done “for the Church” as we say, and very likely taken great trouble in doing it, goes unnoticed or unappreciated?  Few of the services we render are free from the desire to gain personal credit, otherwise we should never mind if we never got any.  Emerson, the American essayist summed it all up when he said,”If you would be known to do a thing, never do it”.

What we must do as disciples must be done from the right motive.  It must in the first place be done for God and that means it must be humble service.  We shall never fully learn humility in this life but it is a quality which is at the heart of true Christian discipleship.  As St Augustine says, “You aspire to great things: begin with little ones.  You desire to erect a very high building, think first about the foundation of humility.  The foundations are always sunk proportionately to the intended height and weight of the building”.