Leviticus 22:17-23:44; Mark 9:30-10:12; Psalm 44:1-8; Proverbs 10:19
“Do not present an animal with defects, because the Lord will not accept it on your behalf.”
“He said to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of his enemies. He will be killed, but three days later he will rise from the dead.’”
“They did not conquer the land with their swords; it was not their own strong arm that gave them victory.
It was your right hand and strong arm and the blinding light from your face that helped them, for you loved them.”
God never gives second best. He provides only the finest guidance, protection, strength, light and victory. He offered His own Son, the perfect, flawless sacrifice. He shares His love, unconditionally. It’s no wonder He isn’t delighted when we respond with defective sacrifices, tainted tithes and hollow worship. I tend to give Christ only what I can safely lose, attempting to “sacrifice” without real cost. In responding to grace, I need to do better.
Emptying ourselves, sharing our valued resources, actually frees us to more fully accept the bounty of God. If our hands and hearts are full of earthly things, we cannot grasp Christ’s blessings. We rely too much on the material, and ourselves. Our good becomes the enemy of His best. God recognizes this; it is why He calls us to a life of service, and radical reliance on His power and provision. He knows that, when we shortchange the Spirit, we actually shortchange ourselves.
That’s why tithes, sacrifices and worship are supposed to cost something. They represent an offering of ourselves, not as a condition of salvation, but in recognition of exactly what that salvation cost God, and in expectation of His daily blessings. In that light, my “sacrifices” of only what I think I can afford are just pitiful. God freely showers us with grace. When I treat that grace as mundane or unworthy of great thanksgiving, I demean not just the Gift, but the Giver.
It shames me to think of how much I hold back from Jesus, especially in light of what He gave for me. I have to fight the tendency to do or offer the acceptable minimum. God has no acceptable minimum. When He talks of making our bodies living sacrifices, He’s not kidding. I am not ready to give at all until I am ready to literally offer a piece of myself for His redemption and use.
2 comments:
Tom, thanks for persevering through this process...and thanks for giving us a chance to comment. Your words this week on sacrifice, doubt and selfishness hit home with me and they all go together...I guess that is why you publish them this way (I am catching on!). How do you sacrifice unconditionally if you have doubt and if you have doubt how can you not fear loss thus resulting in selfishness. I personnally seem to stuggle with these issues in the middle of the night. I wake up doubting what I did the day before or being overly concerned about what is going to happen (or not happen) tomorrow. I lose sight of my purpose here on earth...to love God and forget the rest. As you will attest I am sure that is hard to do. My current remedy for getting back to sleep at 3 am is to recite The Lords prayer over and over until I fall back asleep. A crutch? maybe...but I figure anything that puts me closer to God can't be all bad. Finally talking about selfishness and the sin it produces as you did on Monday, don't you love the Liberty Mutual add on TV where people are helping each other. One person helps another accross the road, someone sees this act and holds the door for someone else...etc etc each feeding off the last persons example. To me this is how I view grace on human scale...we can't alway be perfect but we can always make small sacrifices to help someone else. This "practice" has got to be appealing to God. It has to be! That is my story and I am sticking to it. Thanks for your sacrifice Tom. We are ALL benefitting. Thom in Omaha
Or, you could try blogging the Bible - works for me!
Thanks, Thom!
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