How Sacrifice Is Beautiful
The idea of sacrificing something seems foreign and out of place to the modern American Christian. God wants me to give up [popularity, power, wealth]? We cringe. Our "go get it" "you deserve it" "do you boo" culture has inundated us with a false reality. This verse might make some of us feel "all the (bad) feels."
The truth is God does call us to sacrifice things. We are called to give up our rights to even our own selves in order to follow Jesus. But before you stop reading, let me draw you back in with God's heart behind it. This is for a far greater life and more abundant reality.
Sacrifice reminds us that it does us no good to worship anything else but God.
Timothy Keller said "If you love anything in this world more than God, you will crush that object under the weight of your expectations." In other words, God is the only One who can hold our worship and the rights to everything. Anything else will break because it was never meant to hold our worship. This is why sacrifice is actually such a wonderful thing. It reminds us who is in charge. We merely steward all our relationships, talents, time, and treasure.
Since we don't participate in the Old Testament sacrificial system anymore, what could this refer to now? Hebrews 13:15 gives us a wonderful way here: "Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name."We give Him the glory first. We don't merely pay lip service but have hearts focused on worshiping God over self, money, power, status, people or social media likes. Our hearts will always want to worship something since that what God made us to do. So let's keep examining ourselves each morning to align our hearts with His will for us, friends!
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