RISE
Day Forty-five – Today is day forty-five. Today we want to think about the idea of sacrifice. Paul once said that we should present our bodies as “living sacrifices” to God. Much of the New Testament reveals how this apostle of Christ blazed that trail and left us with an example to follow. He said, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ, lives in me.” In short, he saw his life completely as a sacrifice, looking to the former successes and pursuits as “dung,” to use the King James rendering.
Admittedly, sacrifice is not easy. How many of us will give up lucrative careers to go preach or teach the gospel? How many of us will sacrifice personal time so that our church family can benefit from our work? How many of us will fill the plate with our hard-earned money, rather than fill our lives with the luxuries of the world? How many of us will spend an equal amount of time keeping up the Lord’s house and our own homes?
The hardest of sacrifices, however, is most likely going to be the giving over of our will to His. In the Garden of Gethsemane Christ depicted that struggle when he asked for the cup of crucifixion to pass, but that it must be God’s will that is done. The simple statements in the garden depict that friction that so often occurs between the spiritual nature of His will and our earthly desires. John the apostle would later write that “anyone who wills to do His will, will know…” Giving over our will by setting pride aside and letting Him be Lord of our lives is often hard. It gets even harder when we want to do some very good and spiritual things, but He has plans for us that are even better…just maybe not what we want to do. In those cases do we have the fortitude and maturity to say “let thy will be done, not mine.”
Not all transformation will be easy, but as we do so we should find our sacrifices coming more fully and freely. We will find that when we open ourselves to His will in all things it opens a whole new world of possibilities. Today is day forty-five. What sacrifices are you making? Will you let His will be done to truly transform you?
