Pastor Rick Warren put it best—“The problem with a
living sacrifice is that it can crawl off the altar.” If you’re nodding in agreement, join the
crowd of Christians who often find ourselves feeling our way away from
submission to God. We realize God’s
great mercy and we respond by saying, “I’m all yours!” but when the stones get
sharp and the fire gets hot, we head back down. Sometimes it seems easier and
more exciting to do what feels good right then or to act impulsively rather than
wait without worry or trust through trial, so we slink over the edge and scurry
away from surrender.
The good news is that while we may not care for creepy
crawly things, God is not scared of them.
In fact, He embraces them. He “knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only
dust…Like a father to his children, [God] is tender
and compassionate to those who fear him”(Ps 103:14,13). Perhaps this is one reason God designated in the Old Testament that
the same sacrifice (one young lamb, two quarts of flour, and one quart of olive
oil) be offered to Him every day—twice a
day(Num 28:3-4). Morning and evening,
over and over and over, day after day, week after week, month after month, year
after year, God’s people placed the same thing on the same altar.
The lamb was required to be perfect—“without defect” was the description,
and through the perfect righteousness of Christ, we have been made “holy, blameless, and without blemish”(Eph
5:26-27). The offering specified in the
first covenant was a “pleasing aroma to
God”(Num 28:6), and when we yield ourselves to Him, we are the “living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to
God”(Rom 12:1). The Old Testament
offering wasn’t called a “regular offering” without reason, for our Heavenly Father
knows we need to offer ourselves on a regular basis, and that we need to
present the same the regular sacrifice—our lives. Christ’s sacrifice for us was “once-and-done,”
but the offering of ourselves to Him must be daily—or several times a day!
When you crawl off the
altar, God’s grace lets you get climb back on
Be completely His—again.
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