On Sacrifice

If you haven't noticed, I've been spending a lot of time reading Relevant Magazine on line. Today, I was reading this article on Lent... it was more about sacrifice.

This explaination of what sacrifice means blew me away: "taking something perfectly good and destroying it before God." Sacrifice makes no sense. The words that come to mind is reckless abandonment. To truly sacrifice your life is to live reckless abadoned to Christ. The only way anyone can do that is they believed in a God that is better than what they can currently see and understand. If they believe in a God that is molding them and leading them to be a better person than who they already are, then and only then would anyone willing recklessly abandon their life to God.

Even David knew about this concept that when we offer something to God, it must cost us something: "I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing." (2 Samuel 24:24)

If you go back to the time of Cain and Abel, when we don't offer something that costs us, God doesn't even care. "... but for Cain and his offering he had no regard." (Genesis 4:5a)

And if you think this is just an OT thing, then we can talk about Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. Where God simply struck them dead... and this is POST Pentacost!

This is not a matter of what we give... I think at the heart of it really is about our heart. Do we love God enough to give Him something will cost us, to give Him our very best, and to give Him our all? 

In the past 2 years or so, the story of sacrifice that has been on my heart has been the story of Abraham and Issac (Genesis 22). Issac was God's promise to Abraham fulfilled. Abraham was already over 100 years old, and he had to wait so long for God to fulfill His promise... and one day, God just asks him to sacrifice his son. If that's not sacrifice, I don't know what is. Awhile back, I prayed a very dangerous prayer. I asked God to give me the same type of faith that Abraham had. I asked Him to take me to a place where I would be able to lay ALL things down at the altar, even if those things were the fulfilled promises of God that I had waited so long for. I asked him to show me what these things were which were my "Issac"... and to take me to the place where I can say, these are not mine, but yours, so teach me to be able to lay them back on the altar for you if you ask.

Here's the thing... God doesn't ALWAYS come like He did in Abraham's story with Issac. Sometimes, God doesn't come at the last minute to stop you, sometimes, He lets you go through with the whole sacrifice, and you really DO have to let go. Would you still trust God? Would you still continue to recklessly abandon your life into his hands? Even when God seems to witholding his promise to you, or delaying his promise... would you keep hanging onto Him?