FROM THE MISSION Being the Offering Every Day Decisions, decisions. Blessed be God who gives us the amazing privilege and the power to make decisions, and who gives of Himself as He helps us make them. I don’t know what it would be like to be, say, a shark and live with a mind of instinct alone, having little or no rational thought, let alone the capacity to think as we do and choose. How do we live? We choose. How do we die? We choose. Alone, in their simplest literal form, these are the most important choices we make, but there are other choices we make which seem to influence many subsequent choices we make, even to the point of where we are faced with the important choice of life or death. Decisions, decisions; drug use or not; diet; exercise; caution and temperance; forgiveness; offer our heart or harden our heart; go this way or that way; do this or do that; trust Christ or reject Him; my way or His way. “Then He said to them all, If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.” Luke 9:23, 24 When the Christ speaks of losing our life for His sake, this is certainly not a threat, but instead a call for a voluntary offering. Many people have imagined or actually lived through situations where they have offered themselves in place of others, even to the point of dying in their place. Parents certainly feel this, as well as so many others, Christian or not. Love is the most powerful force in the universe; “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” 1 John 4:16 One of the most dramatic occurrences of this in the Old Testament is God’s call to Abraham to; Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. Gen. 22:2 The Bible does not elaborate at all on the reaction of Abraham to such a devastating predicament. The God of the universe, who can give, take back, and give again has asked father Abraham to kill his Son Isaac as he would a sacrificial animal, which includes preparing the body and burning Isaac properly. WOW. It has been speculated widely what Abraham felt, what he thought, what he prayed, what he cried about, and how he spent his time before going off to offer his son to the Lord. One speculation that most certainly has come to mind for a lot of people is, “If it were me in the place of Abraham, would God accept me as the offering instead of my Son?” We don’t know if Abraham “negotiated” with the Lord like this, but we do know that Abraham knew the utmost importance of obeying God, who can raise the dead, and proceeded by faith to do this unfathomable thing. The story ends with God stopping Abraham from completing the actual sacrifice, but not stopping it from going to the point where Abraham’s heart was clearly seen as faithful and obedient, to the maximum. “Being the offering” is in our hearts first, which can be clearly seen, and that comes as a result of the correct orientation of our heart to God. It seems to me that negotiation is a human attempt to find “space” in the life of faith. Sin has brought a lot of disobedience even in believers. Some of this disobedience can seem like an “attempt” to obey but it’s contaminated with lawyer-like excuses, selfishness, lack of devotion, even ignorance, and denies the clear-cut commandments of God. In another hard-core exchange between a Jew and the Son of God is about what actually appears to be harder things to offer than our flesh and blood; “Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.’ But he was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” Mark 10:21, 22 We find (after living so many years centered around “having” and “getting” and “earning” and “deserving” and “wanting” what money, power, prestige and influence can buy) that it is like ripping flesh from bone and heart from the chest for a lot of people to give up all they have “wanted and worked for.” This goes for relationships too. Would it not be hard if we had to face the end of a relationship with the dearest of our fellow humans (wife, parents, children) because Jesus came between us and them? Would it not be hard to let them go from our clinging hearts and offer them and our relationship to them on the altar of God’s good, perfect, and sovereign control of everyone and everything? Hard, it is. There is no other way to enter into the perfection of living with the perfect King of all, to experience the perfect new relationship with Him and the perfect new relationship with all people and all “things.” God gives and takes away, and He does it with all the perfect, loving intentions, for all the perfect reasons, at just the perfect time. Be the offering every day. What we offer is so much less than what we have gotten, are getting, and will get from the Lord of the universe! Such a GREAT gift!! Ourselves, our troubles, worries, and sin on the altar of offering, for His peace, righteousness, adoption, provision, protection, ETERNAL LIFE…. “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My names sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.” Matt. 19:29 How wondrous is the correct exchange between the Giver of Life and the children of God who give back to the Lord just as freely from a heart in-dwelt by the Holy Spirit of Christ Jesus! It is how it is supposed to be. No worldly transaction, free or otherwise, no friendship, not even any blood relationship can come even close to it in comparison. BE the offering; don’t wish to be the offering, or visualize being the offering, or talk about being the offering; be the offering. You know the difference; every day, day after day. Behold the superlative generosity of the Lord Jesus, for He has given us His all. Although a tithe of His possessions would have made a universe of angels, rich beyond all thought, yet He was not content until He had given us all that He had. It would have been surprising grace if He had allowed us to eat the crumbs of His abundance beneath the table of His mercy; but He will do nothing by half measures. He makes us sit with Him and share the feast. If He had given us some small donation from His royal treasure, we would have had cause to love Him eternally; but in fact He wants His bride to be as rich as Himself, and He will not have a glory or a grace in which she will not share. He has not been content with less than making us joint-heirs with Himself, so that we might have equal possessions. He has emptied all His riches into the members of the church and has shared everything with His redeemed. There is not one room in His house the key of which He will keep from His people. He gives them complete freedom to take all that He has to enjoy as their own; He loves to see them enjoy His treasure and take as much as they can possibly carry. The limitless fullness of His all-sufficiency is as free to the believer as the air he breathes. Christ has put the cup of His love and grace to the believers lip and invites him to drink of it forever; if he could empty it, he is welcome to do so, but as he cannot exhaust it, he is invited to drink abundantly, for it is all his own. What truer proof of fellowship can heaven or earth provide? C.H. Spurgeon When I stand before the throne Dressed in beauty not my own; When I see you as You are, Love You with unsinning heart; Then, Lord, shall I fully know— Not till then--how much I owe.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 05:45:53 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015