Sacrificial living

P 3484 A living sacrifice.

/ DVH

Today I want to highlight two things that are part of our new way to live, led by the Holy Spirit.

ONE: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:1-2 NIV.

Many of us think that worship is singing slow songs, like love songs to Jesus, or about Him — reverently, joyfully and with emphasis. For some it means raising our hands. For others that means kneeling down or standing up. We are told to be filled with the Spirit, singing to ourselves in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs… fantastic, let’s do that! But we will need to change our whole way of thinking if we want to follow Jesus.

Paul talks about the reality of sacrificial living. Let us not be fooled … he says real worship is offering your body as a living sacrifice. That’s your dead, living body! All dead, really dead, never-getting up again DEAD, to the things of this world. It is to be laid upon the altar of “whatever You want, Father God!” That can get pretty grim when it hits close to home. Almighty God is a jealous God, He wants all of us, not just the left-overs.

It looks like Isaac did, when the boy allowed himself to be trussed and tied up like a turkey and placed upon the rough altar his father Abraham had built. Then his own father lifted up the knife to kill him. It’s that kind of “if I die I die” attitude that God sees as worship. Meanwhile, in the Western world, Abraham would have ended up in court defending his abuse of his son! And good luck getting your kid to lie down on an altar. They won’t even let you take their phone away. 😱

I think one of the biggest mistakes Christianity has made is to try to reinforce the things of the Spirit, in the natural world – instead of prayerfully allowing “God to break our hearts with the things that break His.” I don’t much like it – but that’s what our new life looks like. We can’t just teach this, because we have to embrace it as individuals. We need to fall in love with Jesus so deeply, that lip-service just won’t do. That means we will dig, chase, and go after anything that offers us the opportunity to mature, because serving Him is now our purpose.

Mature Christians don’t stand in corners grumbling about each other, other people, or the pastor. They take what the bible says seriously and do their best, with God’s help, to obey it. Even to their own hurt. They don’t offer excuses, blame their parents or their childhood, or even our current society for their choices. They understand the concept of free will and they exercise it by choosing His Way over theirs, simply because the bible says the Lord loves obedience.

TWO: Romans 12 Verses 3,6b-13: “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you…                                                                               … … If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. Love in Action. Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” 

People often want to know what their spiritual gift is, perhaps to validate themselves within the Body of Christ. Sometimes leaders have their own little exclusive club going, and everyone else wants to be a member of the “IN” group. Well, there is no IN group unless we are ALL IN IT!  We are here to serve the Lord and one another, not promote ourselves.

Jesus did not promote Himself, yet He drew huge crowds because His teaching was truth, and healings and miracles followed Him around. He didn’t need an advanced group to prepare things for the Speaker who was the main event. He taught the people in a language they could understand, about their Heavenly Father and how to relate to Him and each other. These people were spiritual people … they already had a history with God. We too can have a history with God and still not be living sacrifices.

A gift is about the generosity of the Giver, not the receiver. Someone once gave me the most ghastly clock I have ever seen … it was all I could do to thank them! I still shudder thinking about it. But for a little while, they stopped what they were doing and thought about me. That’s where gratitude lies, recognising the other person’s effort even when it is way off course. We must let each other learn. There will be a bit of wiggling as each one of us tries to find our place. However, dead people don’t care where you put them.

If we are to lead, then we need to do it as a servant to all, in season and out. These gifts are not there to put in place some sort of pecking order in the Body, they are to be used for the benefit of all. Those who are saved, and the-people-who-don’t-know-Him- yet. The reality is now we must stop living our life, for ourselves, and start living out what we were put here to do. We live this life as living sacrifices to His glory! And choose to live out heaven’s realities down here, where life gets icky and unpredictable. Bye 👋.

P3406 Living like the bible is true.

/ DVH

Every single day, many people reading this blog get on public transport, or maybe they walk or get into a car, and head off to their place of employment. Before they go, they don’t check out how many accidents have occurred to their type of bus or train or car – they just get in the vehicle and GO. They have put their faith in arriving on time, and in one piece. We all need this kind of faith in God’s Word. What if we treat His Word the same way we treat ordinary things like public transport? What if instead of this life being clouded by stuff, we responded to Jesus’ teaching like He is in the room with us?

Instead of remembering those things that we think didn’t work, our thoughts need to be continually drawn back toward what Jesus has said and already done. Then all of the focus goes off me and my efforts, and over onto His finished ministry. His ministry benefitted every single one of us. Let’s live like we believe that.  Instead of living this life randomly, remembering Jesus at oddly choreographed moments — or perhaps when the roof falls in —- He needs to become the centre of everything we give our lives to.

So when we go to work, raise our kids, interact with others …  even our leisure time … is now lived for Jesus. “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord and not for people.” Colossians 3:23.  As we choose to live this way, we will be transformed daily, because living this way means we are using our faith. Over time, our thinking will change— it shifts to what Jesus wants from me and what He did for me. Now I read the bible listening for Him to speak to me. 

There is no need for a debate about whether I should forgive or not. That’s a done deal. I give freely and love others without thinking up good reasons why I shouldn’t!  There is no longer a debate going on inside me. Nothing is about  who is right and who is wrong— our new life in Christ is about knowing what He says and living my life the way Jesus would. Every choice, every step we make to do things His way, is a step or choice toward total transformation. So we choose to respond to things the way He would, because we can be like Him. And in this process our own ideas, plans and programs fall away. He becomes the central pivotal point – not what Sister-always-has-an-opinion thinks, or Brother-if-you-don’t-believe-what-I-believe-you-are-going-straight-to-hell thinks! Our thoughts centre on what does the bible say, and what would Jesus do?? 

It seems to me that we’ve mistaken authority for dictatorship, and they are not the same. Nor are we ruled by a consequences consensus. That’s what gave us all these denominations in the first place. Is Christ divided? 1 Corinthians 1:13 says otherwise. The Apostle Paul was utterly brilliant — until God Himself blasted him and threw him off his horse — then he also had to learn to think about absolutely everything he had already known from Christ’s perspective. Meeting Jesus didn’t just change this man’s mind, it changed his life! God must have given Paul a huge dose of humility on that trip to heaven!

The way to be transformed is to make the same choices Jesus made. He chose to die to what He wanted, or thought he needed, to live for the will of His Heavenly Father. By the way, it is one thing to metaphorically die to self — it is totally another to lay there and let someone else do it for you. That spouse, that neighbour, that boss, that child who drives you mad, is God’s grinding wheel to transform your life. And if it seems like it is killing us … that is what it is supposed to do! It is part of the process of dying to ourselves and daily learning to live for Jesus. It is as real as those nails and that cross were. Let’s use our faith to step out of the boat of this world’s opinions and start moving into our Heavenly Father’s ways. What if what we know about the Lord was more real than the things around us?

We learn grace when we choose to act like Jesus would  toward people who are not treating us well. Have you noticed that today many people have the most amazing energy to persecute others? It goes on and on – like most TV soapies. We can choose to default on our God-given new life arrangement, and many Christians do. It is so much easier to explain away the bits we feel we can’t do. But it is far better to seek out what He says in the bible, particularly in the New Testament. It’s not difficult to think like Jesus does, it is just very hard on our flesh. 

When we live, day by day, moment by moment choosing to follow the Lord, we are choosing LIFE. ABUNDANT LIFE.  We have yet to see fully what that means, we simply know that Jesus Himself lived like this. Heaven comes down, because heaven is attracted to the smell of sacrificial living, when it is done for Jesus’ sake. Let’s keep this fact before our eyes, Father God sacrificed His Son to redeem anyone who wants to be saved. That shows us that what we run away from, the Lord goes toward. 

As we live like His Way of thinking, doing and being is true, and it is — that’s when our faith-filled actions lead to His truth totally saturating and inhabiting our lives. Faith is the pathway into this new way of life God has given us. We don’t just live this way to raise the dead, we also live that way to raise our hopes when all seems lost.That faith that saved us, will transform our lives as we use it day by day. It all starts with what we SAY or choose not to SAY.

Living the way Jesus Himself did, day by day, by loving others and choosing to obey Him – means we are living like the bible is true. IT IS. We will continue to have only a little of the power of God, while we choose to put our faith into simply being saved. I believe that power is released through walking by faith in love, humility, daily releasing His grace to others, and following Him. Bye. 👋.