Word for Today, Sat. 08 Jan 2004: What Kind of Sacrifice?
Posted by: masinick <masinick@...>
Dear friends,
Today's devotional message, once again, comes from Oswald
Chambers' My Utmost For His Highest. As I have previously
mentioned, you can get Utmost from a variety of sources. I've
taken this one from the Heartlight.org Email list.
In this message, Oswald Chambers helps us correct correct some
common errors in our thinking concerning the kind of sacrifices
that God wants from us. Abraham thought that God wanted a blood
sacrifice. Many of us just think that God wants our money, our
time, our possessions. While God may indeed want to have us use
the things He has given us in service to Him for others, what He
really wants is the sacrifice of ourselves, to surrender our
agenda and our ways and instead seek a full and intimate
relationship with Him.
Don't you see? So often we confuse a relationship with God with
DOING stuff. Now I'm not suggesting that we ever abandon doing
things. What I am suggesting is that we get to the place where
we discern what God is asking personally of us. That begins with
knowing Him.
How then, do we get to know Him? We've talked about this many
times in the past, but worthwhile topics bear repeating, over and
over again. We get to know Him by reading His Word, regularly,
expectantly, systematically, faithfully. We then ask God to
speak to us through His Word, to put His Spirit into our hearts
so that we can understand His Word and learn from Him. In this
way, we develop a personal, intimate relationship with the author
of life.
Yours in Christ,
Brian
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/ MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST -- http://www.heartlight.org/
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January 8, 2005
DOES MY SACRIFICE LIVE?
And Abraham built an altar... and bound Isaac his son.
Genesis 22:9
http://www.SearchGodsWord.org/desk/?query=ge+22:9&sr=1
This incident is a picture of the blunder we make in thinking
that the final thing God wants of us is the sacrifice of
death. what God wants is the sacrifice through death which
enables us to do what Jesus did, viz., sacrifice our lives. Not
- I am willing to go to death with Thee, but - I am willing to be
identified with Thy death so that I may sacrifice my life to God.
We seem to think that God wants us to give up things! God
purified Abraham from this blunder, and the same discipline goes
on in our lives. God nowhere tells us to give up things for the
sake of giving them up. He tells us to give them up for the sake
of the only thing worth having - viz., life with Himself. It is
a question of loosening the bands that hinder the life, and
immediately those bands are loosened by identification with the
death of Jesus, we enter into a relationship with God whereby we
can sacrifice our lives to Him.
It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death. He
wants you to be a "living sacrifice," to let Him have all your
powers that have been saved and sanctified through Jesus. This
is the thing that is acceptable to God.
MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST - by Oswald Chambers //
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http://www.heartlight.org/devotionals/my_utmost /
This devotional is copyright Oswald Chambers Publications,
< http://www.oswaldchambers.co.uk >.
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--
Brian Masinick, mailto:masinick@yahoo.com
Home page: http://www.geocities.com/masinick/
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