A Living Sacrifice

Romans 12:1-2 ESV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

I have been thinking about these two verses, off and on, for over a week now.  Last week at Bible Study the teacher was teaching on Psalm 91.  We are to abide in the shelter of Almighty God.  This is a very fitting teaching seeing what is going on in the world around us.  During the teaching he mentioned Romans 12:1-2. It stuck with me. Sometimes when someone is preaching or teaching I can see in my mind what they are talking about.  This was one of those cases.

I could picture the priest killing the lamb.  It was intentional. There was no reservation. The priest was obeying God. Jesus was killed as a lamb to the slaughter. He laid down His life but He was also killed. God sent His Son into this world, intentionally, to die for our sins. If the lamb that was sacrificied died naturally, it wasn't the sacrifice that God intended. It would have been disobedience on the part of the priest to offer a sacrifice that wasn't killed. 

Just like the priest intentionally killed the sacrifice to be burned on the altar, we are to intentionally kill the things in our life that come between us and God. Sometimes those things may seem like good things.  I heard someone say recently discernment is the difference between knowing what is right and what is almost right. What is almost right is wrong and is sin. We have to make the intentional choice to lay our lives down daily asking God to show us what is right and almost right. If something gets between us and God, it is an idol no matter how good it seems.

My cousin said something this past week that goes right along with this. He said he wants God to work in him so that God can work through him. Without being a daily living sacrifice, how can God use us? Without daily dying to self, how can he work through us to reach others? Without getting those things out of our life that are almost right, we can't get to where God wants us. 

This Sunday is Resurrection Sunday. It is the day Jesus, the ultimate sacrifice, was raised from the dead.  Let's think about how we can daily become an intentional, daily, living sacrifice for Jesus.  Just as he was raised from the dead, Jesus raises us from Spiritual death when we accept Him as our Savior.