Recently God has really been laying on my heart the true sacrifice of life. In Romans Paul tells us how our lives should look. Romans 12:1 says "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God- this is your spiritual act of worship." Basically what Paul is trying to say is broken into two parts.
The first thing he says is, hey guys, look at what God has done for you! He sent His son to die on the cross for your sins and He set you free from captivity. Once Paul finishes with that he moves on to what we should do in light of that. He tells us that we ought to offer our lives as living sacrifices to God. What is interesting about the wording here is the fact that a living sacrifice, doesn't really make sense. In the Old Testament the priests would offer sacrifices to temporarily cover the sins of the people. So these sacrifices were stone dead. But Paul tells us to be a living sacrifice.
What he means is that in ourselves we are dead. We should realize that we would still be sinners without Christ, but through Him we have life. I don't know about you but that makes me want to live for Christ in a big way. I know that we can never repay Him for what He has given us, but I still want to thank Him by giving my life to Him in any way that He wants to use it. That is what Paul is trying to convey to us. He wants us to see what God has done and let us realize that all we can do is offer our lives to Him.
I want to challenge you to really think about the verses here in Romans. Read around it. Read the whole book! Just think about it though. Is God calling you to give your life to Him as a sacrifice? I can't promise that it will be easy. It takes faith and trust and it is gonna be risky at times, but in the end, I can tell you that the reward will outweigh the hardship. God is good.
