Seven Sacrifices to Joy

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

It’s great to be with you for Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power. Thank you so much for joining me for the conclusion of one of the longest series in my blogging history! Grab your Red Strand of Faith and let’s return to where we left off, comparing the Old Testament sacrifice of a body to the New Testament sacrifice of our body. I’m hoping we will tie several more knots in the conclusion of this series, the Sacrifice of the Body.

We’ve learned that whenever an Old Testament sacrifice was offered, it couldn’t be reclaimed. It became holy and dedicated, or sanctified unto the Lord. Sanctified means to be set apart, so that paints a vivid picture when we put ourselves on/in the canvas of it, aka, the altar of life!

See, our bodies have been sanctified unto the Lord when He purchased us with His own blood. Sounds a bit gory, and many of us don’t like to think of the great lengths He went through to pay for our junk, but the shedding of His blood as an atonement for our sins is a reality that must be brought to the forefront of our souls, a tool, if you will, to help us surrender and render our bodies as His, as He did for us.

His sacrifice is what purchased us and He thereafter quick-claimed the deed of ownership to us in hopes that we would willingly and whole-heartedly sign the title back to Him! This is confirmed in 1st Corinthians 6:19-20 which tells us, "Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God and you are not your own”!

The difference between the Old Testament offering and the offering of our bodies is that the Old Testament offering was dead and could not jump down off of the altar when the fire became hot, but we can! Oh, how difficult it is when the heat of living for Christ and taking a stand begins to be turned up, right? Do we, a living sacrifice, jump down off the altar of consecration to God and reclaim ourselves as our own or do we cling to Him so as to become like Him, surrendered and available?

To offer or present our bodies as a living sacrifice unto God means we are to be available for His use at His discretion. Our flesh may really struggle with that truth, to show up and shut up, wondering where and when, questioning the how of it all. Often it is the undesired, the unlovely, and the unglamorous places, times, and persons that our loving God, who loves us too much to leave us how we are, will use to bless us with the richest of life's lessons in preparation for the future.

Yes, this sacrifice requires life, not death, and that surrendered, sacrificial life brings glory to God. Heat is part of being on the altar for God and His glory is the result. Oh, Father, may I be a living sacrifice, one hour, one day at a time on my way to You!

That’s a wrap! Join us tomorrow for Faith Filled Fridays @ Croley’s Corner of Chicklit Power.

Love,

Evinda

Seven Sacrifices to Joy

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

Thanks so much for taking time out of your day to come and share Coffee Hour with me and take in more of this series, The Seven Sacrifices to Joy.” The good news is we are headed toward the finish line of this series and the series to follow will have you giggling from the inside out for sure! Grab your SOF (strand of faith) and your coffee, hot or cold, and let’s go tie some knots in our faith as we learn more about what it means to offer up our bodies as a sacrifice.

Another definition for bodies, (soma) from the Greek concordance reads: “it is translated ‘slaves.’ In its figurative uses the essential idea is preserved, the complete man.”  Here’s my summation of that translation: I choose to be a slave… to freedom in Christ or to bondage of my flesh. Does that make sense?

Let’s paint a verbal picture of a tug of war. On one side is your physical self, your flesh, and on the other side is your spiritual self, your soul. You may be wondering, well, where’s the mind? Right in the middle and it will follow whatever pulls the hardest! So when the flesh screams for something not so good and contradictory to the spirit, that’s the first tug. And trust me when I say that what the flesh wants, it usually screams for if not given right away and the spirit, well that can tend to be drowned out by the screaming of the flesh if we are not still and listening to its whisper.

Now, the spirit will tug back, and the more it has been nourished, the harder it can pull, allowing your spiritual self to win over the flesh, thereby becoming a slave to Christ. Each victory intensifies the next tug…and the next, and then next, and so on and so on; the good news is that the intensity of each victory increases too and increases our awareness of the next tug, and sometimes before it even happens, because His Spirit within you has increased your awareness, wisdom and discernment.

But then there will be a different tug-of-war, and so on and so forth. Life is full of tug-of-wars, the flesh over the spirit. As soon as we have figured out how to let our flesh win over the body in one air, He moves us into another area that needs refining, pruning, sharpening. Sometimes it feels as though our hands, and hearts, are full of blisters from all the tugging, but can I assure you that staying in the fight to learn how to offer up our bodies as a living sacrifice will help us finish the race!

The next thing I discern from this one verse, this sacrifice of our body, is to be available… and not just on Sundays, or whenever your Sabbath is. This scripture is saying that we are to render to God the use of our bodies as a living sacrifice to Him. Unfortunately, we can be living externally but actually dead…internally and therefore eternally.

In the Old Testament, when the offering was placed upon the altar, it was not to be reclaimed; it was to be consumed before the Lord. In other words, there was no taking it back, no Indian-giving! :-)

Now, while our bodies are not laid upon an altar as was done in the Old Testament, they are still to be a sacrifice offered to God for consumption in the gospel ministry and never to be reclaimed as our own again. I keep hearing that song, “I have decided to follow Jesus; I have decided to follow Jesus; I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back”!

What if we faced each temptation to give into flesh and allowed His Spirit to tug us through and over the victory line? Each victory will lessen the chances of turning back and increase the propensity to offer up our body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto the One who joins us in the tug-of-wars of this life, welcoming us into the next…

Join me tomorrow for the CONCLUSION of this series!

Love,

Evinda

Seven Sacrifices to Joy

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

Hello and happy day to you! Thanks for joining me for our Coffee Hour and more of this series The Seven Sacrifices to Joy as I write from my heart to yours the road to joy. I had no idea it would have so many twists, turns and tumultuous obstacles to get to and through! Grab your coffee and your Strand of Faith and let’s go to the seventh sacrifice…. Finally!

The seventh sacrifice is our body.  Now, I’m not speaking about becoming like the animals that were put upon the altar as a sacrifice in the Old Testament… ugh, that’s a bit gory. No, I’m talking about something completely different, a different sacrifice that we can offer because of the gift of grace. Let’s take a look at Romans 12:1 and begin to see why/how our bodies are deemed to be a sacrifice.

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your spiritual worship." (Romans 12.1: Harper Collins Study Bible.)

So we see that our bodies are deemed a “living sacrifice,” and that doesn’t mean the walking dead! Then what in the world… how in the world… first of all, “bodies” in this context refers to total self, aka, mind, body and soul/heart! Whew, but there’s probably a seven-course meal in that one verse… but don’t panic; we won’t park here for too long, just what is necessary to really grasp what this sacrifice is all about.

The word “bodies” translates in the Greek to “soma” and means “the body as a whole, the instrument of life.”  So this confirms the principle of mind, body and soul. But how many of us get up in the morning physically and emotionally, perhaps even with an emotional hangover, and begin our day without our spiritual selves? When and if we do that, we would perpetuate that emotional hangover because we are functioning out of balance!

Oh, how I remember the days of my feet hitting the floor and running through my to-do list like a marathon runner desperately yearning to cross the finish line! See, going through the day like that is like riding the oceans of life in a boat without a captain, or attending and learning the lessons in the classroom of life without a teacher, or traveling the globe in a plane without a captain: DANGEROUS!

What would our lives look like if we put our whole self in and incorporated the spiritual component into our days, our agendas, our families … instead of playing Hokey Pokey and turning ourselves around in the same circle, over and over and over again?

So could it be that one way our bodies are a sacrifice is when we live with all three components, mind, body and soul/spirit so as to avoid crashing when the waves of life hit us?

Join me tomorrow for more on this sacrifice!

Evinda