A Pleasing Offering – Part 3

A continuation… (Read Part 1 and Part 2)

In Romans 13:8, 9, Paul writes that all of the commandments in the law are fulfilled if we will just love one another and that all of the commandments could be summed up by the command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. While the Scriptures themselves command me to be a woman of the Word and to meditate on it daily and to pray unceasingly, if I do those things and neglect to love my children, I have missed it! Matthew 23:23 has Jesus rebuking the religious leaders saying, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone.” It is a religious spirit that causes us to get so focused on performing the duties of being a Christian that we forget what truly matters – justice, mercy, faith and love. They were offering to God what was required by the law, but they had missed what He truly desired to receive from them.

For me, while this new revelation has deeply impacted my heart, it is still difficult to put into action. I have found it difficult to lay down my desires for how I want to worship God and what I want to offer Him in order to seek what He wants. While I may be fixated upon getting time to read my Bible or pray, if I were to stop and ask Him, “What offering do you want from me, God?” perhaps His answer would be, “Play with your son” or “Rest your body” or “Go for a walk with your husband” or “Call your friend and pray for her need” or “Sing a song to me” or “Hold your daughter while she cries” or any number of things that I previously wouldn’t have considered as being a valid offering of worship unto God. Somewhere along the line, I forgot that I am actually loving God when I love people! I think there will also be times when He would ask of me to read my Bible or pray, but the point is that I don’t assume what He wants and that I am willing to give up my way of doing things for His way. To have a broken and contrite spirit like David wrote about in Psalm 51:16-17 requires that I submit my will to God and set aside my own selfish desires – not an easy thing to do!

As Romans 12:1 says, “…present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God…”