Morning Friends!

This week I was reading the book of Romans when the following scripture had me deep in thought.

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service – Romans 12:1”

In this scripture, the apostle Paul was pleading with God’s people to present themselves to God in a Holy and acceptable way. Thereafter, I began to contrast this scripture with how we typically come to God. Sometimes we come to God in a way that we always want something. Lord, I want a better job, Lord, I want financial freedom, Lord, I want better health, Lord I want this and I want that! Everything is Lord, Lord, Lord! Don’t get me wrong, asking of God is a great thing. After all, everything is in His hands to give, and “the starting point of receiving is always asking”, so keep on asking. ( Matthew 7:7 and James 4:2-3).

However, sometimes we are required to not be in receiving mode, but instead come in the presence of God with the aim to be a giver. Let us be the one to grant requests, grant the request of God and present yourself Holy and acceptable before Him.  Don’t always come with the mindset of taking and receiving. Having this mindset of giving first (see blog – The Principle of Firsts ) actually allows God to grant our request faster, especially when we sacrificially give to Him our body, which is His temple.

This walk with God is all about sacrifices. In the older covenant we used to make a sacrifice in the form of a lamb and kill it and offer it up to God. In the same way, in the new covenant, we take a living lamb in terms of our body and kill it and offer it up to God. As it is in the Old Testament, so it is with the new, “all sacrifices must be dead to be offered up”. So, if you are offering up less and less to God, then you’re not as dead as you think and you are actually rescinding. The less you offer up to God, the more you are alive to the world. It is that simple.

John 12:24 states: “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”

There is fruitfulness in death and in certain things it is only death that can bring the victory, or in our case, the absolute surrender of our lives. This is what we need to bring before God each time we enter His presence. Wee need to bring ourselves emptied, prostrate, and Holy before Him. This is the type of giving and presenting God wants before any asking takes place.

It is time we give God what He wants first and put His petition of Holiness and righteousness at the forefront, before we bombard Him with our requests.  It is time to stop putting the cart before the horse.

I close this blog with the following quote from Elisabeth Elliot.

“To Pray, thy will to be done. I must be willing, if the answer requires it, that my will be undone”

PS: Dane Miller was last seen reading Micah 6:8 and Deuteronomy 10:12-13

Your Brother in the Lord,

Dane Miller – “God is the Author, I am the Pen”

Authored Book – What is the Woman Saying – Lessons from Biblical Women.

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