Sacrifice a.k.a. consideration continued

Earlier this week I was reading in a devotional book called, 'The Word For You Today' - Wednesday, February 23rd and I came accross the following and it seemed to fit in with the sacrifice/consideration subject for this month. The verse was Psalm 100:2 which reads, 'Serve the Lord with gladness...' Further along in the devotion it states, "When you come to believe, really believe that service is God working through you..." There is more to that sentence, but that portion of it really struck me. I did not realize that our service we are offering to God now, is God working through us. I was thinking that as we serve; God would use us occasionally to impact someone around us as we worked. I did not realize that our service/sacrifice is God using us now. I guess I was thinking that our usefulness was measured by the outcomes, or the reactions of the people around us. However, I realized that we are to do our part and serve God, how others respond or don't respond is between that person and God.

As I was mulling that over I was flipping through the Bible and I came accross Proverbs 1:19. This verse says, "When you grab all you can get, that's what happens: the more you get, the less you are." (The Message Bible) I thought, wow how true that is. The more we hold back and don't sacrifice for others, the more we become dissatisfied with ourselves, and even discontented and disappointed in ourselves. 'The less we are.' So God has arranged for us to receive a double blessing. As we serve/sacrifice for others we get the additional blessing of contentment. Wow! God is good!

Sacrifice a.k.a. Consideration

Matthew 22:39
And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'

Dictionary.com defines sacrifice as, “the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.” Sacrifice can be such an intimidating word. It implies deprivation, and pain. Jesus’ goal may be to get us to a place where we can be sold out, 100% for Him, but that is an ongoing journey, not a place where most Christians start. Instead we can begin by being considerate, in other words making small sacrifices for someone else.

Matthew 22:39 states that we are to love our neighbors. A simple definition of ‘our neighbors’ is someone other than ourselves, not just the people who live next door. In a biblical sense neighbors are people who are near to us, the people we interact with on a daily basis. Instead of deprivation God may want us to do without for a short time. Instead of experiencing pain God may want us to forsake our wants for the benefit of others. While doing without and forsaking our wants are temporarily not pleasant experiences yet these sacrifices can have eternal rewards. This can be a good way to love the people around us. So a practical definition of sacrifice can be; doing something we don’t want to do for someone else’s benefit.

A couple of examples of the consideration Jesus showed others is when Jesus cooked breakfast for His disciples (John 21:9-13), and turned water into wine as His Mother requested (John 2:3-10). Jesus wants us to follow the examples He set by being considerate and sacrificing our time and energy for others.

Read More:
John 21:9-17

Prayer:
Lord help me to make my considerations for others a sacrifice to You, so that if no one recognizes my efforts I won’t be angry or hurt.

Action Plan:
Decide to make small sacrifices for others without expecting anything in return.