Earlier this week I was reflecting on the post I shared last week about the sacrifice of others. This got me thinking about my own sacrifices. As followers of Christ we are called to live a life of sacrifice.
This, then, reminded me of something I learned years ago as a young youth pastor from a senior pastor that I have always admired and looked up to. I was with a group of youth pastors at a monthly get together when this senior pastor popped his head in the door to say hello. The youth pastor from his church asked him if he had any words of wisdom to share with us.
He began telling us how he had recently read in the Bible where God told Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Then he read to us part of that scripture, Genesis 22:5, which says: He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
He highlighted the part where Abraham said: “We will worship and then we will come back.” And then he said something that has impacted my life greatly over the years. He said, “We need to be people who learn to convert our sacrifice into worship.”
When sacrifice is simply sacrifice, we tend to focus on the cost, we focus on what we’re giving up. But when we convert our sacrifice into worship, we’re able to focus on why we’re doing what we’re doing: bringing glory and honor to the Lord. We are created to glorify the Lord in all that we do, but God doesn’t want it to be a burden for us to serve Him. His desire is that our worship would be a delight, and that our love for Him would enable us to convert our sacrifice into joyful worship!
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