Sacrifice

I had to come directly home from bible study and post this, because I can honestly say I've never been more convicted than I have been in the last few weeks through this Beth Moore study on Daniel. One of the main points of the night was the difference between selfishness and sacrifice. Living in the post-modern Christian world, we live by the idea that we do things quickly, efficiently, and at a minimum cost to us (and I don't just mean financially). We pull together lunches for the homeless, and feel great about spending a couple hours of our day giving out food to people less fortunate than us. We see kids starving in Haiti and send $5 that we've got lying around, then proceed to tell our Facebook friends that we gave to Haiti and they should too. I'm not saying that those things are, by nature, bad things, but they don't require much from us. They don't take us out of our comfort zone or take too much of our spending money, so that we are not inconvenienced in our comfortable lives that we've been blessed with.

BUT GOD CALLS US TO DO MORE.

He calls us to give all that we have; to come out of our comfortable lives and do something radical for His glory. For some people, He calls them to be missionaries in foreign countries. For others, He wants them to impact their local community through outreach, child mentoring, etc. Maybe for people that are blessed financially, He calls them to prioritize their finances to give freely and without trepidation.

I find that I struggle most in my life with giving God control over every aspect of my life. Even as I write this, I'm struggling with what is going to happen in my future and where life is taking me. But ultimately, when I give over those feelings of worry and doubt and submit my life to God, things start falling into place. I like to think of those times as God knocking me on the head ever so gently and saying "Thanks for remembering me. I'm still here, and I always will be."

I don't know what kind of radical thing He is calling me for, but I pray diligently that He shows me that direction and that I do everything in my power to take on that responsibility with everything that I have. When I think about it like that, it makes all of these decisions that I'm needing to make seem a lot easier.