Present yourselves as living sacrifices…(Rom. 12:1)
So we all survived the final blood red moon of the blood moon tetrad…so far. We still have a couple of days left in the Feast of Tabernacles, which ends at sunset Sunday (in Jerusalem). For those who are convinced Jesus will return during this feast, we will have at least another year of waiting after Sunday. But God always seems to surprise us and it would be just like him to show up when we are least expecting it.
But watching the blood red supermoon go through its phases last Sunday night reminded me of an important spiritual principle. As we watched the lunar eclipse, it appeared as if something was changing with the moon itself. But the moon is just a big dead rock in the sky. It has no light of its own. It’s apparent light is the reflection of the sun’s light. Even when it goes red (looked much more orange to me) it is not that the moon is changing, but that the earth has moved between the moon and the sun. For the moon, everything is about positioning.
The same is true of our lives. It is all about positioning …spiritual positioning. A friend of mine signs all her correspondence with the words “love and light”. But much like the moon, we have no light of our own. We are reflectors. Ideally, our lives reflect the glory of God. We were created in the image of God so that we might reflect the glory of God. But for that to happen, we need to be properly positioned. In the larger context of the above text, Paul gives us three important “tips” about getting spiritually “positioned”.
The first tip is that we are to “present ourselves”. The word in the Greek text carries the technical sense of a sacrificial offering being presented at the altar in Jerusalem. That might be why Paul goes on to say that we are to present ourselves as “living sacrifices”. You could paraphrase this first tip as: “bring your life before the Lord and give it to him.” To get spiritually positioned, we need to lay it all on the altar. How serious are you about Jesus? If 70% of Americans identify themselves as Christians, how many have “presented themselves” as living sacrifices? Not judging…just asking. When you give it all to God, you begin to get yourself spiritually positioned to reflect his glory. When you don’t…you stay spiritually “eclipsed”.
What pleases God? What is he looking for from us? I think he is looking for DESIRE. Do we desire to be his man or woman? And I think he is looking for DECISION. Are we wiling to lay it all on the altar. Are we willing to be a living sacrifice? If so, we begin to position ourselves spiritually. Of course, as someone has observed, the problem with a living sacrifice is that it can crawl off the altar! So even though the grammar of the above text speaks of a once-for-all decision, it is a decision that requires ongoing recommitment.
The second tip Paul gives is that to be properly spiritually positioned, we need to stop something. I’ll tackle that in my next post.