March 31
“He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors Me; and to him who orders his way aright I shall show the salvation of God.” (Psalm 50:23)
When we think about sacrificing ourselves to God, we may imagine being a missionary to a remote place or being expended as a martyr in a dramatic ending and testimony to God. But God will call very few of us to this kind of service. The vast majority of us will be called to sacrifice ourselves in the daily grind. Daily diligence to do the things He has given us to do and to keep ourselves from sin and being tainted by the world. That is perhaps as difficult as actually dying for Christ, and maybe in some respects it is more difficult because it involves thousands of acts of obedience over thousands of days; many, many decisions of obedience and dying to ourselves it seems to me are more difficult than one big decision that costs us our lives.
In the verse quoted above, we see a different kind of sacrifice or at least a different aspect of sacrificing ourselves. God mentions that when we offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving we honor Him. Now God I am sure had in mind in this verse the actual sacrifices prescribed in the Law of Moses that the Israelites were to bring before the Lord (see Leviticus 7:11-15), but I think the spirit of this sacrifice still applies to us today, in that God desires us to be giving thanks to Him on a regular basis.
How does giving thanks and sacrificing ourselves and rededicating ourselves fit together? Well, one could think of thanksgiving as a small act of dying to ourselves because we have to stop and consciously and openly acknowledge God. We acknowledge that we don’t have all the resources and can’t generate sustenance on our own. We can’t protect ourselves or others or even keep ourselves alive. The more we acknowledge God, the more we die to ourselves, and the more we become a sacrifice dedicated to the Lord.
I personally don’t do well giving thanks to God. It just doesn’t come naturally. I wish it did. I think it is because of my pride. I am more conscious of my labors and what I have done than I am for what God has provided and done through my labors. This issue of thanksgiving, or lack thereof, points at the root of why we don’t make good sacrifices and don’t want to rededicate ourselves to God: our pride. We think we’re something. We think we’ve done it. We think we’ve accomplished something. And then we want to protect that something and somebody that we have created; dedicating ourselves as a sacrifice to God might ruin us! God may not take care of us as well as we can take care of ourselves, and God may require effort that we may not want to do.
Giving thanks is a sacrifice and a good reminder that all things come from Him. And if we are acknowledging that all things come from Him, then it is a smaller step to give back to Him what came from Him in the first place, our very lives, our energy and passion each and every day.