Sacrifice

Over the past few weeks a few things have been pulling on my heart, demanding that I write about them. Among the most persistent is this, would you die for Christ?
Would you be torn apart by lions or even have your intestines ripped out and eaten by pigs, all for the name of Jesus? 
I began to think, if I had one chance to really make people think about their salvation, if I had one shot to stand up in front of a thousand Christians and make them really think deeply about their current state as a follower. I would teach on that, I would ask the people, if you were faced with the most gruesome and painful death imaginable, would you stick to your guns and hold to the love you have for God? Or would you simply deny Him for the sake of saving your human body?  

Some people think that God died so we wouldn’t have to suffer, or God wants the best for us and He wouldn’t make us go through that. I have even heard people argue that God takes away the pain of those who do sacrifice themselves. Really, this last claim aggravates me deeply; a sacrifice without cost is no sacrifice at all! How can you take that from past martyrs? 

I want everyone to understand that Christianity itself is sacrifice. Not only is physical pain involved but mental as well and the mental sacrifices you must make are what bring you to the point of self sacrifice. Everyday you must sacrifice your will, fleshly desires and many other things. 
Let’s look at the Bible for some evidence regarding my belief:

1 Peter 2:20-21
 20 But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.

James 1:2-4
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

1 Peter 1:6-9
6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  

Luke 9:62
62 Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Ephesians 5:1-2 
“Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” 


The number of scriptures on the cost of following Jesus Christ is great, I could go on an on, but I think I can get the message across with only a few. 

Just as a man or woman looks for their future spouse, so does God. We are that spouse. You would not want someone who only pretends to love you, someone who is merely with you because you promised them a nice house and some fancy cars. You would want them to love you for you, because they are struck with the beauty of who you are and the same is for God, He doesn’t want fakes. 
My point is this,

1 Peter 1:6-9
6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

God places trials in our lives to weed out the bad from the good, the unfaithful from the faithful, to help us grow, furthering our walk with Him and to find his true lovers.  Your salvation is not received when you say the words of submission and acceptance, those are only the beginning. The Bible says that we must “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” You must prove yourself faithful to the end to receive this gift from God.

What I am trying to get across is this; Christianity is not something to be taken lightly. 
I want to express to you that it is tough, and I don’t mean Americanized, watered down Christianity. I mean the real stuff, laid out by Jesus himself, not some silly man made theology. These new age teachers preach safety, mediocre lives and no sacrifice. It’s wrong, by doing this we have created Christians who have no idea what they have gotten themselves into! Look, we must prepare new followers, ask them tough questions that might scare them away, ask them if they are willing to give up EVERYTHING, and I mean everything. 

Luke 9:62
62 Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

There is something severely wrong when over half of the Christians in this world, spiritually are in the same place they were, 10 years ago. I am convinced that if I were to ask a crowd of 1000 Christians whether they were willing this very moment to die for the name of Christ, that only about 100 or so would be able to truthfully say yes. But, I am also convinced that it would make them think very long and hard about their salvation.
The situation is not a good one, don’t call yourself a Christian unless you are willing to take up your cross and leave everything else behind. 

As people who have known the Lord longer, we must prepare our new family members so that they may succeed in the fight for their salvation. 
It doesn’t stop once they say that prayer of salvation, it begins and we must be there to disciple them! 

Luke 14:25-35

25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and
sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. 27 And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
28 “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? 29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, 30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
31 “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.
34 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? 35 It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.
“Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

The process of sacrifice brings us closer to the Lord; everything you give up is more than worth it. 
For everything that you give, you get it back doubly in a new, fresh and wonderful way! 
Giving up the world for God’s presence, alone is more than enough. 
Just like the song “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand else where.”

Don’t get me wrong, God doesn't sit up in heaven demanding sacrifices from us all day long, but it’s the sacrifices that bring us closer. That’s what true selfless love is. 

Make sure you can make such a sacrifice, making sure that your level of intimacy with the Lord is so deep that you are willing to die for Him even though He is unseen. 

John 15:13
13Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends

Why is Suffering in the World if God Loves us?

If God truly loves us, if He is powerful; why is death, depression, emotional oppression and every other kind of suffering even existent? These are a few questions I want to answer in great detail. I think it very important to know why the world is the way it is. It is not wisdom to believe in something that has ‘loop holes’. Nor is it wise to believe in something and not know why. Though these questions are complex and might even provoke doubt in ones mind I believe there are clear answers to them. That we can know without doubt the truth regarding this subject. The Bible says, 
“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” (Proverbs 25:2) 
 Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. (Eph 5:17)  
 Ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you (Matthew 7:7 )”

Lets begin here, with a few other questions.

1. Where did sin come from, did God create it?
I have heard many people ask this question, as I myself have. 
We must look at all sides of this subject in order to get a clear answer, so lets present another question that will challenge us to think.
God created all things, and it says He is the giver of good gifts.  (James1:16Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. 17Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.)  It says in the book of Genesis, after each day of creation, He saw that what He brought into being was good. (Genesis 1:4 God saw that the light was good) But He created Satan, whom we all know as evil, so how is it that God creates only good? 
The Lord created all beings innocent and pure from the start, but He instilled in us choice, our choices are either to obey and follow Him or to disobey and walk away from Him. Everything apart from God is evil, everything the opposite of God is evil, and when we do the opposite of what God would do, we sin. 
For example, arrogance, conflict, hate and impatience are all the opposite of Humility, peace, love and patience, which are all traits of God that He commands us to have. 



2. Has Suffering always been in the earth and where did it come from?
No, evil and suffering have not always been in the earth. How do we know this? Let’s examine Genesis 1-3. As I said before, after God created each thing it says, “He saw that it was GOOD”. God created only good things, He created a perfect and uncorrupt world.
It wasn’t until after Adam and Eve sinned (by eating the forbidden fruit) that the earth became cursed (Genesis 3) therefore bringing suffering.


3. Who is responsible for suffering inhabiting our world?
If we go over all of our information we will find that humans are wholly responsible for the way the world has turned out. Every individual is responsible for their actions. From the beginning there have been consequences. God commands us not to do things for our own good.  Just think of this, if man had not sinned then there would be no hurting, death, worry, grief or any other kind of evil. We would be walking in the garden with the Lord in complete and utter peace. 
We can sit and complain blaming it on the devil all we want but it is a foolish waste of time to do so, Satan did not corrupt the world with evil until we allowed him to. It is the same today, he tempts us but it is not sin until we give in and do what he wants us to do. 

A friend was telling me about her college’s philosophy teacher, he had actually brought this topic up in class and was mocking Christianity, which prompted me to write this post and explain the answer.

One of his points was this:

“I once asked a district attorney what the worst case he had ever seen was, and he replied, ‘”a young girl disobeyed her father, so her father punished her by beating her with a metal pipe cleaner which ripped her skin away, then he filled a bathtub full of chemicals and made her sit in it. She eventually died of pain.”’ The mother was there the whole time and did nothing to stop it.” He then asks her classroom, “If the mother was there, had the power to stop the torture and eventual death, but didn’t, wouldn’t that make her guilty?” The whole classroom immediately conceded that she was guilty for not stopping it. The teacher then goes on to say that since God is all powerful and has the power to quell all suffering that ‘if He were real’ he would be guilty of not stopping our suffering.

My reaction was, ‘wow very good argument,’ but honestly it isn’t. If we have relationship with Christ and truly understand His ways and goodness, then we will know that this ‘idea’ stems from the mentality of not owning up to, or taking responsibility for anything we do. The horrible crime, that is stated above is the result of a slow degeneration. The world walks away from the Lord more and more everyday, as we do this we allow more and more evil to take root inside of us, the more we sin, the deeper the evil goes and the further we get from God. So in the end it is our fault, again we are responsible for everything we see today. 
(Isaiah 24:4-6
4The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, the exalted of the earth languish. 5The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. 6Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth's inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left.)

4. If God is powerful and He truly loves us, why doesn’t He snap His fingers and make it go away?

a. God is a God of choice
We have already established that the Father is a God of choice, but allow me to elaborate on that. The Lord was building a family when He thought to create us, those were His first intentions. Just like any human, The Lord wants to be loved genuinely. 
The reason I am saying this is because many people think and say that God set us up for failure from the beginning, by allowing us to have a choice between disobeying and obeying. But I want to ask this, would you want to go about your life doing everything someone told you, doing only what you were forced to do, and loving mechanically? No you would absolutely hate it and rebel. We know that we were created in God and Jesus’ Image, (Genesis 1) so by knowing this we can see that God doesn’t want robots to do what they don’t want to do.
Yes, He wants us to come to and love Him but He will not force you.
Just know that if you do the opposite of God’s will there will be no protection or favor over you. Therefore you will be subject to the enemy and your flesh.


b. God knows our hearts
God sees our wicked desires. Would you buy your child a new toy right after he/she walked up to you and said, “I hate you, get away from me, I don’t want anything to do with you.” My guess is no, the child is clearly undeserving and needs a good spanking. These are the very words earth’s heart is uttering. Rebellion, denial, arrogance, deceit all of these things have invaded our hearts and filled the place that God is supposed to be filling.  The Lord does not reward evil.

Romans 1:24-32 (CEV)
24So God let these people go their own way. They did what they wanted to do, and their filthy thoughts made them do shameful things with their bodies. 25They gave up the truth about God for a lie, and they worshiped God's creation instead of God, who will be praised forever. Amen.
26God let them follow their own evil desires. Women no longer wanted to have sex in a natural way, and they did things with each other that were not natural. 27Men behaved in the same way. They stopped wanting to have sex with women and had strong desires for sex with other men. They did shameful things with each other, and what has happened to them is punishment for their foolish deeds.
28 Since these people refused even to think about God, he let their useless minds rule over them. That's why they do all sorts of indecent things. 29 They are evil, wicked, and greedy, as well as mean in every possible way. They want what others have, and they murder, argue, cheat, and are hard to get along with. They gossip, 30 say cruel things about others, and hate God. They are proud, conceited, and boastful, always thinking up new ways to do evil.
These people don't respect their parents. 31They are stupid, unreliable, and don't have any love or pity for others. 32 They know God has said that anyone who acts this way deserves to die. But they keep on doing evil things, and they even encourage others to do them. 



 c. God sent His Son into the world to take back our authority
God has sent us a way, to get out of the mess we made.
Most people think that Jesus only died to restore our relationship with the Father and eternal life, but that is wrong. 
Jesus took back our authority, (Revelation 1:18 and the living one. I died, but now I am alive forever, and I have the keys to death and the world of the dead.)
He gave us the ability to cast out demons, heal the sick and bring back the dead, He even said we would do greater things than what He did while He was on earth. The problem is, nobody seems to be using those gifts, the Church should be functioning in these every day but we aren’t. We have been given the remedy to our wildly spreading disease and yet we don’t use it. 

God did in fact make a way for us to ‘defend that little girl’ when He sent His son to die on the cross. The way we do that is by abstaining from sin and resisting the temptation of the enemy. Look at it like this, had the man never gone so far down the road of sin and walked away from God, the thought of doing such a thing would never have enetered His mind. As it says in (Romans 1:28 28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice… NIV) 
God is not responsible for the things WE do. He gave us the earth to rule and subdue, we took it corrupted it, and now we will have to live with it. 


Also remember this, the Lord is going to, ‘snap his fingers and make everything go away,’ just not yet,( Revelation 21:4 “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.") (Revelation 21: 6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. 8But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”NIV)

    d. When will God relieve our suffering?
In Revelation it explains why God hasn’t remade the world and when He will remove suffering.
Revelation 6: 9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. 10 They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” 11 Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow servants, their brothers and sisters, were killed just as they had been.

Revelation14:14-16 14 I looked, and there before me was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like a son of man with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. 15 Then another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, “Take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” 16 So he who was seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.




5. The summary
                               
I think most people forget that God does not only love, but He also has a ‘Fierce wrath.’ Although He loves us He will not be looked upon as unholy, He will not have his grace and mercy trampled on. My God is not a push over; He is a strong and fierce leader. He will discipline His children, He will pour out His wrath on those who refuse to listen and obey. Your life that you have is a gift and the giver can take it back at any moment. Fear the Lord. 
It’s time to stop blaming the decisions you make on the person next to you. In God’s eyes it’s all the same, He knows what you have done in the secret and there will be a punishment for it, you can blame God and waste all the time you want, but in the end you will answer for what you have done, you will not deny them.
I am not saying this to scare you, I am telling you this because firstly, I am tired of people viewing God as just another Human who is unholy, who can be trampled on and insulted. And also to help you to understand why He doesn’t snap His fingers and make it all go away. Just thank the Lord that He has such a great deal of love, patience, mercy and grace with us or we would have been done for in the Garden of Eden.

I encourage you to sit, or even get on your face before the Lord and ask Him to open your eyes to see, He wants to show us things; He just wants us to put aside our old ways and love Him genuinely. 
It’s not a burden to worship God; it’s not the end of the road, it’s not the ending of freedom. The love of God is the beginning of freedom and wisdom! Cast aside all the distorted images and views you have of God, because I can guarantee that they are 100% wrong, all it takes is giving yourself up for a few minutes and saying, “God, I want something bigger than myself, I want wholeness, show yourself to me.”