Day 24: Sacrifice Of Praise

Waiting is hard.  Joyful waiting is harder still.

It takes sacrifice.

The other night I had to make a sacrifice.  I had to give up what I thought was going to happen to do something that I wasn't looking forward to, basically I didn't have any other choice.  I wasn't too happy about it.

Then I think about sacrifice in the Bible.  It was supposed to happen on a regular basis, but there were also special times that it happened.  Like when someone had sinned, to atone for that sin they were required to make a sacrifice.  But it also happened in times of celebration, with praise and thanksgiving.

The time that I think of this happening was when David brought the ark of the Lord back to Jerusalem.  He and all the people danced in crazy celebration before the Lord.  There was this huge celebration.  Then they offered sacrifices to God.

"They brought the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the Lord."  -2 Samuel 6: 17

When I think of the sacrifice that I made, although it wasn't the same kind (like a physical thing that you could touch and see), my heart was not in the right place.  My heart was not in the place of making that sacrifice with praise.  I was more making the sacrifice with anger and frustration.

How much could this change my perspective, if I think about how a sacrifice was made in the OT when I have to make a sacrifice?  We don't need to make those animal sacrifices today because Jesus came and died as an atonement for all our sins, but what we do can still be a sacrifice.  A pouring out of ourselves in thanksgiving, in humility, in praise, for who God is and for all that He has done.

It takes God changing my heart.  Instead of being hard and bitter, waiting with joy for the Lord to come, to speak, to give me peace.  It happened the other night as I prayed for God's strength, because I knew on my own I could not make it through.

To see more posts in this series just click on the label "31 Days" under the title of each post in this series, or go back to Day 1 here and choose from the list of days listed at the bottom of the post.