Sacrifice

Is it worth it? That thing that you have given up to follow Christ, is it worth it?

^{Luke 18:28}Peter said to him, "We have left all we had to follow you!"

²⁹"I tell you the truth," Jesus said to them, "no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God ³⁰will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life."

Even Peter wanted to know if it was worth it. There is no doubt that sacrifice is part of our relationship with God. In today's world there are many opportunities for us to sacrifice for our Savior. Being in this world and not of it can be one of the most difficult. Especially when our wealth allows us comfort and our lifestyles allow complacency.

What have you sacrificed? What is it that you have given up to follow Christ? We are given a promise in Jesus' Words....."receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life". Are you a living sacrifice knowing the promise of eternal life is a promised blessing?

Newsboys: In Christ Alone

A special praise today for my baby girl who will be 10 on Sat. Happy Birthday Madilynn!!

Prayer: I am still sick from the remnants of the pneumonia, really need my energy and my brain back. Please pray for a job that I applied for, that I would be the right one for the job and that I am doing it for the right reasons. Please pray for our new parenting techniques that we have put in place for the kids, they are actually doing really well with it, need protection from Satan. Please continue to pray for our business. It's been a bit of a struggle being sick.

Praises: Hayden is well this week, whatever she had she is over now. Hayley got her babysitting certificate and has a job, she's finally able to make and spend her OWN money. Praise for our business, things are picking up. We celebrate 13 years this winter.

Please continue to pray for Joanne A. May the Lord do a healing in her body.

Please pray for Ginny R. Cancer is back in her right lung. May the Lord touch her and heal her body.

Possibilities

I am sure at some point this week you ran into an impossible task. Something that you could not accomplish on your own.

^{Luke 18:26}Those who heard this asked, "Who then can be saved?"

²⁷Jesus replied, "What is impossible with men is possible with God."

This life is full of impossible moments but we worship a possible God. The Creator of the Universe wants to save you. He sacrificed His son so he could have a relationship with you. He desires for you to live a life marked with the possibilities that come from Him.

I tend to be a person held back by personal fear and inadequate notions. My pastor once said to make plans with the idea that they will only succeed if God intervenes. As I learn to take a steps in faith, He does take care of the rest. I can tell you from experience that the things that weren't really God ideas to begin with tend to fail. Letting God get involved makes impossible; possible. It makes a quite girl from Salem, Oregon ready to do things that only God saw as potential.

If you are in a place, facing impossible challenges, let God be your savior. He is bigger than anything in this life and He desires to be with you and to see you through it. I think, sometimes, we are given more than we can handle so that we learn to trust God and the plan He has for us.

Please email us at womenofworship1@gmail.com if you would like to share your prayers or praise to be posted on tomorrows devotional.

Idolatry

After proclaiming his goodness, the Rich Ruler gets the answer he didn't want to hear.

Luke 18: ²²When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

²³When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. ²⁴Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! ²⁵Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Ouch!! After all of his attempts to be "good" he was still lacking. The rich ruler had put his money before God. He had one thing in his life he didn't want to part with. Greed and Idolatry.

I don't know if I even need to say it. Christ warned us about greed, God warned us about greed, the scriptures say it over and over again and yet, we still struggle. We either have it and don't want to part with it or we don't have it and covet those that do. Such a struggle. Search your heart continually for the spirit of greed. If you find you have put your material things above the things of God, it may be time to make some changes. God is in the business of repairing hearts and when your ready, He is willing to make a change in you and your attitudes about money.

I have to be make a confession here, the words of Jesus scream to me about my own need to repent in the area of Idolatry in my life. I recently heard Mark Driscoll speak about idolatry, he talks about making good things into God things and how it becomes a bad thing. Anything, and I mean anything, that gets in front of God in our lives is bad. Money, Relationships, Our Children, Our Ministries.....

Is there something in your life you would be angry at God for if He took it away? What if it was for your own good, would you be willing to give it up? I am not making any judgements here, I am personally in the middle of being called out for this in my own life by a dear Christian friend. I am putting the feelings of one person above what God is putting on my heart. I love God and want nothing more than a life filled with His glory and yet, I am bowing my head like the Rich Ruler, I don't know how to do this. Pray for me and I to pray for you and the things you choose to put before God. May we all find the strength, the courage, and the humble attitudes required to step out and faith and put God as number one in our lives.

This verse comes to mind as I think about idolatry in my life and I am reminded that there is a transforming power in Christ and He is doing a work in me.

^{Romans 12:1-2 (msg)} So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Good

One of my favorite attributes of Jesus is his wit. I admire how in one sentence He tells the Rich Ruler that no one is good except God and then lists the commandments. Now, giving the ruler the opportunity to answer, the Rich man responds with how "good" he is.

^{Luke 18: 19}"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. ²⁰You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.'"

²¹"All these I have kept since I was a boy," he said.

I have to say, I probably would have responded in a similar fashion. It is all too easy to bring my religion to a list of good and bad. These are the rules to follow and I follow them, that must earn me some points, right?!! Me, you, the rich ruler...Do we earn a special place because we are "good"? I think when he went to Jesus he thought he had already done everything necessary to inherit eternal life. I have known people in my own life that assume they are inheritors because of their goodness. Do you assume?

Christ came and died for us because we aren't good. Plain and simple. There isn't anything you can do to change the fact that without the sacrifice of His son, you couldn't be in relationship with God. The rules and commandments remind us that we truly are unworthy, all of us. We need God and we needed Christ's sacrifice.

^{Galatians 2:16}know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.

Eternal Life

^{Luke 18:18} A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

There it is..... the question we all ask ourselves at some point or another? What must I do?

We will look into the Rich Ruler this week and undoubtedly find out we are more like him than most of us care to acknowledge. Don't deceive yourself, you know you have asked the question. Here is an answer from Paul's words in Ephesians 2. (emphasis mine)

⁴But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, ⁵even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), ⁶and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; ⁹not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship,created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

It seems pretty clear to me that eternal life comes to us by our faith through the freedom of grace. All the things you are doing to earn it, really have very little meaning. God has a plan for you, no doubt, but that plan is when you are in Christ Jesus. When you are the new creation, born again, God will use you as a tool for His kingdom. Until you believe, your efforts are fruitless. A little faith, a free gift of grace and the inheritance of eternal life is yours.