Tuesday 20 Aug 2013

Tuesday Reading: Psalm 50:14-15

Key Verse: Psalm 50:15
15  And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

Devotion:
Sacrifice is certainly not dead! That should not be any surprise unless you are stuck on thinking of sacrifice as the killing of an animal in order to appease a wrathful God. The more we read through God’s Word the more that we should come to the conclusion that God was always looking for more than a simple animal sacrifice – after all, what could a simple animal sacrifice actually achieve?

God is looking for us to sacrifice something dear to us, something that has great meaning to us so that we can show Him that He means so much more to us than that thing that we hold dear. So if we are sports fans and God wants us to give it up for one week and do something special for Him, we should have no worries about doing that to show Him we love Him more than our sport we hold so dear. (I’m not picking on sport, it’s just one than many of us relate to)

The sacrifice being called for here is the sacrifice of thanksgiving. You may ask how giving thanks can be a sacrifice until you look at two points, the first being that any sacrifice needs to be pleasing to God and the second being that we need to be giving up something. Tick. Tick. God is always going to be please to accept our thanks when we give Him thanks for all that He does in our lives. We are giving up our pride by giving the praise to God for what He has done and not what we have been able to achieve without Him!

The Jews had all manner of vows and ceremonies that they ‘had to’ do in order to stay close to God. They had worked it to a fine art so that they could achieve some great position with God by doing so much for Him. But when people get caught up in doing that sort of thing they quickly build up their own praise and stop praising God for all that He does. So thanksgiving is our way of taking any praise and giving it to God. If you know any special people that do that, go to them and give thanks to God together, right now!

Points to Ponder:
Do you give thanks constantly?

Do you seek His praise or give Him praise?