Sacrifices, Gifts, and Souls

What are you willing to give up?
To holistically follow Jesus.

The first stop He usually makes in my experience is our relationships, especially of those that we have over or undervalued. When you've invited the Holy Spirit to judge your heart and to know you. All of you in a way that only He can.

You can study Love forever, but until you've known what it is like to be loved and known, and judged by the humble creator of you, who knows your downfalls and your pick-me-ups, who knows how to encourage you and break you down, and who knows what He's doing when He leaves you in a desert, then I'm afraid that I cannot say you've experienced love. True love is this, that a brother would lay down his life for the sake of others, so that others may receive gain by his loss. By God, how great a love is that. This is what true friendship is, what true relationship is.

The second stop He usually makes is our own works and deeds. Some things are simply harder to get rid of than others, and the steps might be in a different order for you. Yet a big problem of mine was the fact that I thought I could earn my way to God through sacrificing enough time, doing enough things to earn his attention, or Love. Yet as it expresses in Job, Psalms, even minor prophets "who can repay the Lord, and who can He be in debt to?"

You may sacrifice as much as you want, as often as you like, yet it will never ever come close to the sacrifice that God made when His son was lost. Not only that but through a series of covenants and vows the Lord has made, He has sacrificed His own will to a system that is constantly tried by evil forces to be abused and He has chosen to (as far as I can tell) continue to only work through His creation. 

The Third stop He makes is your motivations. The deep desires and drives you have within your heart. Some of them programmed by the world you live in to be within you, and others created by God for you to have. Why are you doing things for Him when your heart is far from Him? He does not require simple acts or sacrifices, He requires your life. You must be willing to give back to the Lord Most High the life that He gave you, else it will never amount to anything in terms of eternity. Most likely, it will be forgotten by all. He requires complete allegiance and loyalty to His kingdom. To His truth. You do not serve governments of the world, you do not serve businesses, and you do not serve yourself until You have done what you do unto the world. 

If we are all warriors, you must consider at some point how willing you are to lose your life to the enemy's tactics. You must realize that our ultimate gift is that of eternal life, the life that we can live in the reality of right now, and know deeply that there is a very great demand on our heads. If you truly want to see the expansion of the kingdom, practice the power of presence, and walk with boldness against all foreheads, proclaiming truth no matter what. You must be willing to die yourself, as this is what the King demands. We are in war.  It is time to start living like it.