Live in God's WillSample

                                   Part One: What is God’s Will for Us to Become?

DAY 3: Live in God’s will by becoming a living sacrifice. 

God wants us to present our bodies to Him as a living sacrifice. That means obedience will feel painful at times. Our bodies will try to squirm off the altar of submission to run to our self-gratifying desires. No doubt, abstaining from sexual sin is a sacrifice, but it is also a form of worship. We are choosing God and obedience over our flesh and sin. We are accepting His will over our will. 

God’s will for us is to engage in what is good, acceptable, and perfect. We learn what that is by spending time reading and applying the Word to our lives. The world will tell us it is reasonable to get drunk on the weekends or on your 21st birthday. It’s normal to have sex if you’re dating. It’s normal to look at porn. However, we need to ask God to renew our minds according to the values of the Bible. Only then can we walk in the will of God. 

Jesus understands what it means to be a living sacrifice. Every day of His 33 years on earth, He chose to say no to temptation and yes to God’s will for Him. If He didn’t present His body as a living sacrifice first, He could not have fulfilled God’s will for Him to be our final sacrifice so that we could have a loving, intimate relationship with our Creator. Just like Jesus, we must choose to live a sacrificial life to be in the will of God and for Him to use our lives for His purposes. 

Jesus didn’t just save us so that one day we’d be forgiven and perfect in heaven. He wants us to set ourselves apart from the world. He wants us to pursue righteous living. He wants us to continually search our hearts and see if there are any areas we need His help in transforming ourselves. 

Here are some very real and challenging examples that we need to wrestle with: He wants us to love our enemies. People who hate us! He wants us to forgive everyone for anything. ANYTHING! He wants us to believe the best in others and not gossip, slander, or judge. He wants us to put others' needs in front of our own (Try out marriage to grow in that one!) These are really hard, right? Sanctification is painful. It’s like open soul surgery with no drugs to numb the pain when we realize we are just broken, sin-filled people, desperately in need of Him to change us. 

Sometimes, when we think about pursuing holiness, we think about following oppressive rules, not our character development. These expectations of God are not to oppress us, but to grow us to have more of His heart and mind. We are all on a journey of purging sin out of our lives. There are days we obey, and there are days we sin. What God cares about is the attitude of our hearts. Let us commit today to present our bodies as living sacrifices and to renew our minds with the Word of God so that we can become who God wants us to be. 

· What can you do to intentionally renew your mind with God’s Word? 

· What might God be asking you to sacrifice to pursue holiness? 

PRAYER:

Lord, thank You for Your mercy in this process of becoming holy, good, acceptable, and perfect. I want to surrender to You areas in my life where I have not honored you with my body (what I’ve watched, read, listened to, what my hands have done, what my mouth has said). God show me what areas of my mind need to be transformed. Show me what things of this world are enticing me away from becoming more like Jesus. Amen.