Lent Day 37: We Are an Offering (IV)

Good morning to you, my friend!

How did you sleep last night?

Feeling ok this morning?

On this thirty-seventh lenten morning, please allow me to encourage you to begin this day with a stretch and a smile.

Would you please indulge me?

Stand.

Stretch.

Smile.

Surrender your muscles, your thoughts, your words, your actions to the Lord this morning as a beautiful sacrifice of praise.

As we continue our ascent toward Jerusalem, the place where the events of Holy Week took place over 2,000 years ago, we are led to ponder the phrase below: 

We lift our lives up to You. . .

“I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live

but Christ lives in me.

The life I live in the body,
I live by faith in the Son of God.”

Galatians 2:20, NIV

The above verse prompts us, followers of Christ, to examine ourselves . . . 

Have we fallen in love with the Lover of mankind? 

Have we dedicated this earthly tent of a body to Him and His kingdom?

Is our living marked by a sacrifice of love or are we tagging along for the ride as mere opportunists? 

Has "Not my will, but Thine alone" become a familiar utterance in both mundane and serious circumstances, and is our flesh seeking to defer to the Spirit?

Unless our lives express true belief and true repentance, unless our hearts yearn for complete restoration with God, unless our bodies embrace the sweet fellowship of sharing in Christ's death in regard to sin, we cannot fully experience the fullness of love and worship that the Father has reserved for us.

Where are we, then, on the journey of living solely through Christ? 

Are we truly crucified with Christ or does Me-centrism readily rear its ugly head at each turn? 

Seen under the Lord’s microscope, does the sum of our experiences—joys, sorrows, peaks, pits, hills, gullies—speak of lives that are gratefully offered to the Father, for His glory alone?

For most of us, discouragement may threaten to undo us because we know our lives do not measure up to God’s standard. We know inherently that, left to ourselves, we would complete disintegrate to nothingness. Gratefully, we have a Savior who has gone before us. He is the One who fastens us upon the rock of ages cleft for us, who knows each person by name, who moves us from a self-reliant spirit to a Christ-dependent heart, who turns our nothingness into His everything. He is the One who can and does live in anyone and everyone who surrenders the reins of control to Him.

Would you approach the throne of grace with me? 

Lord, please, 

guide us to follow You and to die to ourselves. 

Grant that our sinful nature might be crucified daily 

with its passions and desires. 

Come and breathe Your light into our dry bones, 

fill our hollow shells with the glorious presence of Your Holy Spirit. 

Unlock for us the wonderful mystery of living a life of offering—

that the breath in our nostrils, 

the melody in our hearts, 

the peace in our souls would always be Christ, 

and Christ alone.