Are You Ready To Be Offered?

"He ransoms our lives by giving Himself away so that we can live!"

I know I've heard this time and time again, but it always brings me to a place of complete and utter awe of my Savior. Going back to what Emily talked about in her post, "Jesus turns everything upside down and serves the world by giving his life as a ransom." For me? For us? For the world? Jesus goes against everything the world thought, and still thinks, and gives Himself away so I can live? Wow.

And then he calls us to give ourselves away so others can live. I'm immediately brought to the sacrifice culture point in the Super Ultra where it says "commit yourself to be slaughtered on behalf of your team so that they might live." I'd like to be able to say that for the past few summers I got to see what that looked like from the barney/driver position. But undoubtedly I know I failed in some way or another each summer. And now, I can only look forward, not knowing specifics of what it'll look like being on the admin team.

But ultimately, those specifics don't matter. The call is the same. Give myself away. The devo from yesterday in My Utmost for His Highest spoke to this a little bit, and I want to share it with you guys.

I'm ready to be offered. It is a transaction of will, not of sentiment. Tell God you are ready to be offered; then let the consequences be what they may, there is no strand of complaint now, no matter what God chooses. God put you through the crisis in private, no one person can help another. Externally the life may be the same; the difference is in will. Go through the crisis in will, then when it comes externally there will be no thought of the cost. If you do not transact in will with God along this line, you will end in awakening sympathy of yourself.

"Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar." The altar means fire -- burning and purification and insulation for one purpose only, the destruction of every affinity that God has not started and of every attachment that is not an attachment in God. You do not destroy it, God does; you bind the sacrifice to the horns of the altar; and see that you do not give way to self-pity when the fire begins. After this way of fire, there is not that oppresses or depresses. When the crisis arises, you realize that things cannot touch you as they used to do. What is your way of fire?

Tell God you are ready to be offered, and God will prove Himself to be all you ever dreamed He would be.

So what is the sacrifice? It's me. It's Katy. It's us. It's our whole life, our whole being. And I don't know about you guys, but that fire scares me. But I hold onto the promise in the last sentence, that God will be (and already is) all I've ever dreamed (or will dream) He could be.