{"id":1224,"date":"2010-02-23T23:03:59","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T07:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wordpress\/?p=1224"},"modified":"2010-02-24T09:11:53","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T17:11:53","slug":"the-delight-of-sacrifice-2-24-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=1224","title":{"rendered":"The Delight of Sacrifice 2-24-2010"},"content":{"rendered":"
February 24, 2010<\/div>\n
The Delight of Sacrifice<\/div>\n

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I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls . . . \u20142 Corinthians 12:15<\/div>\n
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\"\"<\/a>Once “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit,” we deliberately begin to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ\u2019s interests and purposes in others\u2019 lives (Romans 5:5<\/a> ). And Jesus has an interest in every individual person. We have no right in Christian service to be guided by our own interests and desires. In fact, this is one of the greatest tests of our relationship with Jesus Christ. The delight of sacrifice is that I lay down my life for my Friend, Jesus (see\u00a0John 15:13<\/a> ). I don\u2019t throw my life away, but I willingly and deliberately lay it down for Him and His interests in other people. And I do this for no cause or purpose of my own. Paul spent his life for only one purpose\u2014 that he might win people to Jesus Christ. Paul always attracted people to his Lord, but never to himself. He said, “I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (\u00a01 Corinthians 9:22<\/a> ).<\/p>\n

When someone thinks that to develop a holy life he must always be alone with God, he is no longer of any use to others. This is like putting himself on a pedestal and isolating himself from the rest of society.\"\"<\/a> Paul was a holy person, but wherever he went Jesus Christ was always allowed to help Himself to his life. Many of us are interested only in our own goals, and Jesus cannot help Himself to our lives. But if we are totally surrendered to Him, we have no goals of our own to serve. Paul said that he knew how to be a “doormat” without resenting it, because the motivation of his life was devotion to Jesus. We tend to be devoted, not to Jesus Christ, but to the things which allow us more spiritual freedom than total surrender to Him would allow. Freedom was not Paul\u2019s motive at all. In fact, he stated, “I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren . . .” (\u00a0Romans 9:3<\/a> ). Had Paul lost his ability to reason? Not at all! For someone who is in love, this is not an overstatement. And Paul was in love with Jesus Christ.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It may be that our own goals and hopes and dreams need not be discarded IF we give ourselves and all our desires up to God first and ask Him to give us more meaningful and\u00a0everlasting goals. It is then paramount for us to stay connected with the Spirit of God\u00a0so we can stay on point with His goals that have replaced ours. <\/em><\/p>\n

We should remember that Jesus told the discipiles to wait until they received the Holy Spirit\u00a0 and the corresponding power\u00a0 from being connected to the Holy Spirit. We too should wait on defining and pursuing our goals until we are\u00a0filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.\u00a0\"\"<\/a> His goals become ours through the power of the Holy Spirit when our Spirit is connected to the Spirit of God. JDV\/DJR <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February 24, 2010 The Delight of Sacrifice I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls . . . \u20142 Corinthians 12:15 Once “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit,” we deliberately begin to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ\u2019s interests and purposes in others\u2019 lives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1224"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1237,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions\/1237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}