THE REASONABLE RESPONSE (cont'd)
And yes, here stands God
the Father looking down on His only begotten Son, painfully turning
His face away from the One that He has loved for an eternity. Oh,
the awful pain and agony, just so He could redeem mankind. God gave
ALL for us!!!
OH, how we owe ALL to God!!! Romans 12:1 tells us that the giving
of our bodies as a living sacrifice is our REASONABLE service. God
gave all for us and we must surrender ALL to Him as our REASONABLE
service. There is a statement in the Old Testament that illustrates
for us what surrendering all is. In I Kings 20:2-4 Ben-Hadad the king
of Syria besieged Samaria and demanded full surrender from the king
of Israel. The king of Israel’s reply in verse 4 was, “O
king, according to thy saying, I am thine, and all that I have.’
Even Ahab, the wicked king of Israel, knew what total surrender meant.
Ahab, the king of Syria, offers Ben-Hadad, first of all, himself.
Ahab describes Ben-Hadad as his king and offers himself as Ben-Hadad’s
servant. Ahab also offers Ben-Hadad all that he has. Total surrender
is what we need to offer God. We need to offer, first, ourselves.
We must give ourselves over to God totally and without any reservation.
To give ourselves over totally to God means to give Him full control
of each and every part of us, each and every minute of our lives,
and each and every aspect of our lives. There can be no part of our
lives left out; we must give Him our sleeping hours, we must give
Him the morning hours, we must give Him the main part of the day or
the working hours, we must give Him the evening hours, and all that
remains. We must give Him control over all parts of our lives; we
must give Him control over our thought life, we must give Him control
over our eating life, we must give Him control over our social life,
we must give Him control over our work life, we must give Him control
over our dating or married life, and we must give Him control over
our physical life (i.e. our actions/reactions to others, those things
that control us and not us them, those things we think we have control
over, etc.), our spiritual life, our private life, our public life,
and all that remains. We must also give all that we possess to Jesus.
We must give Him all or our money, all of our clothes, all of our
houses and lands, all of our vehicles, all of our toys, all of our
tools, all of our furniture, all of our friends, all of our loved
ones, all of everything. All must be given to the Lord Jesus. This
is our reasonable service. In talking about our sacrifice and surrender
to God, Jesus in Mark 9:49 said, “For everyone shall be salted
with fire, and every sacrifice will be salted (seasoned) with salt.”
Being seasoned with fire refers to being offered as a sacrifice as
well as having our chaff burned up. Seasoning food with fire (i.e.
barbecue) improves the flavor of the food. II Cor. 3:3 says, “clearly
you are an epistle (letter) of Christ, ministered by us, written not
with ink, but by the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone
but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.”
