“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you us the best thing you can do for Him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what He wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (Romans 12:1-2 MSG)
You may have read the above verses in the NIV, NASB or ESV, but there is something comforting to me about how the Message expands on the familiar wording of how we are to present ourselves “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (ESV)
I don’t know about you, but that ESV verse puzzled me for a long time, until I took it to the Father and asked for His insight.
And He reassured me that all my life given over to Him – every word I speak to others, every action I take throughout my day, (whether laundry, bill paying or changing the cat litter), every prayer I lift to Him to help me in any moment of need – is indeed an offering of worship to Him.
All of me, offered up to God every day, is a living gift for His delight. Right where I am at, right now.
My words for 2021 are ‘living present,’ which makes me chuckle in the context of this verse. I am the living present best suited to pour out in service to my King!
#sharingHope #livingpresent
KARLA LEES 