The Thing I Love Most

"I lift a knife to the thing I love most
Praying You'll come so I can have both
What I need is You to touch me
What I need is for You to be the thing that I need."
-David Crowder Band, Let Me Feel You Shine

This whole week has been very different compared to most of my weeks so far. Lots of lessons are being learned and lots of changes are occurring. It's amazing to see how God speaks, and even more amazing to see what He speaks about. It's like ever since my prayer became "show me your way that your glory be made known," He's had no problem getting in my face and teaching me some new tricks. And I love it!
This is my New Spring in life. I have come out of the cold, dead winter, out of darkness and despair, out of emptiness, and I'm emerging into a spring-time of amazing, fast growth, changes, shifts, new beginnings, and new opportunities. This is what happens when we die to ourselves and arise in Christ.
We can't make the seasons in our lives change any more than we can make the seasons of the Earth change. It's useless, and feudal. Our job as humans is to surrender it all, dying branch and twisted root, to the One who can put life back into the Earth around us. Our job is to allow the glory rain of God to wash over our dead skin, saturating us with love, mercy, compassion, and grace, so that we can see where our life comes from and point back to him. Hosea 2:14-23
That sounds so general and cliche, but it's a basic of our faith. "...give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him." Romans 12:1
I've had to learn a tiny bit about self-sacrifice this week. One lesson He keeps pushing on me is that whatever I love most, whatever I hold dear and fear to lose more than anything, I need to bring to the altar of sacrifice for Him. The story of Abraham and Isaac comes to mind. It finally makes sense: what did Abraham love more than the son the Lord had given him? What other belonging or desire was more important to Abraham than his own flesh and blood, the thing he had waited for his whole life to possess? Nothing. But God tested his faith and commitment by commanding him to give up his own son, merely because He said to.
Oh that I would be so willing!
There are lots of things in my life that are important to me, and others that are becoming more important to me, even recently. But my prayer has to be, and has been, "Lord, be glorified in me and this life you've given me. Allow me to continually sacrifice those things which I hold most dear, even down to my own life, as fragrant offerings on the altar of praise, that you would be made known, that I would die to myself and this world, risen in Christ, and that your glory-light will be lit and made bright for the world to see. Amen."