{"id":464812,"date":"2025-01-08T12:16:47","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T06:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.com\/?p=464812"},"modified":"2025-01-08T12:16:47","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T06:46:47","slug":"does-my-sacrifice-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/2025\/01\/08\/does-my-sacrifice-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Does My Sacrifice Live?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>Abraham built an altar there and . . . bound his son Isaac.<br>\u2014Genesis 22:9<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abraham\u2019s intentions in offering his son to God were good, but it was not the offering God wanted. \u201cDo not lay a hand on the boy,\u201d the angel of the Lord told Abraham. \u201cDo not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son\u201d (Genesis 22:12). God didn\u2019t want Isaac\u2019s death; he wanted Abraham\u2019s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We make a version of Abraham\u2019s mistake. We think that the ultimate thing God wants from us is the sacrifice of death. What God wants from us is the sacrifice through death that enables us to do what Jesus did: sacrifice our lives. The idea isn\u2019t \u201cI am willing to go to death with Jesus,\u201d but \u201cI am willing to be identified with Jesus\u2019s death so that I may sacrifice my life to God.\u201d Nowhere in Scripture does God ask us to give things up simply for the sake of giving them up. He asks us to give things up for the sake of the only thing worth having: a life with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">God disciplined Abraham to show him the error of his belief, and the same discipline goes on in our lives. The goal is to loosen the ties that constrict the life of Christ in us, so that we can enter into a relationship with him. We may be challenged and disciplined until we finally understand: it is of no value to God to give him our lives for death. He wants us to be a living sacrifice, to let him have all our vibrant, vital powers. This is the offering that is acceptable to God.<br>By Oswald Chambers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Abraham built an altar there and . . . bound his son Isaac.\u2014Genesis 22:9 Abraham\u2019s intentions in offering his son to God were good, but it was not the offering God wanted. \u201cDo not lay a hand on the boy,\u201d the angel of the Lord told Abraham. \u201cDo not do anything to him. Now I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[686],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-464812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-daily-devotion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}