Sacrifice

The heart of love is sacrifice isn't it, a married couple need to sacrifice some of their own needs in order for the marriage to work, parents need to sacrifice their own time and money for the well being of their children, love of a job means a sacrifice of time back home, the point is we all make sacrifice for the thing we love, the important thing is do we love the right thing. Speaking as someone who struggled with addiction, I often sacrificed my health in order to get high.
What do you sacrifice so that your heart can get what it loves? I don't know about you but I sacrificed so much to so many different things that in the end all of them fell short of providing me with the love and satisfaction I was looking for. A job always lets you down, a partner will always make mistakes, a car rusts, money doesn't quite cut it, we go on.
The perfect sacrifice that is made many of us don't even see, I didn't for years, the perfection of Jesus' sacrifice in our place. He gave the biggest sacrifice ever, not only time but his own life, there is no greater love than when someone lays down his life for you. This at a time when we don't even care for him or love him. Some people say to me why can't I pay the price, why can't I do good things and why can't God just let me off some of the bad things I have done, we all make mistakes.
Let's imagine for a moment that you have a car, you crash that car into your neighbours. Now there are a couple of options here, you can pay for the damage, or your neighbour can pay for the damage. Either way somebody has to pay for the consequence of your action, there is always a cost. Take it another way, say your son smashes a plate, he says sorry and you forgive him, however it has still cost you the plate. You see the same is true for us, we have all broken God's laws and we have a fine we need to pay, unfortunately we don't have the means to pay that fine, we need somebody to pay that fine, it is the highest costing fine in the whole universe therefore it is going to take someone with the biggest heart of love to pay that fine. It is going to cost so much that someone needs to give their life as a ransom, as payment, as the bounty if you like.
In steps Jesus Christ who sacrificed himself so that debtors like you and I can have all our debts wiped clean, all we need do is come to him acknowledging that we have nothing to offer as payment and turn to him and he will provide it for us.
God doesn't call you to come to him with your goodness, it is like going to the neighbour of the smashed car and offering him 20p, it's an insult it cost far more than that. If you feel you are going to stand before God at the end of your life and offer him 20p as a merit for getting to him, that is a huge insult, especially when he has paid for it himself.
Look, this isn't about us breaking a few rules and trying to make up for it, God is your father who wants the best for you, he wants to love you, much like you would with your own children provide them with rules that is going to give them the best, God is the same. He is offering you the biggest help, the biggest satisfaction, the biggest joy, the biggest freedom and we turn away from him and play around in the mud when there is an offer of paradise for free!
drop me a line georgeosborn@avantiministries.com