Robert E Rasmussen.com

There are many practices which can help you at the marker of sacrifice. Confession of all known sin, especially in the presence of others you trust, can bring wonderful cleansing if you mean it from your heart. Naming the sin or practice for what it is can clarify the issue which needs to be sacrificed. Renunciation – a turning away from that which you were doing or thinking – can help you put to death that which you are leaving at the cross. Consecration is a holy confirmation of a decision to repent. These acts could be observed in some ceremonial or formal way to add importance. A communion service can be an important time to confess and solidify the work of sacrifice in your life.

There are very likely attachments in the spiritual realm which must be dealt with. You may have given place in your heart to a spirit of lust, greed, power, or such as these. This is a larger subject than we can deal with here, and one that is often dispelled or ignored, but I encourage you to discuss this with a godly believer who can draw on passages such as Ephesians six. There are some good books on this subject; just be sure to choose balanced writers and not extremists.

Confusion may figure into this part of the trail. Satan is a beguiler and deceiver. Your circumstances may be so complex that confusion becomes a byproduct. Stress may cause you to function at less than your normal capacity. Your health may suffer, even severely. What a guide we have in Jesus. Who can know all that caused Him to cry out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” You can be sure He will not be condemning of you when you are confused.

Friends may seek to comfort you, but few can walk where you are walking. Their attempts to help you through this time may seem hurtful. They may share scriptures with you intending to encourage you, but it will seem like they are belittling the seriousness by throwing a verse at it. Try not to judge or resent their efforts. Likely, they mean well. When they have their death-like experience, you will be more sensitive to them as a result of your season of sacrifice.

What should you do when, even while you are trying to sacrifice all to God, someone or something comes along and adds offense to an already horrible time? How can you avoid a setback at a critical season? The only advice I can offer is to admit to God in prayer that you have reached your limit. Tell Him you want to extend grace to others, that you know Jesus said “Father forgive them for they know not what they do,” but that God will have to give you grace enough because you don’t have it yourself. Cast your care on the Lord, for He cares for you.

Review some of the scriptures we have shared above. Meditate on them, and pray them back to God. Above all, remember that Jesus meets you at your Golgotha. He knows the pain of sacrifice, and since the Spirit of God dwells in you as a believer, you have the holy presence of Christ with you. The One who prayed, “Into Thy hands I commit My spirit” is there to help you commit your spirit into the loving hands of your Father in heaven.

I cannot say how long your season of sacrifice will last. It may be as brief as a minute or a day. It may be of the sort that extends for months or years. But of this I am sure: God does not leave anyone hanging any longer than needed. Crucifixion is not the end, but a passage to what is next. So don’t lose heart. God is able. He will take glory from your sacrifice, and move you on to the purposes He has in mind for you.

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Practical counsel for the disciple at the place of sacrifice

Has God put a challenge before you that seems insurmountable? As difficult as it is and will be, there is a positive aspect to appreciate. At least you know where you are on the trail, and you know what to do. Not only that, but you know that the One who came to this place first is staying with you right now.

Maybe you are at a different expression of Golgotha. Has God asked you to surrender something you treasured? If you truly surrendered your will to His, then you now have the task of laying it down at the foot of the cross and leaving it there. To sacrifice is to fully place your life into God’s hands, commit yourself to whatever He demands.

If you surrendered a sinful habit, the call to sacrifice means that you must now stop that habit. If God’s will confronted an addiction in your life, now you are at your own Golgotha where you must put that addiction to death. Pour out the alcohol, smash the syringes, burn the magazines, give up your smart phone or video games. Jesus said that if your eye offends you, pluck it out. If your hand offends you, cut it off. Crucifixion does whatever it takes.

I love accountability and I wish it worked. But if you have not gone to the cross and let your heart be broken before God, you can have a hundred godly believers holding you accountable and you will still find a way to sneak back to your addiction. Your sacrifice must be honest and complete, otherwise call it a wound because it isn’t a crucifixion.

If God asked you to surrender an inappropriate relationship, Golgotha demands that you break it off, not temporarily, but a clean break. No strings attached. Soon you are going to have to bury the corpse of Golgotha. So you better completely kill what God has asked for, because you don’t want to be buried alive.

Am I being harsh? Jesus was harsh. She who loses her life for Christ ends up keeping it. But she who tries to keep life will end up losing it. That’s harsh, but its truth. Many believers today are trying to have a bit of sacrifice with a bit of self. They are either miserable or desensitized to the things of God’s Spirit.

Did you surrender something or someone you treasured as much or more than God? That was an idol. You did wonderfully to say “nevertheless, not as I will.” But don’t leave that idol to reappear. Your work, ministry, or dream project may be an idol. Your hobby, your art or music, your games. Your spouse or girl or guy friend could have become on par with God in your life. God is calling you to sacrifice anything that competes with Him. Should you quit your job? Maybe. Kill your girlfriend? No! But you must lay them down at the foot of the cross and give them to God, inviting Him to resume first place in your life.

Dealing with these issues cannot be accomplished in a sentence prayer. You need to search out your heart in all honesty before God. “Repentance” is a change of mind, a turning around to face a different direction. “Mortify” means to put to death. Addictions, idols, chronic attitudes of self-centeredness typically take a long process to root out and destroy. I suggest you find a mature Christian friend or two, or a counselor who knows the Word, to help you work through your call to sacrifice and put God in first place again.

As it was with surrender, sacrifice may be a threshold to greater days. You may be at the point of finally putting to death an attitude, a relationship, a job, a location that has held you back from living in free and fulfilling service for God. Sacrifice is always hard, but it is always the next step toward joy in Christ.

Let me take you a bit further in the previous story of my faith crisis in college. That was quite a few years ago, and I did not at that time think of it as a Gethsemane-like call to surrender, but I now realize that it was. True to form, God wanted my surrender because He intended to ask for sacrifice. He might have worked in my heart to ask me to pursue architecture to the best of my ability. In a different believer, God might have required the sacrifice of climbing the professional ladder and designing or starting a company, not as a driven business person but as a faithful worker seeking to worship God in the marketplace. He did not do that with me. My faith crisis became a career crisis. As the Father required of Jesus the sacrifice of His life, the Father required of me, in a much milder version, my life as an architect. I did not know the specifics, but I believed that God wanted me to serve in a full-time occupation in ministry. This had been something I wanted to avoid because my dad was both a pastor and missionary. I had seen the jobs and wasn’t interested! You might ask, “Was it a difficult sacrifice?” Yes, and no. Yes in the sense that I had dreamed of the kinds of houses I could design (and live in!), and the cars I would drive, swooping into the three-car garage under the house! But in a deeper way, it was not a difficult sacrifice to make. I’ll tell you why (and here I am actually giving some counsel). When you love God, and want to be like Jesus, it is a deep relief when you finally know His will, even when it is hard, even when in a sense it is what you didn’t want to hear. Because deep down inside, what we really want, you and I, is not the amazing house and sports cars to go with it. What we really want is to please God.