Sacrifice

The word just keeps coming back to me. As I mentioned earlier, the Lord has called me to a season of fasting. Sadly, I have not been as faithful in this as I should have been. The Lord asked me “are you willing to sacrifice here so that you may reap the rewards later? Is {this issue} worth the cost now?”

At Awana last night, the kids’ lesson was about sacrifice. The teacher asked the kids to define a sacrifice. Their answer: something that costs something.

A teacher from high school and an overall incredible lady has been blogging about training, and I think training and sacrifice go hand in hand. You can read about her training here.

Bound4Life is a marvelous organization that prays for the end of abortion. The end of this blog post reminded me once again of sacrifices we must make in order to reap fruit.

P.S. I encourage you to research your products, because as we sacrifice time and convenience to purchase products untainted by abortion, companies must change their habits because of financial losses. More on that another time.

Another blogger wrote about asking the Lord to wake her up when He wants to spend time with her. How incredible. What a sacrifice. I’ll be honest: my first thought was, Lord, I want to spend time with You, but I want to sleep, too! My flesh does not like the sacrifice of getting up early to be with Jesus. But oh how my spirit grows.

So now what? Well, let me be practical. I've set my alarm for ten minutes earlier than normal {I know, ten minutes is not all that much, but if you were beginning to train for a marathon, would you go out and run 26.2 miles? Nope. You would start by maybe walking, maybe jogging a mile. You would start where you’re at. And besides, it’s what Jesus asked me to do, and to be frank, I at first begrudged Him those ten minutes.} These ten minutes are spent simply praying. I have to tell you- it is easier to wake up and pray in bed than it is to sleep ten more minutes and then just get up. Maybe it’s because you don’t necessarily have to be entirely awake to pray, but I find myself being totally awake and able to focus on Jesus. I think it’s because it’s what He asked me to do, so the grace is there.

And now as my prayer life is growing, I find myself praying more throughout my day. I walked to the gym today declaring the Blood of Jesus over my mind. The ten minutes in the morning get me hooked on Jesus; who needs caffeine when you can have the Lord??? I seriously crave Him; He’s my addiction and I love it… has anyone else gotten drunk in the Spirit? That is fun. Wanna get hooked on Jesus fast? Try it. Anyway.
Part of sacrifice is self-control, and I've got to exercise it right now and go work on a paper. :) Peace out. And leave comments. :)