DITW – Sacrifices – April 26
Exactly one month ago today (almost to the hour), I packed up my truck and a UHaul Trailer, loaded Maddie and Adrian, and headed north to Kansas City. I cried as I drove away from my home, knowing that everything would be different. I mourned having to be separated from my wife and half of my children and to go live a place I did not know and to face challenges I did not even know. I told myself that the reason I was doing this was because I was stepping out in faith to follow what God has presented to me, even though I don’t know what that is.
Since I have come here, I have had my fair share of issues from nanny troubles to emotional roller coasters with my kids, missing my wife, trying new churches, etc. I often found myself asking “God… if you are doing this, then why has this been so hard? Why do I struggle so much if this was your path? Was it your path? Did I royally screw up here?”
Then, in the middle of my daily bible study… things like this come up when David has sinned against God and is asked to make an altar in a land owned by Araunah: “Take it, my lord the king, and use it as you wish,” Araunah said to David. “Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and you can use the threshing boards and ox yokes for wood to build a fire on the altar. 23 I will give it all to you, Your Majesty, and may the Lord your God accept your sacrifice. But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on buying it, for I will not present burnt offerings to the Lord my God that have cost me nothing.” So David paid him fifty pieces of silver for the threshing floor and the oxen.” (2 Samuel 24:22-24, NLT). The key point here is “I will not present burnt offerings to the Lord my God that have cost me nothing”
It’s true that Christians (thankfully) are free from having to make animal sacrifices but I think that we often live in a world full of such convenience that we forget how blessed we are. This trip to Kansas has cost me much… not so much financially as mentally and spiritually. But in the end, I know God has a greater plan for me and this plan requires me to sacrifice something to gain everything.