Discussing What It Means To Be A Living Sacrifice
You may have heard that you must sacrifice for your job by waking up early in the morning, being there on time, and following directions. You may have heard that you must sacrifice for relationships by listening, sharing ideas, giving gifts, being dependable, and holding one another accountable. If you would humble yourself to be a living sacrifice for the sake of your bills, your family’s well-being, or your job, how much more should you present yourself as a living sacrifice to Yeshua, the One who created everything? A living sacrifice is the greatest show of allegiance. In this post, we will discuss some of the effort that we are required to put in when we proclaim that we are Kingdom of Heaven Ambassadors.
Today, our pledge of allegiance to Yeshua is being undermined by the false teaching about grace. We are supposed to be a living sacrifice. Grace is one of the most misused, mis-taught, and mis-trusted topics of the Western church today. Grace does not take away from your requirements at work; it does not cancel your penalties anywhere beneath the sun. If you rob a store, you cannot repent and cancel your consequence by stating, “I have been saved by grace”. People only believe that grace alone saves by belief in false grace doctrine. Grace without faith (which cannot be separated from deeds according to James 2:24) does not save. Grace is the buffer for when you have fallen short of the law, and requires a contrite heart for activation (See Psalms 51:17). The hyper grace doctrine is a Great Deception of our day as I said in my previous post, Biblical Grace Vs. Hyper Grace. I assure you, it does not cancel the penalties of unrighteousness beyond the sun either. You must conduct yourself in righteousness, pursuing holiness, and reflecting the image of Yeshua: a living sacrifice. You must be willing to make the sacrificial decisions to walk in holiness: cut off your desires to magnify His. For this reason Yeshua said these things in the revelation that he showed John:
“I know your works; you have a name of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is on the point of death, for I have not found your works perfect in the sight of my God. Remember then what you received and heard; obey it, and repent. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you. Yet you have still a few persons in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes; they will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. If you conquer, you will be clothed like them in white robes, and I will not blot your name out of the book of life; I will confess your name before my Father and before his angels. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. (Revelations 3:1-6)
Jesus desires that we be hearers and doers of His word: a living sacrifice. He says clearly that if we are abundant in hearing and lax in doing, we will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Ambassadors, we need to take His warning seriously!
To some extent, I was a prepared and living sacrifice for the US military. In April 2010, I was deployed to Iraq. The Pentagon participates in the ongoing process of gaining intelligence–or whereabouts and status reports on other countries–then they create a strategy that includes how many military personnel will be needed to support each military mission, and what equipment will be necessary to send them with. Accordingly, I found out that my skill set was needed in Iraq one month prior to when I needed to leave. I was given a checklist of many things that I needed to do before I left. I had training to accomplish to get familiar with the Middle eastern culture. I had ammunition training, survival training, and many other trainings to attend prior to departure. I had to get training on my job, so that during my deployment, I could work at maximum capacity for my specialty. I had to get vaccinations and go to many medical appointments to ensure that my health could withstand the deployment. When the time came for me to take off, I left with a lot of knowledge and preparation, several uniforms, more than one pair of boots, toiletries, ammunition, guns, and books to supplement my knowledge. I left with about 12 other military personnel, and we traveled from San Antonio, Texas to Iraq together.
The Sacrifice In Service
Similar to my experience as a military troop, you are deployed here to the Earth from the Kingdom of Heaven to be a living sacrifice. God has sent you to the Earth prepared for the assignment to which you have been assigned. He has given you His word, talents, passions, wisdom, demographics, psychographics, spiritual armor, and everything else necessary to fulfill your assignment. Do not take what Yeshua has given you and yield it to another person, place, or things causes with the greatest allegiance! There is a steep penalty for that!
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With my enlistment into the military, I had to sign a contract stating my willingness to defend the country even if it required me to lay down my life. All government employees have to sign a comparable contract stating that they will not divulge information given to them by the government, they must not ally with enemies of the country that they are defending, they should make necessary sacrifices to align themselves with the ideology of the country, or be severely punished for opposition. This contract makes us a living sacrifice to the government. Our social security numbers, location, the intimate details of our health and family, and many more things are divulged.
Every person has been placed on the Earth to administer the Kingdom of Heaven. By way of Satan’s intentional tactics, some people will become distracted by ulterior paths: complacency, idolatry, sorcery (sometimes intentional or sometimes by way of drug use), immorality, and others. At the end of this life, we are all faced with the day when we stand accountable for how well we were as stewards of the gift of life, talents, connections, and resources. Those who will be rewarded are those who have multiplied what they were given; those who have exercised the assignment as a Kingdom ambassador well. You are to be a living sacrifice! Jesus said:
“To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away. Now throw this useless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”
Similar to the contract that I signed with the military, God set laws before you, and you must decide who you will follow. For the military, I had to wear a uniform daily, I was taught conduct, I had attendance requirements, training that I had to do, and many other standards to uphold on-duty and off-duty.
What It Means To Be A Living Sacrifice
As an ambassador of the Kingdom of Heaven, you are required to abide by similar statutes. You are to present yourself as a living sacrifice to the King. Your life, your works, and your ways should no longer be directed by your own thoughts and will, but rather, you sacrifice in allegiance to your citizenry in Heaven.
In the Old Testament, the priest had to prepare an unblemished lamb to atone for the sins of Israel. Similarly, Romans 12:1 says:
“And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.”
This means that as ambassadors of Heaven, we must live a distinguished lifestyle as an act of worship to our King. Just as the lamb was sacrificed procedurally, we must also yield ourselves to the responsibilities of the assignment. Jesus ended the requirement of presenting dead sacrifices. We must be a living sacrifice. For the sacrificed lamb, the priest was required to:
- Slit the throat – We must abandon vain speaking. Any ways that we emanate thoughts of our own will, we must subject to the authority of God.
- Heads chopped off – We dethrone anything that currently leads our lives and take Jesus as the head; the leader and authoritarian. We no longer make decisions without subjecting them to the authority of Heaven.
- Remove the skin – Any protective coverings that are placed over us must be removed. Mike Parsons said, “We cannot have defense mechanisms, protection mechanisms and our own self-righteousness as a barrier: we have to be vulnerable and transparent before God, and before others. “
- Slit open the body – We must become open and willing to display our inner workings; our most vulnerable assets.
- Clean the inner parts – Our hearts, minds, cells and organs that disseminate influence thru our bodies must be submitted for cleansing. Thoughts, intentions, our framework, and nutrients must be examined and adjusted to ensure that we grow the ability to tap into the frequency of God; the frequency of righteousness.
- Chop off the legs– Our mobility must be subject to Jesus. We no longer walk on our own paths or ways, but we are carried by the orders of righteousness thru Jesus.
He has deployed you to the Earth to offer the inhabitants the best in His storehouse, to end war, to end poverty, sickness, and disease by submission to Jesus Christ. He is returning and will administer the abundance in His storehouse to those who are prepared to press thru this life’s tribulation.
Action Steps:
Ask yourself, “Am I a prepared diplomat to transmit His message to the Earth’s inhabitants? Are your views on foreign policy in line with the King? Have you exercised your rights as a Kingdom of Heaven citizen?”
Meditate on Genesis 2:4-6 which says:
I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and will give to your offspring all these lands; and all the nations of the earth shall gain blessing for themselves through your offspring, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”
Ask yourself, “Can I follow in the footsteps that Abraham did, administering the Kingdom of God by obeying His voice, keeping His charge, commandments, statutes, and laws?”
If you can say, “Yes”, you are prepared to present your vow to God to be a living sacrifice. Pray and tell Yeshua you are prepared to administer His kingdom and be a living sacrifice to Him. Ask for His forgiveness for any unrighteousness that you have committed and be prepared to change your conduct in thought and deed.
Blessings.
If you enjoyed this post, and you would like more information on how you can be successful in your deployment to Earth, check out 12 Undeniable Laws For Being A Kingdom of Heaven Ambassador NOW!