Sacrifice

I had the pleasure this weekend of being a bridesmaid in the wedding of our very own LR Lady, Farrell, to the wonderful Mr. Marshall Pollard. The wedding was absolutely beautiful, and it was amazing to watch one of my favorite girlfriends make a covenant that beautifully models the Lord's love for his church.


During the homily of the ceremony, one of the things that the pastor spoke about that really got to me was about sacrifice in marriage. While I didn't want to focus on that topic today (Let's be real: I'm no expert!), the idea of sacrifice in our walk with Christ really stuck with me.


 Take a look at this segment in Luke 9:

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?"

~Luke 9: 23-26

So I don't know about you all, but I'm the type of girl that wants to have it all. I want to be good at as many things as possible - to be the perfect student, daughter, Christian, friend, whatever - you name it, I would love to be excellent at it. While striving for excellence is certainly not a bad thing, I think it can become really dangerous when we make it our only goal. Christ never promises us that we should be excellent at everything. In fact, making that our primary goal aggrandizes ourselves instead of the Lord's name, which I would strongly argue is the opposite of what we should strive for. 


Following Christ means denying ourselves - which could mean giving up the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect anything, in exchange for finding our life and identity in the Lord. We aren't asked to do this every once and while when we feel like it - this is something the Lord calls us to daily. We should expect to daily have to make sacrifices of our own desires. I love how Christ notes that we often try to cling onto these desires/plans/worldly for our lives in attempt to find life and identity. I love even more how He makes it clear that our true identity is in the Lord, and by making these sacrifices, we're actually coming closer to realize who the Lord intends us to be. Pretty cool stuff. 


My prayer for us today is that we would honestly look at our lives for areas that we can sacrifice and surrender to the Lord!