I apologize for not writing on the blog last week. For those of you who attend Westlake Baptist you know I had a minor mishap that resulted in a broken hand. However thanks to my parents a couple Christmases ago I am still able to type simply by speaking.
If you joined us at Westlake Baptist this past Sunday you heard a familiar line. That line is,” it’s not a sacrifice if it doesn’t cost you something.” The word sacrifice is used over 200 times in the Bible. In each circumstance it costs someone something. It is really easy to talk about sacrifice when you are not asked to make one. However the proverbial ” rubber meets the road” moment comes when you must give a sacrifice. It is in these difficult moments that many well-meaning Christians often quote Romans 8:28 which says, ” and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” I myself have used that verse on a number of occasions. One thing I try to stress whether I speak that verse to someone or if I am preaching it, is that it says all things work for good, it doesn’t say all things are good. This is where theologians talk about the sovereignty of God. Do I believe that God is in control of all circumstances for do I believe that God is in control of circumstances that turn out the way I want them to? Again, if you are not in the middle of a difficult time you generally answer this question very quickly. However, when you are in the middle of a difficult time the answer comes a little slower, and sometimes your answer is entirely different. Yet that is the question before us, do we truly believe God is in control? If we trust God in the good times then shouldn’t we also trust him in what we perceive to be difficult times? After all, who decides what is a good thing or a bad thing? How many times have we thought things were bad only to look back at the end and see that it turned out to be good? The only way we can make it through life is to pray seeking God’s will and then trusting that his will is both good and perfect. You may be asked to give a sacrifice in life, but remember God gave the ultimate sacrifice. And if that ultimate sacrifice was for our good then we can trust what ever sacrifice he asks us to make is also for our good.