¹ 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. ² Don’t copy the behav­ior and cus­toms of this world, but let God trans­form you into a new per­son by chang­ing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleas­ing and perfect.

Extreme Faith

Start­ing this Thurs­day night, we are launch­ing a new series at Bik­ers’ Church called Extreme Faith. Today’s pas­sage is the basis for the final week of that series. Let me give you a sneak peak on what we’ll be talk­ing about in that mes­sage. (For those who are unable to be there “live”, you can watch the videos in HD qual­ity here.)

Paul is call­ing peo­ple to trust God with every ounce of their being. Actu­ally, it’s hard not to see this verse in the con­text of extreme faith. Paul is sug­gest­ing that we offer our bod­ies as liv­ing sac­ri­fices. Now, I’m sure this goes with­out say­ing, but notice he includes the word liv­ing. Paul is not talk­ing here about killing our­selves or some­one else. Yes, peo­ple take this pas­sage out of con­text. But he’s not talk­ing about that.

What I believe Paul is talk­ing about here is the idea that we will­ingly sac­ri­fice our will, desires, pas­sions and wants to God. If you were to look up the word sac­ri­fice in the dic­tio­nary, you would find that it includes the idea of sur­ren­der­ing some­thing as an offer­ing to God. The online dic­tio­nary I use goes on to define sac­ri­fice as an act of giv­ing up some­thing val­ued for the sake of some­thing else regarded as more impor­tant or worthy.

Paul goes on to chal­lenge us to not copy the behav­iour of those who do not fol­low Christ. In other words, rather than try­ing to “fit in” to the peo­ple around you, why not choose to fully sur­ren­der your life to God and see what hap­pens. And yet, putting it the way I did in that last sen­tence doesn’t seem to do Paul’s words jus­tice. While fully sur­ren­der may mean the same thing as sac­ri­fice, Paul’s choice of word seems to imply that it wont be easy to give every­thing over to God. It will be dif­fi­cult. It will cost.

And yet, look at the end result of liv­ing a life of extreme faith: “Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleas­ing and per­fect.” Wow. Imag­ine look­ing at your life and feel­ing like it is good, pleas­ing, and per­fect. Few peo­ple I know would describe their life in those terms. Paul sug­gests that we could all expe­ri­ence life that way if we are just will­ing to offer our­selves as a liv­ing sac­ri­fice to God.

Just before I offer today’s prayer, I’d like to ask a favour. Today is New Year’s Day. A good day to start some­thing fresh. Some­thing like offer­ing your­self a liv­ing sac­ri­fice. It’s also a good day to invite some­one else to live life that way. Would you take a minute and share the Oil Change with at least once per­son? Either for­ward this email or click on one of the “share” but­tons listed below this post on the web­site. I’m amazed at the num­ber of peo­ple who con­nect via this devo­tional (I’m aware of at least five Coun­tries rep­re­sented), but I believe that even more could uti­lize it. So, take a minute and pass it along.

My prayer: Lord, I sit here on the first day of a new year. A time when we cel­e­brate fresh starts. And, I choose to start this year by offer­ing myself a liv­ing sac­ri­fice. I give myself to you today. Fully. Com­pletely. In every way. My life is yours. My pas­sions, my desires, my will. I sur­ren­der it all to you. Amen.

Until tomor­row.

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