4. A Living Sacrifice
chapter four
A Living Sacrifice
The girl was barely 14 years old when her parents sent her and her older sister to a Christian youth camp for two weeks. There she realized her need for Jesus and committed her life to Him. A few days later she knew the Lord was calling her to serve Him in missions.
When she went home, she devoured the Word of God each day. She spent much time in prayer. Jesus was real to her.
She knew that her parents, who enjoyed a respectable status in the community and many of the good things in life, planned for her and her sister to enter finishing school to learn the cultural graces that would accompany their debut into society. Later they would attend the university and receive the best education available. And eventually they would marry well-to-do men from good families and make their parents proud.
Now, however, this girl’s life had changed. Everything she did was based on one question: Does this fall in line with my calling from the Lord? So when the time came for her to enroll in finishing school, she spoke to her parents.
“I belong to Jesus,” she told them, “and I’ve given my life to be a missionary someday. I can’t go to this school.”
She could tell her parents were confused. And as her relationship with Jesus grew deeper, her life became even more puzzling to them.
“Why are you acting so differently?” they asked. “We can’t understand you anymore. Look at your sister—she is acting normally.”
Her older sister had a new boyfriend every week, while she had made a decision before the Lord never to date in order to find a husband. Since He knew every hair on her head, He would surely provide a husband for her when she was old enough. She felt no need to go out and “shop around.” But she hardly knew how to explain her new devotion.
Meanwhile, she continued to develop her walk with Jesus. She learned to love Him more deeply as time went by. She spent hours in her room, reading her Bible and praying—much of it for missions. By the time she was 17 or 18, she had read more than 100 books on various cultural groups and missions.
One day she took a small coin from a foreign country and bored a hole into it. Then she put it onto a leather string and tied it around her neck.
Now, she said to herself, every time I look into the mirror or feel the coin around my neck, it will remind me that I am set apart by the Lord. Twenty-four hours a day I am not my own. I must live to reach the lost.
The girl chose to go to nursing school, which she felt would give her an advantage on the mission field. As her graduation day neared, her parents and friends approached her.
“Now that you’re finally through with your studies,” they said, “you should at least take a small vacation and earn a little money before you leave for the mission field, don’t you think?”
“I’ve waited so long to be able to serve the Lord,” she responded. “How can I delay any longer?”
The very day she graduated, her bags were packed and she left to join a mission team.
A few years later, while this young woman was serving on the mission field, she met a young, skinny Indian named K.P. Yohannan. She knew this was the man God had chosen for her to marry.
Gisela’s willingness to give up her life for Jesus, even at a young age, is what has given her the strength over the years to continue to follow the call of God despite enormous tests and trials.
What Will You Do with Your Self?
This, then, is the ultimate secret: We hear and respond to the call of God when we surrender ourselves to Him. Each of us has been given one life and the choice as to how we will live it. The apostle Paul pleads with us:
I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—which is your spiritual worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:1–2
There have been many sermons and much exposition on these two verses from Romans. One thing is clear: Whether you were saved last night or 50 years ago, these verses call for absolute surrender of your self to God.
What will you do with your self? E. Stanley Jones addresses some of the choices the world makes in his book Victory through Surrender:
Many ancient systems have come to the question of what is to be done with the self and have come to many differing answers. The answers coming out of the East have been, in large measure, answers that show world-weariness.
Buddha focused this pervasive disillusionment about the self into the decisive sentence: “Existence and suffering are one.” As long as you are in existence you are in suffering. Then the only way to get out of suffering is to get out of desire. ... So cut the root of desire, become desireless even for life. ...
Buddha would get rid of the problems of the self by getting rid of self.
Vedantic [Hindu] philosophy says that Brahma is the only reality. But Brahma is the Impersonal. So the devotee sits and in meditation affirms: “Aham Brahma”—I am Brahma. He tries to pass from the personal self to the Impersonal Essence, Brahma. When that transition is made ... the problems of the self are over.
I asked [a devotee] his name and he replied: “Ram, Ram.” I asked him where he had come from and he replied, “Ram, Ram.” Where was he going? “Ram, Ram.” What did he want? “Ram, Ram.” I could get no other reply, for he had vowed to use no name except “Ram, Ram.” This was high devotion, but very expensive to the self—it was gone. His face was expressionless. Rama was everything—he was nothing.
When we turn from this world-weariness ... of the East to modern psychology we find a complete reversal of the attitudes toward the self. Modern psychology has three affirmations about the self: know thy self; accept thy self; express thy self.
What is basically wrong with these three affirmations about the self? Take the first: know thy self. But how can you really know your self by studying your self in relation to your self, and other human selves, in a purely material environment? It is all earth-bound, lacks any eternal meaning or goal.
Second: accept thy self. But how can you accept an unacceptable self, a self full of conflicts and contradictions, full of guilt and frustrations, inferiorities and inhibitions, full of its self? To ask a man to accept himself—that kind of self—is to ask the impossible.
Third: secular psychology says: Express thy self. But if you have a dozen people together all of whom have been taught to express themselves—what have you got? ... You have the stage set for clash and confusion and jealousy and strife.
What will you do with your self? Many men and women are still in darkness, trying to figure out the meaning and purpose of life. But no matter what you try to do with your self—whether you deny it, obliterate it, annihilate it, accept it or express it—believe me, it is still alive and kicking.
Jesus tells us what to do with the self: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). But questions remain: How do we follow Him? How do we hear God and implement the power of the Gospel in our lives?
This can happen only through an all-out surrender of ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. It means acknowledging the Lordship of Christ in our lives, not just in theory but in practice. Jesus asks us to love Him supremely, more than anything or anyone else, and to let Him live in us and through us. Paul expressed it beautifully: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
When I let Jesus live in and through me, my self is no longer the one that directs and dictates to me. Now it is Christ, His will and desires, living and acting through me. This is why the habit of compartmentalizing our lives must end. All of me, all that I am, belongs to Christ.
It is a daily practice to learn this principle and live it out in our lives. The choices we make are ultimately not collective ones that we make as a church, a family or even a couple. They are choices we make as individuals.
Take a Closer Look
A young missionary lay on her deathbed in India. A friend came up to her and said, “You must feel a little sad to go so early.”
“No,” she told him with a smile. “Death is mild. My job is finished. I’m going to be with Jesus.”
Once your life is given over completely to the Lord, you will no longer be intimidated by circumstances or swayed by what others think. Paul said, “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God” (1 Corinthians 3:21–23).
Paul also said, “No matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:20).
When we understand who Christ is and surrender our lives to Him, we recognize that He is not a tyrant who sits on a high and mighty throne, shaking His finger at us and saying, “No!” Paul tells us that in Jesus all the promises of God are “Yes!”
When the Lord calls you to consecrate your life to Him, He is looking for a living, breathing, moving sacrifice. He wants a total surrender of your will, your intellect, your mind, your five senses, your emotions, your actions.
I pray that you will take a closer look at who you are. From now on you can live your life for a different purpose than for this world alone. I pray that you will hear the call of God and begin to consider eternity as your perspective.
But I must also warn you: If this is your decision, know that you have chosen to walk a narrow road. When Jesus called His disciples to follow Him, He set some conditions before them. The choice you make to follow Christ involves a cost. There will be inconveniences, difficulties, pain and counterattack by Satan. (We will look at that counterattack in the next section.)
But praise the Lord, whether you are standing or have fallen, you can rejoice because you have surrendered your self to Him. When everything has been said and done, and the earth as we know it is only a memory, Jesus will say to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And His approval is all that matters.