Chapter Five: Offering
Chapter 5
Offering
We now turn our attention to offering. If God has given us a gift, it’s never only for ourselves. It’s always to be offered back to Him and very often it has repercussions for the life of the world. Jesus offered Himself to be bread for the life of the world. He said the bread that I will give is my body and I give it for the life of the world. For a Christian, the pattern is Jesus. What did He do? He offered Himself, a perfect and complete sacrifice, for the love of God. And you and I should be prepared, also, to be broken bread and poured out wine for the life of the world.
Think of the gifts of others whom you know that have been a great blessing and joy to you. I think of the gift of music. I have a nephew who is a concert violinist, who has a tremendous gift. But he doesn’t just play his violin all by himself in his little apartment. That gift is for the sake of the world. And I believe that that’s true of every gift that God gives to us in some way, which is not always apparent right at the beginning. Among the great gifts of my life are my husband, my daughter, and my grandchildren—and there are times when I can be very selfish about those gifts. And yet I have to recognize that they’re not just for me. But these, also, that I think of as my own, must be held with an open hand and offered back to God along with my body and all that I am.
You’re familiar with Paul’s word from Romans 12:1, “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (kjv). I particularly like the KJV translation as it translates that last phrase as “an act of intelligent worship.” Now if I present to God my body as a living sacrifice then that includes everything that the body contains—my brains, my personality, my heart, my emotions, my will, my temperament, my prejudices, my failings, all the rest of it—is presented to God as a living sacrifice. God has, after all, given me a body to live in. Everything in my life I begin to see as a gift and I do mean everything.
Now that may seem like sheer poppycock to some of you. But I hope that in the context of the things that I’ve been saying you’ll begin to see that everything can be seen as a gift, even my widowhood. I began very slowly to recognize, after my first husband was killed, that it was within the context of widowhood that God wanted me to glorify Him. It was not my idea. It was something that God not only allowed, but in a very real sense, which I began slowly to understand, He had given me because He had something else in mind. And this was a gift not just for me, but also for the life of the world in some mysterious sense that I did not need to understand because I could trust Him.
Under this idea of considering how an offering relates to the idea of suffering, I want to consider three things and then I’ll expound on those. First, everything is a gift. Second, there are several kinds of offerings that I can make to God. Or, we could say that we want to think about an offering as a sacrifice, and when I use the word sacrifice with regard to my own life, the emphasis is not on loss and desolation and giving up. The emphasis is on the fact that God has given me something that I can offer back to Him. We’ll come to that a little bit later. And third, the greatest, is the offering of obedience.
When I get up in the morning I do try to make it a practice to do some of my praying first thing in the morning. It’s a good thing to talk to God before you start talking to anybody else. I try to begin my prayers with thanksgiving. There’s always a long list of things for which to be thankful. One of them is I can get up in the morning, that I can be in a comfortable place, looking out over a very beautiful view. I thank God for the sleep of a night, for health and strength and for work to do.
I’m very grateful for work. I think about somebody like Joni Eareckson Tada and what Joni wouldn’t give to just have a chance to wash dishes maybe one time or do the worst job that you and I might hate. Thank God that you can get up. I thank Him for my house and my husband and my health and the money that we have and the food that we have and clothes for our backs and grandchildren and my daughter and on and on and on. And you all have equally long lists, I’m sure.
But then I don’t always find it easy to include on that list the thorn in the flesh, the word that my husband spoke to me which hurt me—as he does that once in a while. I’m married to a sinner. I don’t know what you other married women are married to. But as far as I know, there really isn’t anything else to marry. And it’s always a good exercise for me to remember that my poor husband is also married to a sinner. So I thank God for that husband with his imperfections, which are not very many. But I thank Him for the particular set of gifts that He has given me in that man which I can offer back to God with thanksgiving.
When Joseph was taken into captivity he could not possibly have imagined what God had in mind years later. But in Genesis 45:8 we read Joseph’s words to his brothers: “It was not you who sent me here, but God” (niv). What looked like a horrible thing, jealous brothers hating their younger brother, wanting to get rid of him, deciding to kill him, then realizing they could make some money out of him, selling him into captivity. He goes down to Egypt and is made a slave. And eventually ends up in prison and one thing and another. Does that look like a gift from God? And yet he tells his brothers that it wasn’t them who sent him. It was God.
Paul spoke of being given a thorn in the flesh. Jesus referred to the cup which His Father had given Him. Now each of these things represent great suffering, not trivial things at all. Yet, Joseph was able to say, when he named his son Ephraim, “God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction” (Gen. 41:52 kjv). It’s not the experience that changed him. It was his response. Joseph trusted God. Now what is God’s intention when He gives you and me something? He is giving me something in my hands with which I can turn to Him and offer it back to Him with thanksgiving.
I remember when I was a little girl wanting to buy Christmas presents for my parents and I had no way at all of earning money. My brothers had paper routes and earned maybe twenty-five cents a week or something like that back in the Depression days. But I had to depend on an allowance. So I would have had absolutely nothing to give to my mother for Christmas if my mother hadn’t given something to me first. That’s the way it is with us with God, isn’t it? We are totally destitute. Everything that we have comes from Him and we have nothing to offer except what He has given us.
There’s an old prayer of thanksgiving at the offering time. It goes like this, “All things come of thee, O Lord and of thine own have we given thee.” We receive it from Him. We accept it in our hands. We say thank You. And then we offer it back. This is the logical sequence of the things which I have been talking about. Everything is a gift. Everything is meant to be offered back.
This lesson became a powerful, life-changing, transforming lesson during the time of my husband’s illness. I would awaken in those wee small hours of the night—which Amy Carmichael calls the hours when all life’s molehills become mountains—my mind would be filled with vivid imaginings of the horrible things that were going to happen to my husband between then and death.
Death truly was the unarguable conclusion of what my husband had, medically speaking. There was no possibility that he was going to survive. So I had faced that fairly squarely. But the doctors were predicting hideous mutilations that they were going to practice on him between then and death, and I felt I could not stand it. In those wee small hours I began to cry out to the Lord. Then it came to me with great clarity one night, I suppose about two or three o’clock in the morning, that my agony, my vicarious anguish for my husband was something which God had put in my hands to offer back to Him. It was a gift.
Now let’s think about this second component of offering relative to suffering, the idea of sacrifice. There are many occasions in Scripture where the word sacrifice is used. And it was a very important part of the Hebrew life back in Old Testament days. Blood sacrifice was a daily occurrence in the Tabernacle. And the rituals of sacrifice controlled the people’s whole lives.
The Old Testament also speaks of the sacrifice of thanksgiving in Psalms. The verse that came to me in those hours of fear was a broken and a contrite heart, I will not despise. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, I will not despise. I’m sure some of you have a broken spirit, a broken heart. God will not despise that offering if that’s all you have to offer (Ps. 51:17 kjv, author paraphrase).
I have felt as if I was destitute like the widow of Zarepath. You remember the story of how Elijah was fed by ravens for a time and then God told him that the ravens were going to stop. And that he was to go down to a place called Zarepath where there was a widow who would feed him. Now I don’t think we can begin to imagine the absolute dereliction of a widow in those ancient times. But she was the most helpless and poor of all.19
I’m sure some of you have a broken spirit, a broken heart. God will not despise that offering if that’s all you have to offer (Ps. 51:17 kjv, author paraphrase).
Now why in the world would God Almighty, who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, choose a destitute woman to feed his prophet Elijah? And you remember that when Elijah reaches Zarepath he finds this woman out gathering a couple of sticks, and he asks her for a drink of water. And then he asks her for the most unreasonable request imaginable, and he says bake me a cake.
Well, if she were speaking modern English, she would have said, “Surely you’ve got to be kidding. I’m out here gathering two sticks so that I can bake the last handful of flour and last few drops of oil into a little cake, which is the only thing that stands between me and my son and death. We are starving to death and you ask me to bake you a cake.”
But the woman recognized that this was a man of God. So to her, it was a matter of obedience to God to fulfill his request, so she baked him a cake. She believed his word that the flask of oil would not fail, nor would the barrel of meal be empty. What had God done in sending the prophet to a destitute woman? He had put into that woman’s hands something to offer back. But what a pitiful offering. One little handful of flour, a few drops of oil.
Do you remember when the little boy brought his lunch to Jesus (or the disciples extorted that lunch from him). He had five loaves and two fishes which the disciples brought to Jesus and he put it into Jesus’ hands. One of the disciples even asked Jesus what good that little bit of food could be for such a large crowd.
Now I’m speaking to some of you who feel as if you have nothing whatsoever to offer to God. You don’t have any huge sufferings, perhaps. You don’t have any great gifts. You were behind the door when they gave out the gifts and you feel like, poor me, I can’t sing and I can’t preach and I can’t pray and I can’t write books and I can’t be the hostess with the mostest. So I really can’t serve the Lord. If I had that person’s gifts then it would be a different story.
I don’t know who I’m talking to but I’m sure that there are some of you who would be saying, what is the good of my offering for such a crowd. You’re telling me that I have something that is going to matter for the life of the world? And I say, yes, that’s what I’m telling you. Because God takes a widow with nothing, God takes a little boy’s lunch and He turns that into something for the good of the world because that individual let it go.
I began to see, again very dimly. Please don’t imagine that I was some kind of spiritual giant to see this thing. It was the Holy Spirit of God that said to me, give it to Me. Let it go. Offer it up. A sacrifice. Something in your hands to give Me. How does a mother feel when her tiny little two-year-old comes into the house with a smashed dandelion clenched in his little, sweaty fist and he offers her the smashed dandelion? It means everything in the world because love transforms it. That’s what this is about. Suffering and love are inextricably bound up together. And love invariably means sacrifice.
Suffering and love are inextricably bound up together. And love invariably means sacrifice.
We talked about the sacrifice of fathers and mothers. What about the sacrifice of husbands and wives? What about the sacrifice of those who are prepared to be single for the rest of their lives for the glory of God? I think of Amy Carmichael. She believed that God was actually calling her to remain single and it scared her. She felt that she might, perhaps, be desolate with loneliness. And God brought to her mind the words from Psalm 34:22, “None of them that trust in him shall be desolate” (kjv). And out of that offering, that brokenness, that living sacrifice which was the life of Amy Carmichael, came a great missionary work that continued for decades.
Amy Carmichael, a single woman, became the mother of thousands of Indian children. There was a time when the family that she founded as a Dohnavur Fellowship—little children, rescued from temple prostitution—that family numbered over 900 people at one time. And she worked there for fifty-three years. And she wrote these words in one of her poems, “If Thy dear home be fuller, Lord, for that a little emptier my house on earth, what rich reward that guerdon20 were.” You and I have no idea what God has in mind when we make the offering. But everything is potential material for sacrifice.
Again and again, I’ve had people say to me, how do you handle loneliness? And I say that I can’t handle loneliness. They ask, “Well didn’t you spend a lot of time alone in the jungle?” I inevitably reply, “Yes, I did. I spent a good many more years alone than I did married.” They return, “Well how did you handle it?” To which I reply, “I didn’t. I couldn’t. I have to turn it over to Somebody who can handle it.” In other words, my loneliness became my offering.
And so if God doesn’t always remove the feeling of loneliness, it is in order that every minute of every day, perhaps, I have something to offer up to Him and say, “Lord, here it is. I can’t handle this.” I don’t know what your emotions may be that you can’t handle, but I believe that every one of us knows something about loneliness. Singles always imagine that married people are not lonely, but I can testify that there are different kinds of loneliness.
I have never forgotten what a missionary speaker said in chapel when I was a student. We had compulsory chapel five days a week at Wheaton College. So we heard hundreds of speakers and remembered practically nothing of most of them. But I have never forgotten what this woman said. She spoke about the little boy bringing his lunch to Jesus. And she said, “If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it may be because pieces will feed a multitude when a loaf would satisfy only a little boy.”
What have you got in your hand to give to Him? Is it a gift that you recognize as a gift, a talent for example? Is it the willingness to be a mother and to take the criticism of the women who say that a woman who’s got half a brain will put her children in somebody else’s care and get out and do something “fulfilling”? Is it the willingness to take the flack from the rest of the world about something that you’ve decided to do for Jesus’ sake? Is it the willingness to be unrecognized, unappreciated?
You know, we’ve got a very twisted idea of this word ministry. We think that a ministry means just a very short list of things: preaching or singing or doing a seminar or writing a book or teaching a Sunday school class. Of course those are ministry. They’re forms of service. But the word ministry just means service. And service is a part of our offering to God.
People would think of my ministry as being my missionary work, my writing, my speaking. But you know, I don’t spend most of my life standing at a podium. I spend most of my life sitting at a desk, standing at a sink, standing at an ironing board, going to the grocery store, sitting in airports, doing a whole lot of things which are not anything for which I expect to get medals. They are moments to be offered to Jesus. Do the next thing.
Which brings me to my third component of offering relative to suffering, the offering of obedience. When my brother, Tom, was a little boy about three years old, one of his favorite forms of play was to take all the paper bags out of the drawer in the kitchen where my mother kept them and spread them all over the floor. Well, my mother permitted that with Tom. He was number five. I was number two. And I don’t think I would have gotten away with it. But she’d learned a lot of things by that time and I’m sure she was tired.
She told him that he could do that on one condition, that he put the bags back in the drawer before he left the kitchen. Well, he understood that perfectly well. Children usually understand far more than we think they do. So she came into the kitchen one day and there were the paper bags all over the floor but no sign of Tom. So she found him in the living room where my father was playing the piano, playing hymns. And my mother said, “Tommy, I want you to come put the bags back in the drawer.” And he looked up with a smile of the most innocent and seraphic sweetness and he said, “But I wanna sing ‘Jesus Loves Me.’” And my father stopped playing the piano and took the opportunity to press home a profound lesson: to obey is better than sacrifice.
It’s no good singing “Jesus Loves Me” when you’re disobeying your mother, and the highest form of worship is obedience. What do I have to offer to God that is more important than my obedience? There’s a great lesson on this in the book of Ezekiel, hidden back in the 24th chapter, beginning in verse 16. God told the son of man, “I take away from you the desire of your eyes with one stroke; yet you shall neither mourn nor weep, nor shall your tears run down. Sigh in silence, make no mourning for the dead; bind your turban on your head, and put your sandals on your feet; do not cover your lips, and do not eat man’s bread of sorrow” (Ezek. 24:16–17 nkjv). In other words, forget all the ritual signs of mourning. And Ezekiel replies this, “So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died; and the next morning I did as I was commanded” (Ezek. 24:18 nkjv). Now that’s a very short description of some pretty important things! In the evening my wife died, and the next morning I did as I was commanded.
I have discovered that there is no consolation like obedience. And when I was trying to offer up my feelings to God in those wee small hours of the morning, I thanked God when it was time to get up because there were all kinds of just simple, ordinary, down-to-earth things to do. Do the next thing.
God gave to the widow of Zarepath and to the little boy and to Ezekiel something to give back to Him, something that would matter very much to others. God enabled Ezekiel to give his sorrow back to Him and to get up and do what he was commanded to do for the life of the world. It wasn’t just Ezekiel that God was interested in there. God wanted to make Ezekiel into broken bread and poured out wine for the life of the world.
Let me ask you, who are the people who have most profoundly influenced your life? Those who have most profoundly influenced my life are without exception people who have suffered because it has been in that very suffering that God has refined the gold, tempered the steel, molded the pot, broken the bread and made that person into something that feeds a multitude—of whom I have been one of the beneficiaries.
I once received a wonderful letter from a woman, an older woman who told me back when she was a little girl in the Depression that her father had died. None of his friends came to the funeral. She had to wear a borrowed dress. The house was mortgaged. Her mother was left a widow with seven children. And the lawyer who was supposed to be handling her financial affairs stole the inheritance. And the lady said this, when we went back to the house after the funeral, my mother picked up a broom and began to sweep the kitchen. And she said I look back on that now and I realize that it was the soft swish, swish, swish of that broom that began the healing process. She said my mother was a destitute woman. And when people asked her years later how she made it, she just said, “I prayed.” Well she didn’t just pray. She prayed and she did the next thing. She picked up the broom.
And so I say to you today, God has put something in your hand that you can accept. You can say, thank You, Lord. And then you can offer it back to Him. Let me give you another verse that encourages me tremendously. Psalm 119 verse 91 says, “They continue this day according to Your ordinances, for all are Your servants” (nkjv).
What’s happening in your life today? Is it good? Then it’s easy to thank God for, isn’t it? Is it bad? If you can remember that this day, like every other day, His ordinances stand fast. Those eternal realities are unshakable. His Word is infrangible. The world and all its passionate desires will one day disappear. The man who is following the will of God is part of the permanent and cannot die. I encourage you to make an offering of your sufferings.
Ugo Bassi said this, “Measure your life by loss and not by gain, not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth. For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice, and he that suffereth most hath most to give.”21
I have discovered that there is no consolation like obedience.