I once came across this song titled, ‘Offered To A Deity’ by Minister Theophilus Sunday. It struck my heart deeply. I felt as though I was lying on an altar, ready to be pierced through by a knife like Isaac or burnt by a holy fire from above. The rawness of the song, the dedication and surrender in this song just rent my heart. It lit a fire that is still working its way in my life.

In our previous posts, we’ve talked about priesthood, altars and sacrifice. We have come to understand that we are the priests of our altars. We are the altars for our sacrifices and we ourselves are the sacrifices upon the altar. Last week, we looked at the concept of a sacrifice. Now, Let’s dig deeper into being a sacrifice:

LIVING SACRIFICE

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

Romans 12:1 KJV

The concept of a living sacrifice is quite foreign and strange. And of course, it is. It is the philosophy of an out-of-this-world civilization. A country that does not think like the inhabitants of the earth. To live amongst the citizens of this country, you need to buy into their ideologies. That is what every believer must be busy about.
To say something is a living sacrifice is just like saying something is living dead. It’s an oxymoron. In our previous post, We stated that, death is so imbedded in the concept of sacrifice that it is nearly synonymous.
This tells us that in the concept of a living sacrifice, there is death and there is life. There must be a dying component and at the same time, there is life being generated. It is a continual process of death and life.

Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.

Psalm 40:6-8 KJV

The desire of God was never sacrifices or offerings of bulls and goats. In fact, He states clearly elsewhere that He has no need of the sacrifices. If He was hungry for some meat, He wouldn’t tell us. He doesn’t eat the flesh of the bulls and goats (Psalm 50:12-13). The offerings stipulated in the law was for the benefit of the people. In this way, the people could be righteous before Him and He could be good to them in spite of their sins. What the Lord truly desired was a life standing righteous before Him and dedicated to His agenda, a life thoroughly submitted to Him in surrender. So the Psalmist seeing the desire of the Lord said, “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire”.

One thing I have come to realize is this: the Lord does not want what I have without me. Jesus does not want my tithe. Jesus does not want my time. Jesus does not want my talent or my smartness. Jesus wants ME. He wants my heart. And so when He comes to me, He woos my heart to fall for Him. When He succeeds in wooing me, then He is assured that all I have is His. Then He can make demands at His will because I am now His.
What Jesus desires is that I come to Him and say, “Here I am.” He wants that I, the priest, put myself on the altar as the sacrifice. He desires that I, the one who stands before Him to minister, is wholly given to Him and nothing else. He desires that my life’s delight will be what He wants me to do and be. That though I am alive physically, what I call ‘me’ is dead so that He can express Him in me. I live only to make sure His agenda is established on the earth.
Paul caught this and so He said,
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
He basically says, “I’m dead but I’m alive. What you see me doing is not me but Jesus who lives in me.”

That is the place we have been called to. That is you, presenting you as an offering to God saying, “I have come to do your will. I have come that you will put your ambitions in my heart. I have come so that your passion becomes my heartbeat.
God is calling us to this place of presenting ourselves to Him. He is calling us to say, Here I am. Here I am to do your will. He is calling us out of our personal ambitions, character and passions. These that have been formed mostly out of worldly thought processes and fleshly desires. Here is the call to lay ourselves down on the altar and let the Fire of Presence burn through them, then be raised up with a Kingdom outlook driven into us.
The call is to be Kingdom warriors where the word of our King is our Law. We go where He says we go. We do what He says without personal ambition. The warrior who has a personal ambition becomes a traitor. We were not created to carry out our own plans or to come up with them but to carry the agenda of the Kingdom and flesh it out on the earth. The Prophet Jeremiah understood this and so He said:

O LORD, I know the way of man is not in himself; It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.

We were made for more than living for our goals and agenda. We were made for expanding and establishing the philosophy of Heaven on the earth. We were made to live on the earth but to die daily to the earth.

Will you respond to the call to lay on the altar?