If you are holding something to yourself, not necessarily something that’s bad, but could be something that feels good, an honor, a treasure, a right, not only legitimate but even a blessed right, will you willingly lay it down and give it up if the Lord asks you to do just that?
You will if, and only if, you see how the Lord emptied Himself, took a lowly form, took such humility, was obedient onto death, even the death on the cross.
The Lord expects you to obey because He knows you; but the Lord also expects you to ask Him why, because He wants you to understand that what you do for His sake is connected with His glory which is ultimately ours to share.
There are many ways to sacrifice but nothing expresses a worshiping heart more than a sacrifice made in deliberate and true humility in recognizing the ruins of sin.
The kind of humility that pierces the heart through and through, and blows away all visible halos.
The ruins of sin. It’s the place from which we rise up in resurrection. It’s not necessarily a specific act of sin, or not even your own sin, but some result that finds its root in sin, even as a general condition of the fallen man.
We recognize such ruins of sin in humility, not in glory.
It’s not the condemnation that the Lord wants you to recognize but the effect of the sin He wants you to feel and see. Once you see that, you make a confession by giving up your right, and thus condemn sin by its nature in your humility.
You will then have done something special for the Lord that few others do.
Only then do you truly understand why God accepted Able’s sacrifice and rejected Cain’s. It was because Cain had no sense of the ruin of sin and felt everything was normal and could be taken for granted, but Able saw the ruin and took it in with humility.
The Lord can bless us in a lot of imperfect conditions. Brothers and sisters can also bless us in such conditions. Because He leads us into life by His grace. Because He builds us up upon the ruins of sin, through repentance. That is the whole point of the new life.
But He expects us to recognize the ruin of sin in humility, not in glory.
And it is not in spite of this blessing but because of this blessing that you may hold something that the Lord expects you to give up, even if it is a right, which you can deliberately sacrifice in humility. He does not force you. If you are not sensitive to the Spirit, He does not even make it evident to you. But the Spirit gently whispers and quietly (but deeply) expects.
Would your heart be like Able’s to recognize the ruin of sin (a past to be buried, not the present nor the future), take humility, take a position lower than the position that Adam and Eve in their original condition (before the fall) are supposed to take?
Once you do, you confirm (in fact confess before angels and men) the ruin of Adam and Eve’s fallen position, in which you once were, and place all your hope on the resurrection.
It is our only hope, but it is our hope.
Without this spiritual knowledge of the connection with the Lord’s work and glory, one who asserts an advice and one who takes the advice are just being religiously correct, but not connected with the heart of Lord and throne of the Lord.
Lord, help me look deeper, and prostrate further down, for there is special glory reserved for such a child of God who appreciates the suffering of the Lord through understanding the ruins of sin.