Friday, October 14, 2016

October 14, 2016: A Living Sacrifice

Daily Berry Patch Devotions in 2016 - Day 288  

Devotional Song:  … GO TO THIS LINK …  Please take the time to take in a You Tube video of Cheri Keaggy singing … In Remembrance of Me, poignantly singing of God’s instructions for all Christians to remember Christ’s sacrifice for us and to live as a sacrifice to/for others in His Name and for His glory.

 
Highlight Passage: 1 John 3:16-17 [NKJV] …  
16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? 
 … If we truly live/love for Him, we honor His sacrifice for us.
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Highlight Context: 1st John 3:16-23 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK 
… Our lives lived for Him - as a loving-living sacrifice - shows that we remember and honor His ultimate sacrifice for us.
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Reference Passage #1 … John 10:11 [NKJV] …  
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. …” 
… Jesus declares that, as our Good Shepherd, He will give His life for us … and He did!!

Reference Passage #2 … Romans 12: 1 [NKJV] …  
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 
 … Our lives, lived for Him, become “living sacrifices,” just as His body was for us.

Reference Passage #3 … 1st Corinthians 11:23-26 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK 
… We remember Him.

My Journal for Today:  … Our Daily Bread author, Lawrence Darmani, used a personal story of sacrifice to illustrate what Christ did for us and how we should remember Him with the way we live our lives. He wrote: I love birds, which is why I bought six caged birds and carried them home to our daughter Alice, who began to care for them daily. Then one of the birds fell ill and died. We wondered if the birds would be more likely to thrive if they were not caged. So we freed the surviving five [see attached photo] and observed them fly away in jubilation. 
Alice then pointed out, “Do you realize, Daddy, that it was the death of one bird that caused us to free the rest?” 

Fellow Christian, I pray we realize and remember with our lives the sacrifice our Lord made for us on the cross. Certainly we should every time we partake of our Lord’s table, as He instructed us to do “In remembrance of Him.” (see those instructions in 1 Cor. 11:23-26). But as the Apostle Paul exhorted fellow Christians (to include you/me), we are to become “living sacrifices” of love as our reasonable acts of worship to/for Him (see Rom. 12:1).

So, I ask myself … am I remember His sacrifice by the way I’m living; and will I live in remembrance of Him today? … I pray so.

My Prayer Today: Heavenly Father, Your Son, my Lord, sacrificed all for me. May I be a living sacrifice of love for Him today. Amen  

Blogger Note:  Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled Our Daily Bread, distributed online via email by RBC Ministries.  If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.

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