Sacrifice

David replied, “I have come to buy your threshing floor and to build an altar to the LORD there, so that he will stop the plague.” “Take it, my lord the king, and use it as you wish,” Araunah said to David. “Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and you can use the threshing boards and ox yokes for wood to build a fire on the altar. I will give it all to you, Your Majesty, and may the LORD your God accept your sacrifice.” But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on buying it, for I will not present burnt offerings to the LORD my God that have cost me nothing.” 2 Samuel 24:21-24

A HEART THAT LOVES much is willing to sacrifice. David understood this. God had told him to build an altar on Araunah’s threshing floor and to offer a sacrifice there to cover his sin. When David arrived, Araunah was willing to simply give him whatever supplies he needed —oxen, threshing sledges, ox yokes, the works. But David insisted that he pay. David understood his own need to reckon with what his sin cost. He wasn’t just going through the motions of religious sacrifice; he wanted to offer the Lord something from the heart.

As we seek to grow in Christ, we long for our lives to be increasingly marked by this kind of death to self, this kind of glad giving, and this kind of sacrifice. Surely parenting is one of the key tools God uses to sanctify and grow us in this way. A mother’s call to sacrifice begins as soon as she discovers she’s pregnant and gives up caffeine or wine. When the child is born, a father gives up time and sleep to tend to his newborn. Sacrifice, for a parent, isn’t so much big gestures but more the everyday costs of playing a board game when you’d like to watch television, getting home in time for dinner when you’d like to stay late at work, and spending less time on your own hobbies so you can help your children pursue theirs.

Our children become tools in God’s hands to teach us how to embrace the crucial spiritual discipline of sacrifice and to mold us into the image of Christ —the one who offered himself as a sacrifice.

Lord, when I’m tempted to resent the costly sacrifices of parenting, help me to see that every time I have to die to my own plans, you are adding to my life, not taking from it. Keep up your work of shaping me into the image of your Son, no matter what it may cost me.