He don’t need nor want your sacrifices…He wants your heart!

I don’t want your sacrifices–I want your love;
I don’t want your offerings–I want you to know Me.
Hosea 6:6 TLB  

   “I am sick of your sacrifices” says the Lord.  “Don’t bring me any more burnt offerings!  I don’t want the fat from your rams or other animals.  I don’t want to see the blood from your offerings of bulls and rams and goats.  Why do you keep parading through my courts with your worthless sacrifices?  The incense you bring me is a stench in my nostrils!  Your celebrations of the new moon and the Sabbath day, and your special days for fasting – even your most pious meetings – are all sinful and false.  I want nothing more to do with them.  I hate all your festivals and sacrifices, I cannot stand the sight of them! (Isaiah 1:11-14) NLT

  For You will not delight in my sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:16-17)

  God is a Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit.  He cares nothing about the flesh or what you do in the flesh.  Your flesh cannot please God! (Romans 8:8)

  How often are we led to DOING when we feel we’re not right with God.  If we feel we have neglected our walk, messed up in some way, stepped out of His will, if we have looked with longing eyes at things we don’t need, if we have allowed ourself to be drawn back into old and broken habits, or begin to make more room on our plates for worldly desires?  How often do we seek to fix the distance between us and God by DOING.  We try to read more of the Bible, pray more, be more faithful with our devotions, try to listen to more worship music, put more in the offering plate, be better at paying our tithes.  When we try to keep the rules….do this, don’t do that, trying to please God, we’re offering Him sacrifices and are not pleasing Him at all!  Do!  Do!  Do!  Wearing ourselves out, running in circles like a dog chasing his tail, trying to ‘do’ to please God.  All of which are what David calls my “sacrifices” and “burnt offerings” that God has no delight or pleasure in.  God doesn’t want your sacrifices…He wants YOU!  If you want to sacrifice something to God, offer yourself as a sacrifice.  Like the song says, “pure and holy, tried and true with thanksgiving, I’ll be a living, sanctuary, for You”.

  The Lord doesn’t want our works, our sweat, our strength, our plans, our programs, our schemes.  God isn’t interested in public righteous behavior when we have a private, wicked, sinful heart.  He wants us to deal with our brokenness, our stinkin’ thinkin’ patterns, our hidden jealousies, our judgments, our lusts, our pride and He doesn’t want our guilt either!  He doesn’t want our sacrifices because He’s already paid the price.  Jesus became the final sacrifice, after Him there are no more sacrifices. What He wants is for us to build our lives on mercy and become merciful…show mercy with cheerfulness, let love be genuine, give to the poor, bless those who persecute you, weep with those who weep, associate with the lowly, repay no one evil for evil.  Never avenge yourselves, if your enemy is hungry feed him.  If anyone offends you, be quick to forgive. Love for real, not a love you today, stab you tomorrow phoney kinda love.  Love like Jesus loved, to the death! 

  What God wants is for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time. Once and for all!!! That’s it! That’s all! No more sacrifices!  No more DOING!  He done it all now all we need to do is just relax and enjoy Him, enjoy life, the abundant life He died to give us!

  If He should want anything else from us it would be stillness.  Be still!  Do nothing!  He wants us to take a ‘chill pill’ and just relax, to enter into His rest. Relax and live!  Live our lives one day a time, being led by Holy Spirit, walking in the spirit.  Calling on Holy Spirit and allowing Him to produce a broken spirit and contrite heart over our sin and brokenness so that our hearts may match the brokenness and sorrow God feels when we settle for and embrace counterfeit goodness in exchange for His holy blessings. “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”  Teach me to just relax and enjoy my fellowship with You.

  My prayer…..Help me Abba God to submit myself to Your Holy Spirit to search and know my heart, to test me and see my anxious thoughts. Forgive me of the sin of DOING to gain righteousness instead of standing in the grace and righteousness of Christ and coming before You as the broken woman that I am.  Teach me, help me to just relax!  Have mercy on me, O’ Lord, a sinner saved only by Your grace.  Help me to live in such close intimacy with Holy Spirit that I am so tuned in to the things that break Your heart that they break mine; help me to be sensitive to the things that give Your heart joy and may I embrace them so that they may be my joy also.  May I always love as You love, forgive as You forgive…In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

In His love,
Elizabeth