Sharing His Seat预览

Living Sacrifices

We know according to Scripture in Exodus 20:5 that God is a jealous God and He does not want to share His glory with any other god. In Hebrews 12:29, we see that God is a consuming fire, meaning He will consume anything and everything that stands in His way from claiming His throne. It is made clear that God will do His part and pursue His throne. The question is, will we allow Him to take it or will it be a struggle for us to fully surrender our lives to Him?

How do we develop such a powerful relationship with Jesus that we come to a place where He is the only One seated on the throne of our hearts? Paul says in Romans 12 that we ought to present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, this is our reasonable service that we give to God because of His mercies and goodness that He showered on us through the cross of Jesus. To present our bodies to God means that we use our bodies to glorify Him. Anything that does not glorify God, we should flee from. This includes the list mentioned in Galatians 5 about the works of the flesh. As followers of Jesus, we cannot afford to continue in our old ways. When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour it means that we live a life of repentance. Repentance is turning 180 degrees from where we were headed and walking in the opposite direction. If we practiced lawlessness before, we stop practicing those things. If we had used our bodies as instruments of unrighteousness before then we stop doing those things.

The Bible gives us clear directions on how to overcome the fleshly desires in our lives and live a life that is pleasing to God. When we allow the Holy Spirit to convict us of our sins (John 16:8-11), He will lead us to start obeying the Word of God. The Holy Spirit is the One that will speak to us to do the opposite of what the flesh wants us to do. The flesh has desires that want to be satisfied, and so does the Spirit. But these desires of the Spirit are in contrast to the desires of the flesh. We cannot obey both the voice of the Holy Spirit and the voice of the flesh at the same time. We must live a life of disciplining the flesh, beating it into submission to God, and pleasing God in all our ways.

Colossians 1:10 states that we need to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him in what we do, say, and think. The book of Proverbs says that “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” Meaning that whatever you think about, you will do. Therefore, if you think about grabbing lunch with a friend, then you will find yourself getting in the car and driving to your destination to order lunch with your friend. Our minds are the steering wheel of our actions. So, in context with the Bible, if we think about things that please God, if we think of how we can obey His voice today, then we will walk in that direction.

We prepare the throne for God in our hearts by removing all the unnecessary things that take up space in our minds. Let go of offense, let go of bitterness, let go of jealousy, anger, lust, inferiority, and even selfishness. God is not pleased with those things or the actions they produce. Let us clean the seat for the Lord.