SACRIFICE

 

It is sad that so many of us "lean upon our own understanding" and that of the unsaved world to determine how to think and govern our actions.  But it does prove a point: people are looking....but not necessarily to the One who is the "author and finisher of our faith". 

 

There has never has been a time when those who confess they know God have failed so miserably in walking in His ways.  The early Christians knew what price they would pay to follow the Lord--that was demonstrated right after the Day of Pentecost. Men and women actually sold their possessions and left everything for the "Gospels' sake".  And millions would pay for it with their lives, not just with that generation--but in every generation that followed.  

 

Today the "gospel" of many is to possess, acquire, and live the good life of prosperity "for ones' own sake".  Even in Christian circles, the thinking is that a "successful Christian" is not a person like the beggar Lazarus, but one more like the rich man.  After all, a good father only wants the "best" for his children, which is true....but let's examine this thought: because the wrong concept of it has led to the disastrous condition of the world and the church today.

 

 

I remember the days of WWII. There were youths who could think of nothing but enlistment--as soon as possible, though many were not even old enough to vote. They wanted to fight and defend, even if the cost was their lives.  There are not better words to categorize that time but as "days of sacrifice", when those who fought on the battlefronts and those who remained behind were one and the same.  Because of what price the soldier was paying, the homefront gladly did without the luxuries, and nothing was considered too great a sacrifice for victory.  After all, those on the battlefields were their children, their husbands, their loved ones too! 

 

Denial of the things of this world is looked upon, even by the majority of Christians, as a sign of weakness.  And yet the One who had no place to lay His head also taught his disciples to "deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me".  To "love not the world, neither the things that are in the world". 

 

After the war was over, many of those returning veterans were so traumatized, some would never want to talk about their experiences--and still don't.  They simply put it all behind them and went for the good life of prosperity and peace.  Understandable, yet freedom sometimes requires a price much harder to maintain than to win.

 

Never infusing in our children about the price to be paid, generations pampered and shelted them from every hardship and concept of denial. What followed was Woodstock, the sexual revolution and addiction to drugs. Some of that thinking ended up being carried on into the church and emerging as a "prosperity" gospel.  Mega churches were built on this principal. 

 

What has been the result?  Ironically, there is scripture in the Bible that describes it, found in the book of Proverbs:

 

"There is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not bless their mother.There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and is not washed from their filthiness.There is a generation, O how lofty are their eyes! and their eyelids are lifted up.There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men." (Proverbs 20:11)

 

I have often looked at these verses and thought to myself, "why were these verses inserted in Proverbs? they seem so out--of-place, almost as if they didn't belong.  Yet, they almost prophetically describe the generation of children born to the generation that followed WWII!  For so many of the "baby boomers" would grow up to become the radical hippies and flower-children of the 60s who threw off all restraints and moral decency and became immersed in doing "whatever feels good".

 

Proverb’s "generation" had come into being in our lifetime!

 

It is time that we admit that the whole world suffers as much for what war destroys, as it does from what war can produce.  Buildings can be rebuilt, bridges repaired, widows remarry.  But if a war convinces us that denial of oneself is something we don't want  for our children--either in the spiritual as well as the physical,  the result will become a Proverbs "generation."  Telling them of how much we "sacrificed" to give them the "good life" is a litany of words that have a hollow ring. The truth is "self-evident": by crawling into our protective shells and vowing never to drag our children into the reality of true sacrifice, their skeletons never develop spiritual backbones! 

 

It takes an understanding of sacrifice to enlist, either in a country's army or in the army of the Lord.  That is why we are told to "count the cost".  A political candidate for president must know that he will be both hated and loved, criticized and hailed, given power and possibly paying for it with his life. But weaklings will never please anyone.

 

America is now experiencing the consequences. 

 

Some argue the reason: lack of jobs, no opportunities.  I have a friend whose grandson was giving his parents trouble, heading in the wrong direction.  A rich man saw that, and offered to send him to any trade school of his choice, give him a car, and after his graduating, set him up in his own business; complete with backhoes, trucks, equipment if he wanted to do that.  His answer: “No thanks. I don’t want to work!”  Selling drugs or stealing was more attractive as a career.

 

++++

 

What will a simple, poor watchmaker in Holland produce when he teaches his children the concept of sacrifice?  In the case of Casper Ten Boom, a poor Dutch watchmaker,  his willingness to shelter Jews during the war and hide them in his home from the Nazis, cost every one of them dearly. Yet it produced a generation of strength and dedication and hundreds, perhaps millions came to know the Lord because of what that godly father taught his children at the family dinner table. It later lived on in the books written by one of his daughters, Corrie Ten Boom, who authored the best seller, "The Hiding Place" after she walked out of a Nazi death camp at age 50 to travel the world sharing what she had learned at that table about sacrifice and God's faithfulness...

 

We can only learn from such people what endures and is everlasting.  We will never regain what we lost with powerful armies and majority political machines.  God did not need Gideon’s thousands to defeat the enemy---indeed, it was with the few that victory was achieved. 

 

The formula today is still the same:  2 Chronicles 7:14:

“If MY PEOPLE WHO ARE CALLED BY MY NAME, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven will forgive their sin, and heal their land.

 

 

 

 

MARY E. ADAMS