Definitions

Sometimes when I'm trying to wrap my brain around something God is trying to teach me, I grab a dictionary and start looking up words He keeps putting in my path. The results are often profound. Here are some definitions that are helping to simplify some things for me right now.

Sacrifice: The forfeit of one thing for another thing considered to be of greater value. To sell or give away at a loss.

Offering: Something offered in worship, anything offered as a gift. To present in order to meet a need or satisfy a requirement. To propose as payment; a proposal.

As I finished looking up these two definitions the following verse echoed in my head:

To what purpose [is] the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; [it is] iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Isaiah 1:11-13

Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. Isaiah 1:17-19

And then I looked up one more thing.

Obedient: obeying or willing to obey; complying with or submissive to authority: an obedient son.

Which immediately prompted me to consider:

Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Philippians 2:4-8

Oh Lord, make me more like your Son. I long to be more like Jesus.