groundZero's blog

Take a moment to simply think about what emotions, thoughts and feelings are evoked by the word sacrifice. In today’s society sacrifice is somewhat of a dirty word. It implies giving up something, being uncomfortable, and at it’s highest extent… pain. Little do we know though that sacrifice is central to serving. One is not able to truely serve without first sacrificing something. Jesus sacrificed His own life in the greatest act of servitude the world has ever seen. I think we forget that Christ’s death was a choice. Jesus was not forced to die on the cross, He CHOSE it.

I can’t stop thinking about the first church described in Acts 2. It says they shared everything. EVERYTHING! The truth is nowadays it would be difficult to get any community or gathering to share absolutely everything they have. But Christ not only shared everything He had, He gave it all away. So it comes down to sacrifice, and I believe the first church understood that. They understood sacrifice, that dying to themselves every day was necessary in order to achieve what it is the church is meant to achieve. Matthew 16:25 says, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life for My sake will find it.” Has the church forgotten this? If we seek to avoid sacrifice we stray from the very purpose that God has placed on us. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose it’s authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the 20th century.” Is that what we really want to be?