Are you a living sacrifice?

Romans 12:1 NLT "And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind He will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship Him."

For a while now, I have been contemplating the meaning of being a living sacrifice. Several thoughts have come to mind, on what God is asking His children. Also, what He is not asking of His children.

First of all, Paul is pleading with his brothers and sisters in Christ,(this means you and I) to give our bodies(lives)to God because of ALL He did on the cross. I looked up a few scriptures on sacrifice and what God desires most from His children and this is what I found...
Psalm 51:17 NLT "The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God."
Hebrews 10:5 NLT "That is why, when Christ came into the world, he said to God, “You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings, But you have given me a body to offer."
Hosea 6:6 HCSB "For I desire loyalty and not sacrifice,the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings."
The first step is the obedience of a repentant heart, a broken spirit. If there is anything in our lives that is hindering the spirit, we must repent! The second step is knowing our bodies our not our own. Once we have asked Jesus to forgive our sins and be our Savior, He has the "rights" to our bodies. We have been bought with the price of His blood that was shed on the cross.(Read 1 Cor. 6)The third step is to make a commitment to follow Him no matter what. He desires our loyalty! He desires for us to gain more knowledge of Him!Ya know they say knowledge is power!

The bottom line is we owe Jesus our lives for what He did for us on the cross over 2,000 years ago! We should be willing to lay our lives on the alter, to be poured out for His use! One thing to remember, it's easy for a living sacrifice to get up and walk away when life with Christ becomes painful or a bit uncomfortable. Because God is not a "puppet master", He will never force us to stay on the alter to be a "sacrifice".

Yet He desires us to be completely surrendered, a living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable(only because of Christ)to God. When we surrender our will to His,then we will know His perfect will! That is when we truly worship our King!

I pray for each of us to dig deeper into the Word of God and find ourselves fully surrendered to Him! There truly is no better place to be than on the alter, poured out ready to be used by God!