The Pillars

Daily Dedication

Pat Taylor

What sort of things can you be dedicated to in life?

• work
• family
• hobbies
• values
• drug addiction
• relationship
• sports
• weight-loss

If you're dedicated to weight-loss, and every day for a week you weigh everything you eat. Let's see, three peas, and four carrots, and four ounces of meat... Is it dedicated if you do that for a week and then pig-out at McDonalds? No. I think we have a basic understanding of

Dedication

A renewal of consecration

Consecration

To make or declare to be sacred, to appropriate for sacred used, to set apart, dedicate, or devote to the service and worship of God.

I'd take that one step farther, to consecrate ourselves, because we are the church, right?

You see where Solomon is coming before the people; they've just built the temple. He says, "The heaven of heavens cannot contain God, let alone this building. But if you turn your hearts toward God in this place, he will hear you."

In another example, Hannah was desperately praying for a child. She promises God that if he gives her a child, she would dedicate him to ministry. God did, and she was faithful to keep her end of the bargain. After he was weaned, she took him to the temple, and he became one of the mightiest prophets in the Old Testament.

Being a Christian, living and having a relationship with God, is more than just checking a box. It's a continual effort. If you have a relationship with your Mom, you don't call her once and then never again. But imagine on the day you got baptized, and you had that communication with Jesus, but afterward you never listened to God, obeyed God, or had any kind of relationship with him. That doesn't sound like dedication, does it?

When we commit something to God's hand, God expects us to come through with our part of the covenant. Let's look at some people who have made vows of consecration to God. Let's look at Jonah. He had made some bad choices, then come to his senses, had a prayer meeting with God, and here we read the conclusion:

A lot of people think that sacrifice is something from the Old Testament; now that we're under grace we don't need it.

Wow. This was Paul, basically begging the church. "I beseech you ... to present your bodies a living sacrifice." The term sacrifice means "to slaughter, or to kill". So you're living, yet dead. Dead to the world, yet living to God. It's your reasonable service, not something up and above. And he says to not be conformed to the world. The world wants us to conform, doesn't it? There's a lot of pressure to behave a certain way.

So Jesus is telling us to forget about everything else. How many people here have been saved for over ten years? And of those, how many people are living a life that we couldn't have even imagined when we started? How many people have changed their plans in life?

When we get saved, God has a plan for our life.

Pastor Thomas tells of a time when he attended a city council meeting, and he heard them pray, "God, bless our decisions." How many of us are like that? We went to make or own plans, and then have God bless them. But we should say, "God, I have a plan. But if it's not the right plan, if it's not your plan, I ask that you change it."

So in the big picture, though it seems outwardly that we give up a lot of things to come to Christ, our inward man is renewed day by day. Paul calls it "our light affliction," because he had his eyes on "a more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

There seems to be a pattern in Paul's writings about the death of the natural man. I'm sure that Paul had plans for his life before he became a Christian. He was like a Harvard graduate in today's terms. He said that he profited much in the Jews' religion. But when he became saved, he realized that there are far higher goals to be obtained.

So, built up as lively stones, a spiritual house. You are priests in your own household, and what you offer up are spiritual sacrifices. In the Old Testament, we know they had animal sacrifices. They took a bull or a calf and hacked them up, and offered them up to God. We know that sacrifice is killing or slaughtering. A sacrifice isn't just painful to the one being sacrificed. In the Old Testament, it was also painful to the one doing the sacrificing. That bullock or cow could have been very valuable. God wanted the very best. So usually, a sacrifice is osmething that we'd really rather not do. That's what makes it a sacrifice.

So there's that word again: "beseech." The apostles and elders wanted us to understand that there's some sacrifice that needs to happen in our lives.

So how do we do this sacrifice? How do we stay on track?

We need to watch and pray always.

There's a lot in the Bible about helping each other through the daily battles and trials.

That means that we need to encourage one another. We need to encourage and exhort one another daily.

I never thought I'd get out of the Navy before the world ends. I figured that in four years, it'd all be over. But that's how the early church thought, too. Even today, every time I pick up the newspaper, I think, "How much farther can it be down the road?" But it doesn't matter whether it's ten years or it's ten thousand years.

Let's look at the book of of Acts. That's the "acts" of the disciples, what they did after the great commission.

When I was looking for a church, I remember praying and reading this scripture. I remember reading how the people lived, and saying to myself, "Where are these people?" I used to get in my car every Saturday, and drive twenty or thirty miles from my house, visiting one church after another. And every church said that they were right and everybody else was wrong. But I couldn't find a church that had this daily communion with God. I asked God, "Hey, were are these people?" And God sent me here.

These people were continuing daily in one accord. There was no division, no arguments. First it says, "in the temple," because they were Jews. But then they continued "breaking bread from house to house," exhorting and encouraging one another.

Be not unequally yoked toegether with unbelievers. A yoke is what they used to connect two oxen together so they could plow the field or perform some other task together. Imagine some big, strong, muscle-bound dude pulling together with a scrawny weakling like me. If we're both pulling on the same chain, trying to get a car out of the ditch, who is getting the better deal, and who is getting the short end of the stick? The scrawny weakling isn't going to be working as hard, that's for sure.

If we're connected together with spiritually-weak people, we're getting the short end of the stick. So if you want the long end of the stick, you need to surround yourself with spiritually stronger people, who will help you to grow stronger, too.

People who really want to excel in sports seek out a coach that really pushes them, one that won't take wimpy excuses. If you have a coach that you can call up an hour after training started with some weak excuse like you were tired and decided to take a rest, that coach won't take you to the Olympics. How important is it to you to make it to heaven? Paul likened our spiritual walk with God to preparing for a physical contest. This is the apostle Paul, a man with a powerful walk with God. But he looks at it like a race, where only one person can win the prize.

This is the message that Paul sent to a man while in prison:

That is the same message we need to receive today. We need to have a daily dedication to God, and fulfil it.