Giving back to the Lord in love and honour has been a message on my heart recently. As I pray for His will to be done in my life, I am reminded to be grateful for all that He has blessed me with already and for what may given in the future. Everything that God has given belongs to Him. In that case we shall offer all that we have back to Him as we are to be faithful stewards of what He has bestowed upon us.

How Hannah gives back to the Lord

As confirmation a Sister was sharing the story of Hannah in the bible. Hannah cried out to God for a child, a son, with the promise to offer Him back to God. Yes Hannah gave her firstborn son to God in love and honour. This made me think of other areas of our lives where God has poured out His blessings upon us or even the little things which God has given. Should we not be reminded to offer them back to Him in love and honour, acknowledging that we are merely the recipients of His good gifts.

Understanding that God is Sovereign and can give, take away, or withhold whatever He chooses is truly humbling.

How may I give back to God in love and honour?

I pondered how I may give back to God in love and honour as Hannah did. My first thoughts were our children. I had already prayed for them and promised to raise them in God’s ways to the best of my ability. The responsibility of that promise helps me to make decisions as their Mother, what they can read, watch, learn. The example I am in their life. The list goes on! The understanding is that they are precious gifts and blessings that have been given with the intention that we raise them to be sons and daughters of God.

What about other areas of our lives? Our finances, our health, time, gifts and talents. Before we begin to feel overwhelmed at the possibilities I want to share from a book I have recently been reading by Elisabeth Elliot. ‘Discipline, the glad surrender’.

Jesus glorifies God

The sum of our job here on earth is to glorify God. This was the sum of Jesus’ task as well. How did He do it? Shortly before He was crucified He said to His Father, “I have glorified thee on earth by completing the work which thou gavest me to do.”

There were endless demands on Jesus’ time. People pressed on Him with their needs so that He and His disciples had not leisure even to eat, and He would go away into the hills to pray and be alone. At times the disciples came to Him with reproach because He was not available when needed. There must have been, everywhere He went, those who wanted to be healed who could not get to Him because of the crowds, or who had no one to carry them to Him or to send to ask Him to come to them. How many “if only’s” He must have left behind, how much more that He “could have” done.

There must have been things, also, that Jesus Himself would have liked to do during those three packed years of ministry, but He was a man, with a man’s limitations of time and space. Still He was able to make that amazing claim, “I have finished the work You gave me to do.” This was not the same as saying He had finished everything He could possibly think of to do or that He had done everything others had asked. The claim was that He had done what had been given.

I encourage you to read this book by Elizabeth Elliot, the glad surrender, as it is full of godly wisdom for a disciplined Christian life. So what does this have to do with giving back to the Lord in love and honour?

Offer up what you can

Although we may desire to live our lives for the Lord and glorify Him, we may feel there are so many options and ways we may serve Him. As I thought about how to give back to the Lord I realised that I need to only focus on the work that God has given me to do. That way I can give back to the Lord in faithfulness, love and honour without trying to do it all. Without doing things half-heartedly or out of obligation.

I am able to focus on those things I am given and find joy in what is set before me to do. Jesus was unable to do absolutely everything while He was on this earth but yet He was faithful to do what He was given to do. It can be the same for us.

Examining myself

As I examined myself and my life, I asked God to show me anything I was with-holding from Him. Those things that I have taken control of and not offered back to God. I found myself feeling convicted over the smaller things like being idle or unprepared. To the bigger things like family planning.

Two things came to my attention as reasons that we withhold parts of our lives and ourselves from God.

1. We lack reverence and fear of God. (We don’t understand that He is LORD of our lives).
2. We don’t trust God.

Number one is understanding that we are here to glorify and serve God. Not the other way around. We need to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice and that includes all of ourselves.

Number two is that because we don’t fully trust God, we don’t feel like we can fully surrender or offer back what has been given to us. What if I asked the Lord what to do with my money? What would happen if I surrendered my womb and trusted God with the number of children He wanted to give? In short, we are afraid.

Yet if we can understand that God loves us and wants to bless us and that includes our spiritual growth. Then we can trust that His ways and His will for our lives is good. For He is good.

Living Sacrifices to God

Dear Sisters I encourage you to come before the throne of God and offer yourself and all that you have back to the Lord. Ask Him for blessings that you may then bless others which glorifies God, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Follow Titus 2:5 and Proverbs 31. Give back to the Lord in love and honour for Him. The one who is worthy of all. May God bless you abundantly as you live for Him.

May the Lord bless you,

Megan