Dedication and Blessing

Dedication and Blessing

1. How do I preserve the blessing I have received?

Every blessing received must make us a more complete sacrifice to God. That is the blessing that lasts. Ps. 118:27: “God is the Lord, and He has given us light; bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar!” The proof that you have received light from God lies in the fact that you are willing to let God bind you more firmly as a sacrifice to the horns of the altar, that you are determined that your path will be a sacrificial path and your life a sacrificial life. When you go back to your work with this decision, you can be without fear of losing the blessing you have received; on the contrary, your troubles will only increase the blessing, and what hitherto seems to have been a hindrance to you in following Jesus will now become the cords that bind you more firmly to the altar as a whole sacrifice.

Many are prepared to lose their lives, but they still have reservations as to “how” and “where” this should happen, therefore they were not without their own opinions on the matter. God had said to Abraham: offer your son there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will show you. God also shows us the place where we should bring our sacrifice. Many are prepared to sacrifice themselves on the missionary mountain, but God may have appointed the family mountain instead. Many may be prepared to die in the sun, but the grain of wheat that would bear fruit must first die in the underground. Our nature may be prepared to sacrifice itself, even to death, but it will only do so on its own terms. If Peter, sword in hand, could have given his life for the Saviour, he would have done so. But when Jesus forbade him to do that, and told him to follow Him like a lamb, his courage left him.

Oh, how reluctant our nature is to follow the path that the Lamb has trodden: this is one who will fight and give his life, as long as it is in an heroic way and not in the way of the lamb. We do not love the hidden sacrifice and the hidden death.

2. How are the blessings that I have received made to increase?

Every blessing received must be transformed into a sacrifice. In this way they are increased. God adds an even greater blessing to this blessing that we have placed on the altar of sacrifice. Abraham therefore had to lay his son on the altar, in order for God to place an even greater blessing on Isaac. Just read Gen. 22 to the end. There on the altar God made the greatest promises to Isaac. O, how often have we shut the door to a greater blessing, clinging to what we have instead of rendering it as a sacrifice. By doing so, we could have multiplied our blessings, transforming them into perpetual gifts without end.

Why we today, despite the great amount of knowledge, have so little acknowledgement is, above all, because we did not allow ourselves to be led to the altar by the light we have received, and so our light has sunk into mere knowledge that turns the sincere into unhappy people and the insincere into repulsive hypocrites. For any ray of light from above that cannot produce an offering as fruit will be lost for one’s life. Let us learn from the Lamb! He translates each of the blessings received from above into a sacrifice and finally absorbs everything into the one great sacrifice on the cross.

And did Paul act differently with the blessing he received? He made a sacrifice of all and that is why his life has such eternal content. And Queen Esther! Isn’t the real moral of her story that she transformed the blessing she received and turned it into a sacrifice? She became queen in order to be able to save her people from destruction—by risking her own life. Thus, her blessing becomes a perpetual blessing.

May we live in such a way that our lives are pleasing to God and a great blessing to mankind.