{"id":11681,"date":"2024-08-14T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-14T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/satchurch.lv\/?p=11681"},"modified":"2016-07-17T22:40:38","modified_gmt":"2016-07-17T19:40:38","slug":"sacrifice-measure-love-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/sacrifice-measure-love-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacrifice as a measure of love! II"},"content":{"rendered":"Greetings to you, dear readers of our Daily Word for Spiritual Strength column! I thank God for everyone of you and I pray that you do not become cold in your thirst for the Word of God and His wisdom.\r\n\r\nWe are continuing talking about what love is and what the measure for our love is.\r\n\r\nLove is not feelings, it is self-sacrifice, but self-sacrifice \u2013 it is decision.<\/em>\r\n\r\nOf course, there are feelings in love. But, if we love God, our mutual relationships with God do not consist of feelings alone.\r\n\r\nThe Bible talks about people whom God calls His friends. Why were these people special? All of them proved their love for God with self-sacrifice. They did not afford themselves do many things only because they loved God and longed for friendship with Him.\r\n\r\nThe level of my self-sacrifice determines how much I love God!<\/strong>\r\n\r\nLet us look at the life of Noah.\r\n
\u201cThe LORD saw how great man\u2019s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.\u00a0The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.\u00a0\u00a0So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth\u2014men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air\u2014for I am grieved that I have made them.”\u00a0\u00a0But Noah found favour in the eyes of the LORD.\u00a0\u00a0This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.\u201d\u00a0(Genesis 6:5-9)<\/h6>\r\nIn the times of Noah, people lives the way they wanted, they did what their lusts and feelings dictated. But apart from everybody else, Noah sacrificed his feelings due to his friendship with God, and thus he saved his family.\r\n\r\nWhy did Noah not live the way others lived?\u00a0Because he loved God! With his pure and righteous life in the wicked world, Noah showed his love for God. It was more important for Noah what God tells him, than what people do or say. IT was more important for Noah\u00a0to maintain a love relationship with God, than to be accepted by people.\r\n\r\nThe Bible says that Noah built an altar for God after the floods.\r\n
\u201cThen Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.\u201dGenesis 8:20).<\/h6>\r\n \r\n\r\nThis is another way to Noah showed his love for God.\u00a0Everyone who loves God builds the altar for God.\u00a0When we talk about sacrifice, it is definitely about the altar. Altar to God is a sign of your love for God!\u00a0In his generation, Noah was the only such example.\u00a0Noah built the altar for God, because he constantly saw God\u2019s grace in his life and in his family\u2019s life and it triggered in him love and gratitude to God.\r\n\r\nWhat were you willing to sacrifice to show God that you love Him? A true sacrifice will always cost us something. Your love for God and readiness to please Him might not be accepted by your relatives or friends, therefore they can\u00a0even deny you. Your love for God will require from you holy life, change of habits and many other things. Love for God has nothing common with sin. Are you still ready to choose the way to love God and therefore sacrifice everything that you will be asked to? It is something to think about!\r\n\r\nIf we return to the story about Noah, we know that all human race, except Noah and his family, was wiped out because of evil of sin.\r\n
\u201eThis day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.\u201d\u00a0(Deuteronomy 30:19).<\/h6>\r\n \r\n\r\nSin always leads to death. The love that sacrifices itself always gets rewarded, and the main reward is life, filled with meaning and God\u2019s blessings.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nMay the Lord bless you!\r\n\r\nUntil tomorrow!\r\n\r\nPastor\u00a0Rufus Ajiboye","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Love is not feelings, it is self-sacrifice, but self-sacrifice \u2013 it is decision.\r\n\r\nOf course, there are feelings in love. But, if we love God, our mutual relationships with God do not consist of feelings alone.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nThe Bible talks about people whom God calls His friends. Why were these people special? All of them proved their love for God with self-sacrifice. They did not afford themselves do many things only because they loved God and longed for friendship with Him.","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-word"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":12,"label":"Daily Word"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/depositphotos_59131245-stock-photo-word-love-written-on-lined-e1664288767655.jpg",600,458,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Pastor Rufus Ajiboye","author_link":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/author\/rufus-ajiboye\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":12,"name":"Daily Word","slug":"daily-word","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":12,"taxonomy":"category","description":"Daily word for spiritual strength","parent":0,"count":650,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","cat_ID":12,"category_count":650,"category_description":"Daily word for spiritual strength","cat_name":"Daily Word","category_nicename":"daily-word","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38686,"href":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11681\/revisions\/38686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/satchurch.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}