Not Pleased with Burnt Offering

Psalms 51:15-17 says, “Oh Lord, open my lips, That my mouth may declare Your praise. 16 For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.”

This is probably my favorite in the entire Bible. I would tell you that I plan to get this tattooed on my ankle when I graduate college, but I don’t want to offend anyone. However, if you are already offended, then please devote yourself to pray for me before I am 21.

Anyways, tattoos are not the subject. The subject is worship. I guess the reason I love this verse is because I sometimes try to give God my best. When I help my little brothers with school, I give it to God and say, “Look what I did!” Or when I lead worship I do the same thing, but it’s hard to give my sin to Christ and say, “God, I need Your help.”

Isn’t that a hard thing to swallow? You-I need someone else to help us. It’s kind of humbling. That is what God wants though. He wants us to realize that we are weak and that we are in desperate need of Him. As we saw yesterday in 2 Corinthians 12, God’s Mercy and Grace is made perfect in weakness. I guess the fact that I don’t have to be perfect is shocking to me, because I know that God asks us to be Perfect.

If you have read most of the previous posts, you may see that in my writing, I am trying to come up with an idea of someone who is striving hard after Christ. If you don’t see it, know that I was in a hot pursuit of perfection. What is wrong with trying to seek perfection? Perfection isn’t God.

Make sure you read that right. Perfection isn’t God, but God is perfect. The point being that you can try to be perfect, work really hard to be kind, tape your mouth so you don’t say anything, but what are you doing? You are trying to become perfect by doing things yourself. God must first transform you from the inside out.

My new goal in life is to realize that I am broken, every second of the day. If I can do that, then I will be able to see God work in a million of different ways, and isn’t that better than working myself to be perfect? Don’t get me wrong; obey what God has told you to do. Don’t use Grace as an excuse of not doing what He has told you to do.

However, to follow after Christ, we must understand that we are broken. – Forsake All