Scripture Song: Romans 12:1 (Part 2)

Ok!! Hello! Hi!! I’m alive!

I’m so sorry that last week I didn’t give you guys much! But again thank you for understanding! I had this grand idea to send a surprise blog during the week with this continuation, but that obviously didn’t happen! But it’s ok! We are here! We are gonna talk about this verse and have a good time!

If you missed last week or need a little refresher on the scripture song, here you go!

“And so, dear brothers and sisters,

I plead with you to give your bodies to God

because of all He has done for you.

Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—

The kind He will find acceptable.

This is truly the way to worship Him.”

Ok, I gotta be honest with you, I struggled with which direction to go in talking about this verse, because there are a couple to choose from. However, there was one word that kept jumping out to me and I feel like it’s the little nugget the Lord wants me to give to you today.

Acceptable.

I don’t particularly like this word. There is something about it that reminds me of my fourth grade teacher who was really strict and not the nicest lady. I don’t specifically remember her saying it, but it just feels like she did, you know what I mean? “This is not acceptable work, Kristen.” Or like seeing the word, “Unacceptable” written in bold, red pen on something I turned in for a grade. I don’t know, this word automatically makes me hear “do better, strive harder, and don’t mess up!” (Just me?)

But I am also reminded of a moment I had with the Lord on February 2, 2012.

I was sitting on the couch in my basement apartment, and I felt the Lord inviting me to sit with Him. I was praying and telling Him about how much I wanted Him, but I also felt like I was missing Him somehow. Things I thought I knew, felt now forgotten, uncertain, and confusing. I wrote in my journal:

“I want You, Lord. I want You more than anything. But I don’t know how to really fully have You. I don’t want just a glimpse. I don’t want just burst of energy or excitement. I don’t want to keep You at arms length. I don’t want to be lukewarm. I don’t want to continue to walk in sin. I want freedom. I want an overflow of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. I want You! Not me fitting You into my life, but I want You as my life! How many times can I pray these things, Lord?”

As I was writing this, I was listening to music on YouTube. One of my favorite singers at the time, Bethany Dillon, came on. It was live clip from one of her worship nights. She was sharing a story about being in her room, crying out to the Lord, asking Him if her life really pleased Him. Then she said she had this revelation:

”I’ve got nothing pleasing in me, in the Lord’s eyes, except for Jesus. I’ve got nothing going for me except for Him.”

“Wow Lord! I don’t know that I have ever seen it in that light. But then again, how could I have missed that? I feel like I have been trying to better myself, trying to fix who I am, you know? I’ve been trying to lose weight and work on my appearance. Trying to see all my faults, like being better at cleaning house and not watching so much TV and movies and not being selfish/self-centered/self-righteous. I’ve been trying to be good because I’m a Christian. Because I wanted You. I wanted You to be proud of me. I wanted to do something BIG for You and Your glory. I wanted to be different. I wanted to be someone people talked about— someone like the people in scripture. It was all about me though and what I could do and how people could see me. How could have missed grace? How could I have missed Jesus?! To really sit back and think that You see nothing good in me, that there is nothing in me that pleases You… The way I look, the things in my heart, the way I sing, the good deeds I’ve done— none of that is worth anything to You without Jesus. It changes everything. So what should I do? Help me to wrap my mind around this, Father. This seems easily forgotten. Who I am is irrelevant, what I want to do is irrelevant, how bad I want a husband is irrelevant. But who You are, Jesus, and what You can do and are doing, is everything! What You are doing in me and through me— these are the things that are pleasing to You!”

This night marked me. Some of you might be reading this and want to argue with me quoting Psalm 139 about how “I’m fearfully and wonderfully made.” And I want you to hear me here, I’m not actually saying that isn’t true. I believe whole-heartedly, that the Lord looks at us with this amazing Dad-with-tears-in-His-eyes kind of look and He’s so proud of us, just because we are His! I think we are the crescendo of all His creation. I know that nothing can separate us from His Love!

But I think all of this is true because of Jesus and what He did!

I think I’m fearfully and wonderfully made, because “He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through Him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through Him and for Him. He existed before anything else, and He holds all creation together.” (Colossians 1:15-17)

There is only good in me because He is good. There is only love in me because He is love! There is only peace in me because He is peace.

Everything pleasing in me is because of Him.

My Dad always used this analogy in youth ministry. (Where my visual learners at? 🙋‍♀️) He said to picture a balloon inside another balloon. The inner balloon is you, the outer balloon is Jesus. When the Father looks at you, the inner balloon, He has to look through Jesus, the outer balloon. So all He sees is perfection.

One more visual for you guys! I heard this girl give a good example the other day about a being alive in Christ. (I also heard that this was a C.S. Lewis analogy. So give credit where you want.) She gave the example of a glove. A glove is made in the image of the hand. It’s got all the fingers and a thumb… you get the idea. She said however, without the actual hand inside the glove it’s useless, it just flops over and can’t serve a purpose. But when with the hand inside it, it has life. It has purpose and its purpose serves the hand that gives it life. She explained that the same is true for us, we are made in the image of God, but without Him living inside of us, we are dead and can’t be all we were created to be.

I feel like there is a lot of unflattering language in this passage. “Give your bodies to God?”… Ummm, what even does that mean? “Let them be a living and holy sacrifice?”… well that sounds painful. “The kind He will find acceptable?”… there’s that word again, and I’m not sure I can ever measure up, and I’m not even sure I want to.

But, let me ask a different question, What does He find acceptable? Or better yet, Who does He find acceptable?

Jesus.

Ding, Ding, Ding. Now we can get somewhere.

The funny thing is, February 2, 2012 was not the day I first believed in Jesus. It wasn’t the day Jesus first became real to me. (Although, in some ways the revelation felt like He was becoming real all over again.) It was, however, the day He began the work of unraveling the striving that the world and culture and religion all seem to scream at me constantly. It made me want to give Him my life and surrender all over again.

When you give Jesus your whole life and receive Him for who He is, not what you want Him to be, it’s like you come to life! You no longer have to figure your life out. He will lead you. You no longer have to carry all your struggles and burdens—and trust me they are still there, but He tells us to give them to Him and He will give us rest instead. (Matthew 11) You no longer have to figure out who you are and what you’re supposed to do. You’re the glove on the hand. You just get to partner with Him.

The moment on the couch with the Lord was oddly freeing! I remember feeling like I didn’t have to strive to be something or someone. I remember feeling free from trying to fix myself and all the things I felt like I was doing wrong or not measuring up to. I remember actually feeling relieved that it was all about Jesus and not about me. I was thankful that He was willing to carry it all and I didn’t have to. There was joy in this revelation. There was finally peace in my heart and hope in my future. And it wasn’t because of me or something I had done and I didn’t have to figure out how to achieve it. It was just Him. All His doing. All His heart. All His grace. All HIs love.

So your encouragement for the week:

Give yourself (your body, your being, your heart, your whole self) to God, because what He has done for you is way better than anything you could ever do for yourself. This is good news, not religious, soul sucking, Debbie downer striving news. GOOD NEWS! Because of Jesus you are alive and holy— set apart from the rest of the world. You no longer have to strive to figure out how to live well or live a life worth living, He wants to live through you, if you’ll let Him! This kind of trust and faith in Jesus, pleases the Father—it’s acceptable to Him, because Jesus pleases Him. This is where true freedom is found. This is where true living is. This is where His glory is proclaimed. This is how we truly worship Him!