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The attitude behind: The wish to offer sacrifices …
Often man does not assess his life—his hidden bad attitudes, secret evil motives, lies, pride, lust and all the other things which are not pleasant in God’s sight. These things gradually start deforming his being. This deformed state of man is not in harmony with his original being, the way he was created by God. And then, to solve this inner dissonance he looks for satisfaction in outward things like jobs, studies, performing certain rituals, offering sacrifices, doing charitable works, giving alms…etc. and feels good about himself and is reluctant to see the reality. If someone is honest to himself he can very well see through these things in him.
We can see that people are eager to offer different sacrifices to their gods. In return they expect blessings from the gods on their own ambitious plans and activities. In the assumption of securing their position by their own endeavour, so that they can always say that “I did what I had to, now the gods have to bless me.” This resembles a business relationship based on mutual interest or a marriage of convenience, but the relationship with God as our loving father cannot be like this.
He is not impressed by just what we do, He looks at the heart, He looks at the inner attitude which we have towards Him. He wants to have a deeper relationship with us. He wants us to love Him with our whole heart and serve Him out of love. We can know for certain that He is completely pure and holy; with our bad attitudes, selfish motives, defiled thinking and impure wishes we cannot have part in the relationship with Him unless we deeply change and regret all our sins.
Our sacrifice should be our whole life which we sanctify and purify from all sins and wickedness so that it may be pleasing to Him. He takes delight in such a sacrifice and in this way we will enjoy His protection and the blessing of His presence in our lives.
God is the creator of everything …
God has created everything and everything belongs to Him. We cannot give him anything. A tenant cannot put his owners belongings as deposit for the house.
So, what can we offer to him ?
God is not someone who would need our money or animals, He wants our lives humbly devoted to Him. To honour Him with our lives and to be thankful for everything He has given us. This is the only thing which we can give in return to God for all His provisions for us, this is the most pleasing sacrifice in his sight.
Can we make an agreement with God?
No! Through our sinful lives we have done great harm to His creation. Through our selfish ambitions we have rejected His guidance for our lives—the way in which He wanted things to be. He does not force His demands on us, but respects our free will, He gives us freedom to decide and that is why the world, misusing this freedom, is so evil, filled with unrighteousness, corruption, strife, lust, quarrels and fights. Now, it is not possible to compensate this harm by giving some amount of money, property or time. The harm we have done is not physical, so it cannot be mended by physical things.
We have to seek and love him with all our heart, mind and strength. To give our best to serve him. He is ready to forgive us if we want it, if we accept our sins and confess them. The amount of energy, strength and thoughts we use reflects our longing for his forgiveness. This means we have to devote ourselves completely, to deny ourselves to serve Him and to love others. God wants to show His grace and mercy towards us although we are not worthy of it.
So, we are completely responsible for the way we live. If we take pleasure in what God hates and do what is displeasing to Him then it is our own wrong decisions which puts us far from Him and not His judgment, because He loves us and would always want that we live with Him. He wants us to decide by our own to want to build a relationship with Him. It is not possible unless we want it.