No Strings Attached

"Grandma, in Bible times people had to sacrifice animals to God, didn't they?" Jovie asked one day. "Why don't we do that now?""When Jesus died for our sins, He was the perfect sacrifice. Animal sacrifices are no longer needed because Jesus's sacrifice covers all our wrongs when we trust in Him.""Well, when people made a sacrifice, something had to be killed, right?" said Jovie. "But my memory verse talks about a living sacrifice. What does that mean?""To be a living sacrifice means to give your whole life to God." Grandma picked up a small piece of yarn. "Pretend this yarn is my life. It's my love, my family, my time, my actions--my everything. Here, I'll give it to you." Grandma held out one end of the yarn. Jovie took it, but Grandma kept hold of the other end. "There--my life is all yours now. I'm sacrificing it to you." She tugged on the yarn a little as she spoke.Jovie giggled. "Then why are you still holding on to it?" "Good point," said Grandma. "That's like Christians when we say we've made our lives a living sacrifice to God, but then we leave strings attached to some areas. For example, we might not want God to have any say in how we spend our time or our money. Or perhaps we continue to put ourselves in situations where we'll be tempted to do things that are wrong. It's possible to hold something back in any number of areas." Grandma dropped her end of the yarn. "Now tie that into a bow.""Okay," said Jovie, but as she began to tie a bow, Grandma reached out and took hold of the yarn again, almost tugging it out of Jovie's grasp. "Grandma! What are you doing?""That bow you're making is too small," said Grandma. She smiled at Jovie's puzzled look. "Christians sometimes act the way I just did. When we don't like the way things are going, we try to pull our lives back out of God's hands. To be a living sacrifice, we need to remember that we belong to Jesus, who sacrificed His own life to save us, and trust Him to guide us in every part of our lives.""Even when things aren't going the way we want, right?" Jovie nodded. "I think I get it." – Jean A. Burns