LAY IT DOWN

Romans 12:1 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”

Native hunters in the jungles of Africa have a clever way of trapping monkeys. They slice a coconut in two, hollow it out, and in one half of the shell cut a hole just big enough for a monkey’s hand to pass through. Then they place an orange in the other coconut half before fastening together the two halves of the coconut shell. Finally, they secure the coconut to a tree with a rope, retreat into the jungle, and wait. Sooner or later, an unsuspecting monkey swings by, smells the delicious orange, and discovers its location inside the coconut. The monkey then slips his hand through the small hole, grasps the orange, and tries to pull it through the hole. Of course, the orange won’t come out; it’s too big for the hole. To no avail the persistent monkey continues to pull and pull, never realizing the danger he is in. While the monkey struggles with the orange, the hunters simply stroll in and capture the monkey by throwing a net over him. As long as the monkey keeps his fist wrapped around the orange, the monkey is trapped.

It’s too bad that the poor monkey could save its own life if it would let go of the orange. It rarely occurs to a monkey, however, that it can’t have both the orange and its freedom. That delicious orange becomes a deadly trap. The world sets traps for you that are not unlike the monkey trap. You hear constantly that if you just have enough money, enough stuff, enough power, enough prestige-then you’ll be happy. Under that illusion people spend their whole lives thinking you must have it all. The call of Christianity is unlike that of the world. The focus of the world is on what you can get out of life. A Christian is called to be live life on a higher plain.

The Apostle Paul challenges us to offer ourselves as a sacrifice. Instead of constantly increasing ourselves and taking more for our own contentment, he urges us to lay it down in order to please God. It is an act of worship – he says. We have all learned by now that this idea is very contrary to our own personal nature. Why would I live as a sacrifice, when I can live with surplus? It’s troubling to our natural minds because it is a spiritual truth. The natural eye perceives things in light of our feelings and surroundings. The spiritual eye looks beyond immediate need or want and sees a greater calling which leads to a greater life.

We are confronted every day with circumstances that demand we choose between a world view and a God view. If we choose to adopt a worldly attitude by tightly holding on to things more than we seek after God, we rob ourselves of a deeper connection with the one who created us. God longs for us to give him our body, our mind, and our will. If we make the commitment to be different from the world and to lay our lives down for Christ, we will live fulfilled and blessed. We will have our hope, not in things that pass away, but in one who lives forever.