This is the law of the burnt offering, of the grain offering, of the sin offering, of the guilt offering, of the ordination offering, and of the peace offering, which the Lord commanded Moses on Mount Sinai, on the day that he commanded the people of Israel to bring their offerings to the Lord, in the wilderness of Sinai. - Leviticus 7:37-38 (ESV)
For people with a short attention span, Leviticus 7 can be hard to follow. There are provisions, time constraints, caveats, rationales, and penalties listed for presenting these various offerings. Regardless of the intricacies of these offerings, the nation of Israel was excepted to carry them out from the word go.
For us, we often allow people a considerable amount of time to grow; we don't place unreasonable expectations for new believers. This is good, but there can be a danger that we don't communicate the radicalness of following Christ - people are just easing into this new life. The root, more likely than not, of this non-radical growth is a non-radical commitment by those that have been living under the label of Christian for some time. Be gentle, helpful, understanding - yes. Be dispassionate, unmotivated, unchanged - absolutely not.
I guess the question I ask myself is this: am I giving others a good picture of what it means to follow Christ? Do they know, at least in part, what it would mean for them to submit to the Lordship of our Savior by watching me go through my day?
Continue to work in my own heart, O Lord.
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