Shoved to Them
“Offer it up” is the mantra of my children’s childhood. Don’t want to clean your room? Hate the broccoli? “Offer it up. Work on your parade!” My children hear it daily. Your brother is annoying and you wanna kill him but don’t? “Offer it up!” You skin your knee trying to ride your bike down the hill and don’t scream because the baby is sleeping? (You’re my new favorite child!) “Offer it up!”
When I was a girl, my grandmother would tell me this all the time. “Offer it up!” I was never really sure why God would want me to suffer through not biting my big brother, or politely eating the cauliflower that made me gag, but I’d look up at Heaven anyway and think “If you want it, you’ve got it……why would you want it?”
It wasn’t until I was older that I figured it all out. God doesn’t want our suffering. He wants our obedience. He wants our humility. He wants our charity. He wants our self-control. That’s why we offer the pain, discomfort, and sorrow that we experience up to Him. Not because He desires those things, but because our acceptance of our own crosses become a prayer of obedience to Him.
Go read the rest over at Ignitum Today.
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