Your Best Ewe Now (or The Offal Truth)

Malachi

1:8 "When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?"

1:10 "Oh that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on My altar! I am not please with you," says the Lord Almighty, and I will accept no offering from your hands."

Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen is an easy target. I go back and forth on him - sometimes I think it's not too bad, that many people are in such dire straits that the first thing they need to hear is that God loves them and had wonderful plans for them, and then they can start the process of getting it all back together. Other times, his message goes down like sour milk. It's lukewarm, tepid and without any lasting impact or value. The Christian life is not about our best life now, it's about surrendering everything we are and everything we value to the Lord and let Him use us or burn us out. When we make the message about how to enhance our life, then we lose the true message of Christ. He is not a life-enhancer, He obliterates the old life.

In the days of Malachi, the people were suffering from the same problem. They had come back from Babylon with dreams of Their Best Life Now, but it wasn't quite working out that way. So they decided to take matters into their own hands and withhold the best of the flocks, bringing in the sick and the old for the offerings to the Lord. They deserved the best, so they would supply themselves with the best. God got the leftovers and the lame - they withheld their best ewe. These offerings rose as a stench to the Lord and He told them to "shut the Temple doors."

But don't we do the same thing now? We offer up our best time, energy and money to our own personal pursuits, and whatever is left over, we offer to the Lord. The last minutes of the day. The time when we're least alert or effective. The remnants of our salaries after we've made sure the bills (and entertainment essentials) are taken care of.

We do it in our families as well. We give the outside world our best face, our kindest personality. We treat them with respect, and then we enter our own homes and offer up the "offal" parts ourselves. The leftover entrails of the sacrificial offerings that we've already given to ourselves and the world around us. Brothers - this should not be! Like the people in Malachi, we've got it upside-down. You know those tired devotions you're having? You are, in a sense, lighting "useless fires" before Him.

I am making a more concerted effort to give my best ewe now. I've sat down with my wife and reworked the budget so that God is first. I've tried to make sure that He gets my best time, not my I'm-about-to-fall-asleep time. I also want to make sure that my wife and family get the better part of me, not a cranky, short-tempered father sitting on the couch because he's had a tough day. The people of my church need a better me as well. You see, once you give God your best and start to actually trust Him, the dominoes start falling. You become better for those around you, working from the inside-out.

You want your best life now? Offer up your best you now.