Therefore, brothers and sisters, 

in view of the mercies of God, 

I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, 

holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.

Romans 12:1 CSB

"holy and pleasing to God"

Try as I might, I will always come up short here. 

This is the language of the temple, of the priest who has followed all the purification processes, who is bringing the perfect offering, who faces death if they come up short in any way...but here it is the language of Grace.

Grace that makes my offering perfect.

Grace that fills the gap.

Grace that brings us face to face with Life.

Before the throne of God above

I have a strong, a perfect plea;

A great High Priest, whose Name is Love,

Who ever lives and pleads for me.

Grace takes the heat off to be perfect, allows us to see the corruptions, the wrong motivations, the poor choices, not as something to condemn ourselves with, but places where we can let God's Sprit work.

As crazy as it seems to write these words, Grace already makes me holy and pleasing to God.

You are, by faith in Jesus, already holy (set apart) and pleasing to God. 

(This is language of the temple, the legal, holiness sense of pleasing to God. There's the Gen 1:27, Ps 139:13-14, Eph 1:4,  sense that we are already loved and pleasing to God)

Today we don't have to strive to attain what we already have, but to live in it, to rest in it, to work in it, this place of already holy, already pleasing to God.

#amazinglove

#outrageousgrace

#breathe