Are you available?

There is an old saying that the best ability to offer to God is your availability and rightly so because if you offer your availability to God, you are offering all that you are, just as instructed.

Romans 12:1–2 (ESV) — 1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The picture is a worshipper bringing a peace offering to the priest as a way of expressing gratitude to God. The peace offering would be consumed upon the altar. I am sure that some would look at the situation and think of how better the lamb could have been used or how the worshipper could have taken a lamb which was of little or no worth. But that would not be worship. In fact, substituting anything that is less than the very best for God is unacceptable. David expressed similar sentiments when he was instructed to offer a sacrifice at the threshing floor of Araunah.

2 Samuel 24:19–24 (ESV) — 19 So David went up at Gad’s word, as the Lord commanded. 20 And when Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. And Araunah went out and paid homage to the king with his face to the ground. 21 And Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you, in order to build an altar to the Lord, that the plague may be averted from the people.” 22 Then Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. 23 All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the Lord your God accept you.” 24 But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.

David was available to do as God commanded him. The cost was just part of the availability because God demanded the best. Similarly, Isaiah responded to God’s call by expressing his availability.

Isaiah 6:1–8 (ESV) — 1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” 8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”

Like Isaiah receiving grace in forgiveness, Paul in Romans 12:1 looks back to consider the marvelous grace of God described in the first 11 chapters of Romans that culminated with praise to the sovereign God Who not only designed such a perfect and complete salvation, but carried it out in such a way that only He could get the praise for it.

Romans 11:33–36 (ESV) — 33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

Now, based upon all that God has done for you, if indeed you are one of His, then what is your response? Availability! Present your body (all of you) to God to be utterly consumed by Him – because that is the only reasonable thing to do.

Are you available? I mean really available. We all like to think we are available until a closer look finds that we like to really hold some things back from presenting it all on the altar to be consumed. Let’s look at our time. Out of the 168 hours in a given week, how much of your time have you made available to God? How about your income? How much of your income do you really give to God? How about your talent (your very being)? When it comes right down to it we are not all that available, but it need not be that way. Whenever God shows us a place where we fall short, He is graciously giving us the opportunity to repent and get it right.

Consider God saying to you each day, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” to which we reply like Isaiah, “here am I send me.” This means we present ourselves to God daily and we ask for the sensitivity to the prompting of the Holy Spirit to be used by God and the grace to carry out His will. As a matter of fact, in Romans 12 we have the very instructions for following through on making ourselves available to God.

Godspeed,

Bob Brubaker