“You shall provide a lamb, a year-old without blemish for a burnt offering to the Lord daily. Morning by morning you shall provide it.”
– Ezekiel 46:13
So here’s a picture of a sacrifice offered before God every single day. Morning by morning, you shall provide this offering. And as I read it, I think about my mornings and I trust, I hope your mornings, that we would begin each day by coming before God and saying, “God, here’s my life.” Think Romans 12, right? In view of God’s mercy, let’s offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. This is your spiritual act of worship, to rise every day. And if you’ve not done this already today, to say, “God, here’s my life. I am laying it down in a fresh way today.” This is what Jesus calls us to do.
Luke 9:23. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily.” Every day, morning by morning and all day long. God, here’s my life. Lead me, guide me, direct me. Help me to honor you, to glorify you. May my life be pleasing to you. May it be an offering of praise to you. Can we just pray that? God, here’s our lives today, each one of our lives laid before you. Lead us, guide us, bless us, help us to glorify you today in everything we do. God, we pray that our every word would bring glory to your name. That our every thought would be pure and holy and glorifying to you. That our every desire would reflect your heart. God, that our every action and every decision would be led by your Spirit. We want our whole body, mind, soul, every part of us to be totally pleasing to you.
God, we pray for that in our lives today. May it be so. We want to worship you from the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment we lay our heads down on our pillows at night. And even as we sleep, God, we want everything we do to be glorifying to you. We pray that you would be honored with our lives. We pray that you would be praised by our lives from the moment we wake up. And God, we pray for the spread of your praise through us, right around us.
Matthew 5:16. May people see our lives and give glory to you in heaven as a result. God, help us to live toward that end. And God, not just around us, far from us, we pray for the spread of your praise among all the peoples of the earth. For the Bashkir people of Russia, 1.6 million of them, so few of them knowing you, although there are a few Christians there. God, for our brothers and sisters among the Bashkir, God, we pray for your strengthening of them. We pray that your glory would spread through them and you would send laborers to join with them in spreading the good news of your grace and your glory among the Bashkir in Russia.
O God, as we pray for these people groups in Russia, especially in light of all that’s going on in that part of the world, God, we pray for the spread of your peace and your joy and your love in Russia, specifically among the Bashkir people. And God, we pray that there would be more and more Bashkir people waking up daily, offering their lives as a sacrifice of praise to you. You are worthy of all of our worship, O God. You are worthy of our worship from the very beginning of the day to the end of the day and the next day the same, and the next day the same, all of our days. Be pleased, be praised we pray, with the offering of our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray, the name of the one who cleanses us, who died on a cross for our sins and makes us pleasing to you. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
