Die for Him
Judges 11:36, “So she said to him, “My father, you have given your word to the LORD ; do to me as you have said , since the LORD has avenged you of your enemies, the sons of Ammon.”
Thee story of Jephtah(don’t you love Old Testament names) and his daughter is one of the most bewildering stories in the Bible. When you read the entire story you will undoubtedly walk away scratching your head, saying “What?” Judges 11 I’ll be honest I am just as confused as you may be. It’s kind of like the story of Abraham and Isaac,only intensified.
God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, but at the last second God provided a sheep to be sacrificed instead of Isaac. In the case of Jephtah, he vowed to God that he would sacrifice to God the first thing he saw if only God would give him a victory; but the first thing Jephtah saw when he returned home was his only daughter, and this time God did not provide an alternate. There are a lot of lessons we can learn from this story, but I wanted to look for a minute at the faith of Jephtah’s daughter.
She told her father, “…do to me as you have said…” In saying that she was asking her father to go ahead and offer her up as a sacrifice to God in order to fulfill the vow that had been made. That took an amazing amount of faith!
As Christians we can learn a lot from this story. Jesus said in Matthew 16:24, “Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.25For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”
Just like Jephtah daughter we must be willing to give up our lives to honor Him because only when we surrender our life for His glory that we will truly find the life that He offers. The life that God offers to us is so much greater than what we have on our own!
In John 10:10 Jesus reminds us, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy ; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Jesus offers us the abundant life, a life that is overflowing; but we must be willing to die to ourselves before we can find it.
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Father God, I thank You for offering me a life that I could never find alone, and I ask that You always help me to remember that life can only be found in You. In Jesus’ name, Amen
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Yes, You Can Ministry 