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Lame Offerings

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 30, 1872

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 39, No. 7.

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Lame Offerings.

By C. Green

This subject, presented a few weeks ago by Bro. St. John, caused serious reflections to pass through my mind. How many lame offerings are presented to the Lord, even by those who profess faith in his soon coming!
Our service in the prayer and social meetings is often an index of our lives when about our daily duties. There is so little earnest, secret prayer, so little watching, that our hearts are ill-prepared with thoughts to encourage others, when we meet to recount the goodness of God to us. Again, we often withhold the best, and present the Lord with our little remaining strength for his service, faintly hoping for his acceptance of it, and desiring his blessing—for what? To consume and use as we have often used it before. God gives us all we have, and when with our whole heart we present him with the best we receive from him, he will acknowledge the offering by conferring his blessing.
Have we money to give for his cause, or to pay for the life-giving truth for ourselves, let us present the best and brightest bills we have; that which is the least soiled or torn. Do the wants of the poor plead for something from our cellar or granary, let us give as good as we have, and hurt them not, nor insult the Lord, with that which we would not use ourselves.
Our bodies are required to be living sacrifices. Let us then strive to render them so, by a proper course of diet, with temperance even in this, that we may not have a lame offering in this respect. May we not be profited by Abraham's example, who, when he had prepared his offering and laid it upon the altar, watched it, and drove from it the birds and beasts of prey, who sought to take it away before it was accepted by the Lord.
We may learn from this to keep back from our hearts those covetous thoughts and selfish feelings which would hinder our offering from being complete and free-will. The Lord help us to present our offerings free from blemish or taint of sin or selfishness, that we may have his blessing and his favor.
C. GREEN. Battle Creek, Mich.