The final letter surrounding the cross is “S” for Sacrifice.
If I were to ask you right now, what or who do you sacrifice for in your life, you would probably say, “my spouse, my family, my job, my boss.” But, I have a difficult question to ask you…where is your sacrifice for faith?
As stated before, practicing faith is something we do in a blind fashion because we cannot see who or what we are being faithful to. To have faith means we are willing to sacrifice the “rules” of our society and follow our beliefs regardless.
When you take the initiative to become part of a ministry, you are ultimately saying “I’m willing to sacrifice my desire to follow the world around me and follow my faith instead.” There are ministries out there that will truly make it feel like a sacrifice, and then there is Samaritans In Christ.
I think this may be one of the reasons I love this group so much. We come together so naturally, it doesn’t feel like we are sacrificing anything to be together. But when you look closely, there are always sacrifices at play.
We sacrifice what would be our “normal” lazy Saturday to come together for our Bible Study. We sacrifice time we would have spent doing something else to help someone who needs our love more. We arrange and plan things like this so that adjustments to schedules can be made because we do still need to work around the world’s timeline.
But, we also drop everything when necessary and go visit someone in the hospital or take a family a few things to help get them through the holidays. Time is always the biggest sacrifice we make, however, ultimately, we are sacrificing ourselves because we want to walk in faith.
While that “S” stands for sacrifice, I don’t view what we do as a sacrifice because the people in our group are so good at supporting one another, it doesn’t feel that way. We know there are things some of us have given up to take this walk of faith with us. We know giving anything up can be a struggle, but because we ride as one, the struggle can fade away a little faster as the faith and love we share blooms stronger and stronger every time we are together.
Sacrifice….yes, we sacrifice to walk in faith and we do it in many ways. I’m very adamant about not talking about religion on any of my social media platforms. I’ve seen what putting the word “Christian” can do on the back of my books. I chose to write these blogs this month for my fellow Samaritans because they helped my faith go from dormant to alive again. It’s been a long time since I have felt as good spiritually as I have these last few months. I had to honor my brothers and sisters. I had to walk in faith and sacrifice my stance because I want others to know how important it is to have what I have now. If your faith is struggling, find others with a common ground. Find your people and everything you’ve been holding on to so you can leave “the Jones'” behind and find strength in your faith. That is the ultimate sacrifice…living in faith.
