sacrifice

Sacrifice. It’s such a simple word, yet it has so many complicated definitions depending on who you ask. Sacrifice might be waking up at 4 in the morning to take someone to the airport. Sacrifice might be going without food for a day or two to pray and fast for those less fortunate then yourself. Or sacrifice might be spending 8 hours a day on a bike saddle to raise money for refugees in Thailand.

Webster defines sacrifice as, “Destruction or surrender of anything for the sake of something else; devotion of some desirable object in behalf of a higher object, or to a claim deemed more pressing; hence, also, the thing so devoted or given up; as, the sacrifice of interest to pleasure, or of pleasure to interest.”

Very often, it takes a physical sacrifice to truly find yourself. From my experience on different missions trips, the minute you stop doing something for you, and start doing it for God, is the minute that you truly find yourself. Whether that be completing a task you weren’t able to complete before, or finding something you truly doing.

For me, it was biking. When I first heard the story of Venture going on 4 years ago now, I thought to myself, “hey, that would be fun…it’s right up your alley…but you don’t ride a bike” and I just kinda left it that for a year. The following year, I had opened to the idea of doing it, and even excited about doing it. But still, a little hesitant cause I still wasn’t a person to ride his bike. But I had three separate people, unbeknownst to each other, ask me if was going to do tour. I got the hint. God wanted me to do tour. I just couldn’t do it the following year, due to a commitment at YWAM Metro New York. I had a year left. But that’s how we get to this point. Within a week of my commitment ending, I was making it a point to ride my bike a little each day. Eventually it got to the point where I looked FORWARD to going for bike rides. I knew the physical sacrifice and the physical toll that the summer long bike ride across the United States was going to take on my body. I had firsthand experience with the cause that we’re riding for. Now, I’m upset when I can’t go for a bike ride. I can honestly say, I never thought there would come a day where something like that would happen, but it has.

So with that…I ask you this one question. What is sacrifice to you?