Quotes & Sayings About Sacrificing For God

The idols of modern culture have had a profound influence on the shape of our work today. In traditional societies people found their meaning and sense of value by submitting their interests and sacrificing their desires to serve higher causes like God, family, and other people. In modern societies there is often no higher cause than individual interests and desires. This shift powerfully changed the role of work in people's lives - it now became the way we defined ourselves. Traditional cultures tended to see people's place on the social ladder as assigned by nature or convention, each family having its "proper place." That view had put too little stock in the role of individual talent, ambition, and hard work for determining the outcome of one's life. But modern society responded by putting too much stock in the autonomous person. — Timothy Keller

If I told you that God speaks to us through our urges so long as these are safe and proper and totally civilized and don't hurt anyone, what would I be saying? If I told you longing is okay as long as it is within the bounds of what our world considers normal, I would be going counter to my whole tradition. My people discovered divine urges, for goodness' sake. Not namby-pamby urges either. It was loincloth-tearing, harlot-marrying, sacrificing, succumbing, and surrendering kinds of urges. Not without bickering and haggling, I'll grant you, but ultimately urges of the worst kind, the kind that demanded everything. — Francisco X Stork

God took on our humanity, our sin, and the just punishment that sin deserves, dying a God-forsaken, hellish death on the cross, because only this could rescue us from our self-chosen destruction. God expresses unsurpassable love for us and ascribes unsurpassable worth to us by sacrificing the One who has unsurpassable value on our behalf! — Gregory A. Boyd

We shouldn't enable ourselves or others to bad behavior, but should always encourage for good. Our attitude toward sin is a reflection of our knowledge of our relationship to God; we are His children, and though we are to work through weakness, what plagues and plays on those weaknesses is not part of who we are. We will have to choose between sacrificing our sins, or sacrificing who we are, which would be sacrificing our divine heritage. — Michael Brent Jones

I wanted to get away,' said she; 'everybody wants to plague and worry me about nothing. They'll be all right tomorrow. What's worrying them?'
'They are sacrificing to our Canadian God,' said Solly. 'We all believe that if we fret and abuse ourselves sufficiently, Providence will take pity and smile upon anything we attempt. A light heart, or a consciousness of desert, attracts ill luck. You have been away from your native land too long. You have forgotten our folkways. Listen to that gang over there; they are scanning the heavens and hoping aloud that it won't rain tomorrow. That is to placate the Mean Old Man in the Sky, and persuade him to be kind to us. — Robertson Davies

How do I judge my own sincerity? The saving grace of salvation is located in a holy and electing God, and a sacrificing, suffering, and obedient Savior. Stakes this high can never rest on my sincerity. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

No thing worth while is obtained in this life without sacrificing, without putting forth effort. The evil one thrusts things upon us but God asks us to reach out and get that which he offers. "Teach self-denial," says Walter Scott, "and make it pleasurable, and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer. — David O. McKay

The "developed" nations had given to the "free market" the status of a god, and were sacrificing to it their farmers, farmlands, and communities, their forests, wetlands, and prairies, their ecosystems and watersheds. They had accepted universal pollution and global warming as normal costs of doing business. — Wendell Berry

Total surrender to the will of God actually is sacrificing oneself as a burnt offering to God. The proof of this state is dying to oneself, - to one's own opinions, wishes and feelings or tastes, in order to live by Divine intellect, in conformity with the Divine will and in partaking of God. In the forefront of this endeavor is our Lord and Savior. He surrendered the whole of Himself to God the Father, and us in Himself, 'For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones' (Eph. 5:30). So let us hasten in His footsteps? — Lorenzo Scupoli

A true and safe leader is likely to be one who has no desire to lead, but is forced into a position of leadership by the inward pressure of the Holy Spirit and the press of the external situation. Such were Moses and David and the Old Testament prophets. I think there was hardly a great leader from Paul to the present day but that was drafted by the Holy Spirit for the task, and commissioned by the Lord of the Church to fill a position he had little heart for. I believe it might be accepted as a fairly reliable rule of thumb that the man who is ambitious to lead is disqualified as a leader. The true leader will have no desire to lord it over God's heritage, but will be humble, gentle, self-sacrificing, and altogether as ready to follow as to lead, when the Spirit makes it clear that a wiser and more gifted man than himself has appeared. — A.W. Tozer

The 'economy' became a god such as never before, and a happy, successful society was one that could please this god - sometimes by sacrificing beautiful things - to keep the deity from getting angry and harming the people by withdrawing favours. — Michael Leunig

Let me paraphrase what Paul is saying here: Jesus married the Church - Christians, you and me, us. The Church is His literal bride. He laid His life down for the Church. And Paul writes that husbands should love their wives in the same way that Jesus loved The Church, and vice-versa.
What a daunting task.
But what is made clear in this passage is that marriage was designed to display the love that Jesus has for the Church, His bride. It's the closest thing we can get to tasting the kind of love that He has for us - a sacrificing love, a serving love, a selfless love.
Do you see what this means?
Marriage isn't really about us.
It's not.
It's about God.
It's about the Gospel. — Cole Ryan

The act of sacrificing thank offerings to God - even for the bread and cup of cost, for cancer and crucifixion - this prepares the way for God to show us His fullest salvation from bitter, angry, resentful lives and from all sin that — Ann Voskamp

Lukewarm people are continually concerned with playing it safe; they are slaves to the god of control. This focus on safe living keeps them from sacrificing and risking for God. — Francis Chan

If men were reduced to sacrificing other men to appease the darkness, the Dark god's reign had already begun. — Miyuki Miyabe

But this isn't their God, she decided. It's my God. This is a God I have found through sacrificing my own life, through my flesh being cut, my skin ripped off, my blood sucked away, my nails torn, all my time and hopes and memories being stolen from me. This is not a God with a form. No white clothes, no long beard. This god has no doctrine, no scripture, no precepts. No reward, no punishment. This God doesn't give, and doesn't take away. There is no heaven up in the sky, no hell down below. When it's hot, and when it's cold, God is simply there. — Haruki Murakami

There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, and, of its many rungs, three are the most important. People used to make human sacrifices to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best ... Then, during the moral epoch of humanity, people sacrificed the strongest instincts they had, their 'nature,' to their god ... Finally, what was left to be sacrificed? Didn't people have to sacrifice god himself and worship rocks, stupidity, gravity, fate, or nothingness out of sheer cruelty to themselves? — Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, said that what he resented in most Christians was what he perceived as a constant underlying resentment: (1) a denied resentment toward God for demanding sacrifice, (2) toward others for not appreciating our sacrifice, (3) sacrificing as much as we sacrifice, (4) and a resentment toward others for not having to do it! — Richard Rohr

The human papillomavirus (HPV) has long been known as a sexually transmitted infection that, at its worst, can cause cervical cancer in women. A vaccine is now available - these days, vaccines are increasingly swiftly developed - not to cure this malady but to immunize women against it. But there are forces in the administration who oppose the adoption of this measure on the grounds that it fails to discourage premarital sex. To accept the spread of cervical cancer in the name of god is no different, morally or intellectually, from sacrificing these women on a stone altar and thanking the deity for giving us the sexual impulse and then condemning it. We — Christopher Hitchens

The American Beauty Rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God. — John D. Rockefeller

If your fundamental is a man dying on the cross for his enemies, if the very heart of your self-image and your religion is a man praying for his enemies as he died for them, sacrificing for them, loving them - if that sinks into your heart of hearts, it's going to produce the kind of life that the early Christians produced. The most inclusive possible life out of the most exclusive possible claim - and that is this is the truth. But what is the truth? The truth is a God become weak, loving and dying for the people who opposed him, dying forgiving them. — Timothy Keller

Our flesh takes over when we decide to be self-centered instead of self-sacrificing. Then there is Satan. God — Stormie O'martian

But how can we effectively represent Christ, who in sacrificial love gave his life for others, if we don't deeply care about those he died for? And since "God is love" (1 John 4:8), doesn't it follow that the one great distinguishing characteristic of Christians everywhere should be a self-sacrificing love for people? Doctrine, apologetics, spiritual gifts, and prophecy charts are all great, but God is love. Without love, everything becomes meaningless (1 Cor. 13). — Jim Cymbala

God's design for taking the gospel to the world is a slow, intentional, simple process that involves every one of his people sacrificing every facet of their lives to multiply the life of Christ in others. — David Platt

True biblical love is sacrificing, purifying, nurturing, and enduring. — Elizabeth George

The eternal God - the infinite Jehovah - has done all he could do - even to the sacrificing his own Son - to provide a way for man's happiness, and yet they reject him, hate him, and laugh him to scorn! — Elijah Parish Lovejoy

It's not that this lifestyle should be crazy to us. It should be the only thing that makes sense. Giving up everything and sacrificing everything we can for the afterlife is logical. "Crazy" is living a safe life and storing up things while trying to enjoy our time on earth, knowing that any millisecond God could take your life. To me that is crazy, and that is radical. The crazy ones are the ones who live life like there is no God. To me that is insanity. — Francis Chan

Motherhood is the one thing in all the world which most truly exemplifies the God-given virtues of creating and sacrificing. Though it carries the woman close to the brink of death, motherhood also leads her into the very realm of the fountains of life and makes her co-partner with the Creator in bestowing upon eternal spirits mortal life. — David O. McKay

The God of the universe
the creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor
loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss. — Francis Chan

I'm the idiot box. I'm the TV. I'm the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I'm the boob tube. I'm the little shrine the family gathers to adore.'
'You're the television? Or someone in the television?'
'The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.'
'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow.
'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other.' She raised two fingers, blew imaginary gunsmoke from the tips. Then she winked, a big old I Love Lucy wink.
'You're a God?' said Shadow.
Lucy smirked, and took a ladylike puff of her cigarette. 'You could say that,' she said. — Neil Gaiman

India's sex ratio is 1000 boys for 940 girls. Who creates this disparity? It isn't God. Don't fill your coffers by sacrificing the mother's womb. People feel that sons will take care of them when they are old. But I have seen aged parents in old-age homes. I have seen families where one daughter serves parents more than five sons. — Narendra Modi