What is a good offering?

There is more to giving than meets the eye!

Everything in life is about offering or giving. When we love someone we give ourselves to that person. A farmer gives seed to the land. A good student gives the best of himself to his studies to get his degree. An employee works hard to get his salary at the end of the month... and so on.

Offering is highly important to God: “To you priests who despise My name… You offer defiled food on My altar.”
(Malachi 1:6-7)

In those days people would offer an animal to redeem them of their sins, but the priests would take the best animals to keep for themselves, giving only the lame and crippled as an offering on the altar.

This made God very angry because that offering represented the life of a person and the priests showed that they had no fear towards it.

So what is a good offering? It is your life placed on the altar of God - our offering represents our life.
As Christians we give our offering to God, not only materially, but also in everything we do as a result of our faith in God. For example, by making sure that you are a good wife, you are giving an offering to God.

When you decide to give up your wrong ways of living, you are also giving an offering to God.
When we give ourselves to God, we are not only giving, we are being the perfect offering.
God did the same for us when He gave His Son Jesus. Hence, until today, we can only pray to God in the name of Jesus. His offering has brought us closer to God.

When we give our lives to God, we are actually presenting our perfect offering so that we can have God in our lives.
Only those who are an offering themselves are ready to serve Him. Not those who simply give offerings. Now we can understand the meaning of these words better:

“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
(Matthew 16.25)

God bless you.
Bishop Edir Macedo
Leader and Founder of UCKG