\u201cIf your offering is a fellowship offering . . . you are to present . . . an animal without defect.\u201d
\n \u2014 Leviticus 3:1<\/p>\n
When I was growing up, our family would often grill meat for our meals in the summer. My parents enjoyed grilled steak, but it didn\u2019t seem sensible to use choice meat for four young kids who didn\u2019t appreciate a sirloin. So instead they put \u201ctube steak\u201d on the barbecue just for us. We were satisfied until we learned that tube steaks were just hot dogs!It’s one thing to use a lesser kind of meat when feeding a large family, but it\u2019s quite another to try to pass off less than our best to God. In Leviticus 3 God spells out the requirements for fellowship offerings. These sound similar to the rules for burnt offerings (Leviticus 1), but the fellowship offering illustrated the joy of living in a peaceful relationship with God. God\u2019s desire was to draw his people into relationship with himself. So, as the holy and true God, he called for receiving animals without blemish or defect. In addition, with these offerings the people had to separate and offer all of the fat portions to the Lord. Why? Because the fat was considered the choicest part of the animal, and that was to be dedicated to God.Romans 12 expands on this idea, noting that our response to God\u2019s mercy is to offer the best that we have: our very selves! Do we offer God our very best? When we give of our time, talents, and treasure, do we give God our best, or the leftovers? In view of God\u2019s mercy, let\u2019s offer God the very best of all we have!<\/p>\n
O Lord, you have made us your sons and daughters! May we honor you by joyfully giving our best to you! In Jesus, Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cIf your offering is a fellowship offering . . . you are to present . . . an animal without defect.\u201d \u2014 Leviticus 3:1 When I was growing up, our family would often grill meat for our meals in the summer. My parents enjoyed grilled steak, but it didn\u2019t seem sensible to use choice meat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[988,987],"class_list":["post-9238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-devotionals","tag-steak","tag-tube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}