Sacrifice

Jesus said, Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.

Mark 10:29-30

The first time these verses really impressed me were many years ago sitting in my dorm room in college. As I read them I knew God was asking me to love him with all my heart, mind, and soul, but I had my own plans as to how my life was going to turn out and it didn't involve leaving family. God had other plans. 

Over the years being away from parents, siblings, grandparents has caused great distress. God was using these times to ask me

'Jody, when you are far from loved ones, when you've moved away from good friends who are brothers and sisters in Christ, when your husband is busy with his job and your children are off to school or with their friends...

have you found that I am(Jesus) enough?'

If everyone and everything is stripped away, will God be enough?

I recently read a quote by David Livingstone, who gave his life to serve Christ in exploring Africa so there would be access to take the gospel there.

"People talk of sacrifice in spending so much of my life in Africa...

It is no sacrifice. It is rather a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice."

David Livingstone

This week I am reading through the gospels as I meditate and remember what my Savior went through. I will think most about his sacrifice, reminding myself I have never made a sacrifice either.