I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. — Romans 12:1
By definition, sacrifice costs us something. Long before Another Well Ministries existed, I had built other things. A side business. Other pursuits and projects that kept me moving and gave me a sense of purpose and momentum. They were good things. Things I had invested time and energy into building. Things I was not ready to simply walk away from.
But it became clear that in order to say yes to what God was asking, I needed to say no to those things. The ministry required focus that I could not give it while holding on to everything else. And so one by one I laid them down. It was not easy. It cost something real. But it was the right thing to do.
And what came from that sacrifice has been worth every bit of what it required.
Every altar in Scripture required something to be placed upon it. The altar was never empty. It was always the site of something given, something that cost the one bringing it. Abraham brought Isaac. David refused to offer God something that cost him nothing, saying plainly that he would not give to God what belonged to someone else. The pattern is consistent across every generation of Scripture. The altar demands something real.
Paul introduces a remarkable concept in Romans 12. He does not ask us to die on the altar. He asks us to stay on it. A living sacrifice. The entirety of who we are, our time, our comfort, our ambitions, our plans, our resources, offered continuously to God as an act of ongoing surrender. Not a single dramatic moment of consecration but a daily, renewable choice to keep ourselves on the altar rather than climbing off when it becomes uncomfortable.
And then he says something that reframes everything. He calls it our reasonable service.
Not our extraordinary act of exceptional devotion. Not the spiritual heroism of the especially committed. Our reasonable service. The minimum expected response of someone who understands what was sacrificed for them. When we consider what God gave, His only Son, placed on an altar of wood on a hill outside Jerusalem, the sacrifice of our own comfort, convenience, and carefully constructed plans begins to look less like heroism and more like the least we could offer in return.
The altar of sacrifice asks an honest question. What are you withholding?
Every believer has an area of life that has not yet been placed on the altar. A plan held too tightly. A comfort too precious to release. A dream that has become an idol because we have never been willing to say, God, if You ask for this, I will give it. The altar of sacrifice is the place where we bring those things. Not because God is trying to take everything from us but because He knows that what we hold back from Him tends to hold us back from Him.
What I gave up to start this ministry was real. But what God has done through the ministry has been more than anything I could have built on my own. The sacrifice opened a door that my holding on would have kept closed.
That is the nature of the altar of sacrifice. You place something on it and it is consumed. But what God builds in its place is always greater than what you laid down.
What is still in your hands that belongs on the altar? Lay it down. The living sacrifice is your reasonable service. And God never wastes what is genuinely given to Him.
You cannot fully receive what God has for you while your hands are still full of what you are unwilling to release.
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About Another Well Ministries
Another Well Ministries exists to help people slow down, listen deeply, and encounter God in the ordinary places of life. Through devotionals, reflections, and spiritual resources, we seek to create space for faith to be formed with honesty, grace, and hope.
To learn more about the heart of the ministry or explore additional resources, visit anotherwell.org.
