Male or Son
there are a lot of males in the world. if there’s 6 billion people and the ladies hold 51%ish of the population then by my math there are just under 3 billion dudes floating around this place. out of those < 3 billion dudes there are only two that i can rightfully call my sons. now that might not make a huge difference for the other 2,999,999,998 guys in the world but for Emery and Max it’s huge. they don’t eat unless I feed them*. they don’t have shoes to wear unless i shove them on their fat feet. they don’t feel safe and accepted unless i provide that for them. but even if i’m the best father the world has ever seen, and believe me i’m not, that still will not be enough. i’ve realized this, i’ve realized that there are things out of my control. i’m going to have bad days and i’m going to screw up and some of my screw up is going to spill out onto my boys and they’re going to be left wanting.
i’ve got to give them up. there is no way i can take care of them like a good Father can! and on top of that there’s this weird thing that if i put those two beautiful boys as the most important thing in my life i’m going to neglect their mother and their Creator!
today in our life journal reading is the account of the first passover and something jumped out at me. when they’re figuring out how to explain all this to their kids they say, ‘ the Lord saved us from our slavery with mighty power but our captor would not let us go, so God killed all the first born males, human and animal’. then it gets weird ‘that is why we offer all the first born males to the Lord.’ wait, what?! because God killed all the first born males we offer ours to Him (sorry Emery!). don’t stop there — ‘except that the firstborn sons are redeemed.’ (exodus 13:14 & 15)
there it is! ahhhh there’s a difference between a ‘male’ and a ’son’, sons are redeemed!
so here’s my application, and i hope this makes sense; God can’t redeem what we don’t offer. all the stuff that we hold onto; our kids, our money, our mistakes, He can’t vindicate because we won’t let Him! we’ve got to give it to Him first. i’ve got to give everything to Him first! we offer it to God from behind the doorpost, you know the one covered in the blood of the lamb (exodus 12:6 & 7), we’re offering it to God as sons, not males.
God, help me to keep everything behind the doorpost, covered by the blood. But more than anything give me strength and confidence to offer you everything for your redemption.
Created over 2 years ago
