Bringing Our Best

Malachi 1:6-8 (NIV) -

“A son honours his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honour due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the Lord Almighty. “It is you priests who show contempt for my name. “But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’ “By offering defiled food on my altar. “But you ask, ‘How have we defiled you?’ “By saying that the Lord’s table is contemptible. When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the Lord Almighty.

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God has been challenging me over these last few weeks about bringing my best to Him, especially when I come into His house to worship. This morning during my devotion time, I felt led to tell you guys a little about it as well, and found this passage in the process.

In it, the prophet Malachi calls out the Israelite priests for becoming lazy and complacent with their offerings. Rather than giving God the first and best of what they have to offer (as God tells them to do in verses such as Exodus 23:19 and 34:26), the Israelite people are bringing anything and everything that they please - including the animals that they consider to be worthless or broken. This kind of attitude treats God as an afterthought, something to throw our scraps to, rather than the Holy and Almighty God, King of the universe, who provides our every need and is the only true source of life.

I remember that, as a kid growing up in the church, my mum and dad would make me dress up for church each week in what we called my 'Sunday clothes'. It wasn't anything too extreme or flashy - just a shirt and some pants or shorts depending on the weather - but they were some of the most presentable clothes I had. How well I understood this at the time, I can't remember, but looking back I see that my parents were trying to teach me that whenever I went to worship God in His house, I should bring the best of myself rather than just whatever I felt like haphazardly giving away.

Unfortunately, as time went on, I ended up in the same position as the priests Malachi was speaking to - I became complacent and started showing up for church wearing whatever I felt like (often trackies and a t-shirt). I stopped bringing my best to God. I believe many of us have ended up in a similar situation, even if not to the same extreme as I was at - an attitude I recently heard described as the 'cult of casual'.

I wonder what would happen if a bunch of us decided to start making the effort to bring God our best again? Lately, as God has been challenging me and helping me to grow, I've been making the switch back to that childhood idea of 'church clothes'. It looks a lot different now to how it did as a kid, and it will look different for each of you as well since we are all unique and in different positions in life. But perhaps if a few of us started setting ourselves apart for God and bringing Him the best of what we have to offer, others would see the change in us - the change in our attitudes, in our behaviours, in our lives - and follow in our footsteps. Maybe, just maybe, this is the path to revival: that one person would commit themselves to following God more closely, teach the people closest to them to do the same by their example, and allow themselves to be seen by many so they can set an example for their community as well.

Of course, bringing our best to God is something that ought to be applied to every area of our lives, but this has been the most significant example in my life right now, and it's certainly a good place to start. I hope I've given y'all something to reflect on and even apply to your own life in the coming weeks, and I pray you'll each have a blessed day, in which you grow closer with your loving Father and come to know His heart more deeply than you ever have before.