Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore

Transforming your prayer life –  Part 1

My understanding of the five sacrifices in the book of Leviticus transformed my approach to God. These sacrifices gave profound meaning to elements of my prayer life.  

1. The Burnt Offering: Experiencing God’s Unconditional Love

In the Old Testament, the burnt offering was the divinely appointed means for a Jew to approach God and experience His acceptance, embrace, and love. This offering atoned not only for specific sins but also addressed the general defilement of human nature, making the offerer acceptable before a holy God. This allowed them to experience His love and embrace.

Burnt offering highlights a crucial truth: our acceptance by God is not based on who we are, how we feel, or our own merit, but solely on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf. When he bore our sins on the cross, he was fully burnt by the wrath of God, and by raising Christ from dead and exalting Him, God declared that only way of acceptance for unworthy sinners is through His work alone.

How do we offer a “burnt offering” today? We come to God in faith, resting the full weight of our souls on Christ for our acceptance. Every morning when we come in prayer, sometimes we don’t feel God’s love or experience a sense of closeness, at times even may sense a strangeness. What do we do? We come to God offering our ‘burnt offering; every morning; approach God solely based on Christ’s work. Such burnt offering/approach is a “sweet aroma” to nostrils of God. This act of faith often opens the floodgates of God’s love into our hearts, filling us with exuberant joy and making prayer truly enjoyable.

2. The Grain Offering: Expressing Heartfelt Gratitude

Following the burnt offering, a Jew would offer a grain offering, representing the fruit of their labor as an expression of gratitude. Similarly, when we experience God’s love and acceptance through Christ’s work, our hearts overflow with gratitude, prompting us to offer ourselves back to God and thank Him profusely.

Ingratitude is a source of unhappiness. Conversely, expressing heartfelt gratitude to God fills our hearts with joy through the Holy Spirit. This is our “grain offering” today.

3. The Peace Offering: Finding Peace in Troubled Times

The peace offering was offered during times of trouble. The priests received two portions of the sacrifice: the breast and the thigh. When we feel troubled and lack peace, we can “feed” on the “breast” of our Sacrifice, Jesus Christ, contemplating His infinite love in giving Himself for us and His ongoing intercession and guidance in our lives.  We also “feed” on His “thigh,” symbolizing His strength and power which can take care of any problems that trouble us leads to peace of mind.   This is how we experience peace through the “peace offering.”

These first three offerings beautifully illustrate the order of the fruits of the Spirit: Love (burnt offering), Joy (grain offering), and Peace (peace offering).

What Happens When We Sin? The remaining two offerings address the issue of sin:

4. The Sin Offering: Recognizing the Weight of Our Sin

In the sin offering, the offerer laid their hand on the animal, symbolically transferring their sin and identifying with the sacrifice. The fat, liver, and kidneys were offered on the altar, while the rest was burned outside the camp.

Often, our confessions lack a true sense and its impact on God and Christ. Imagine that every time we ask for forgiveness, we are symbolically laying our hands on Jesus, transferring our sin to Him, and asking Him to accept this as if he committed that sin and bear the consequences.  This realization should deeply affect any believer who truly loves Christ, cultivating a genuine sorrow for sin, hatred for it, and a determination to turn away from it.

5. The Guilt Offering: Addressing Sins Against Others

The guilt offering, similar in ritual to the sin offering, specifically addresses sins committed against other people. While the previous four offerings focus on our relationship with God, the guilt offering highlights our relationships with others. We often underestimate how much we sin against our parents, spouses, children, and others, and how this guilt hinders our prayer life. Therefore, when we come to God, we must confess our sins against others, as taught in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

As you can see only by growing in knowledge of God’s word and by taking time to understand the depth of these truths, we can experience a dynamic and transforming prayer life.