{"id":786552,"date":"2012-09-05T16:08:53","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T16:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.centerdeep2.com\/riverbendprep\/?p=786552"},"modified":"2012-09-05T16:38:07","modified_gmt":"2012-09-05T16:38:07","slug":"firstfruit-offering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.centerdeep2.com\/riverbendprep\/2012\/09\/05\/firstfruit-offering\/","title":{"rendered":"Firstfruit Offering"},"content":{"rendered":"

Firstfruit Offerings<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ezekiel 44:30 “The best of all firstfruits of any kind, and every sacrifice of any kind from all your sacrifices, shall be the priest\u2019s; also you shall give to the priest the first of your ground meal, to cause a blessing to rest on your house.”<\/p>\n

Firstfruit offering is something that was common in the Old Testament.\u00a0 The Israelites offered up their firstfruits of everything to the priests.\u00a0 This is how the priests (and their families) were taken care of and considered their primary income.\u00a0 In turn, the priests would perform their priestly duties, including praying a blessing over the person\u2019s home, and God would bless that home.<\/p>\n

Today, as believers, we offer our financial tithe (hopefully at least 10%) to our home church.\u00a0 We might also provide sacrificial giving to other ministries and charities, or where God prompts us to give.\u00a0 But it this all there is to firstfruits?<\/p>\n

With Jesus Christ as our hight priest, today, we can pray, \u201cLord, we are all in.\u00a0 We want you to have all of us. We place you first above all.\u00a0\u00a0 Above bad habits, above addictions, above routines, above all that is good in our life; above all. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n

When we fully realize all that Jesus did for us on the cross, it is hard not to fall to our knees in gratitude and thanksgiving.\u00a0 Yet, because we fully do not understand, and\/or have a brain that likes to follow sparkly things \ud83d\ude42 , daily distractions continue to fight for our attention and pull us away from Jesus and His position in our lives.<\/p>\n

How do we go through our day, keeping God first in our lives?\u00a0 We can verbally acknowledge that He is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, in all that we say and do as we go about our day.\u00a0 We can offer up little prayers, seeking God\u2019s guidance in even the most mundane of tasks.\u00a0 We can sing songs of Worship and praise while folding the laundry, offering our hearts to the One who made us.<\/p>\n

God has amazing, great things in store for each of us.\u00a0 The only way we can recognize what these things are is if we are close to Him.\u00a0 To be close to God, we need to know Him through prayer, studying the Holy Scriptures, and creating stillness in our souls, so we can hear what the Holy Spirit is telling us.<\/p>\n

Here is a song to lift up in prayer today: Clean Hands by Chris Tomlin<\/a><\/p>\n

ETA:<\/strong> I love when this happens! \u00a0After posting to the blog, I came across this on Facebook:<\/p>\n

What Does It Mean To Put God First?<\/a><\/p>\n

My favorite thing from this article:\u00a0God is not a back-up plan but the Planner of life itself.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Amen to that!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Firstfruit Offerings Ezekiel 44:30 “The best of all firstfruits of any kind, and every sacrifice of any kind from all your sacrifices, shall be the priest\u2019s; also you shall give to the priest the first of your ground meal, to cause a blessing to rest on your house.” Firstfruit offering is something that was common […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-786552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-reflections"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centerdeep2.com\/riverbendprep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centerdeep2.com\/riverbendprep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centerdeep2.com\/riverbendprep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centerdeep2.com\/riverbendprep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centerdeep2.com\/riverbendprep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786552"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.centerdeep2.com\/riverbendprep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":786555,"href":"https:\/\/www.centerdeep2.com\/riverbendprep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786552\/revisions\/786555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centerdeep2.com\/riverbendprep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centerdeep2.com\/riverbendprep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centerdeep2.com\/riverbendprep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}