“But [David] said to Araunah, ‘No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.’”

This maybe kind of an odd passage, but it’s my VOD because I really like the heart behind it.

David realizes here that an offering to God (The Almighty!) is worthless if it doesn’t cost. This was pretty convicting to me as I read it. Being human, I am lazy; being raised to be sort of intellectual, I try to live lazily by outwitting my circumstances. By this I mean, I like to find ways to get the greatest returns for the least amount of effort. This can be good in business and other areas of life. It doesn’t, I don’t believe, transfer into serving God.

Here’s why: God looks at our hearts. If our hearts are unwilling to exert effort to worship Him, God’s not going to be pleased with our lives. Of course it’s not wrong to try to be efficient, but when our efforts to be efficient are only to appease our laziness, then there’s a problem.

For me this has been a tough realization because my laziness is so ingrained into me. Change will require God’s grace. That’s the point, though, I think.

(This verse goes well with the one above. I didn’t know where to include it, though, so here it is: Romans 12:1 “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship[reasonable service].”)