Weekly Devotional: November 5, 2026

DEVOTIONAL
by Captain Robert Coriston
Corps Officer of Tyler Texas

GOD’S WORD

Romans 12:1
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - This is your true and proper worship.”

1 Samuel 15:22
“But Samuel replied: ‘Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord?  To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.’”

DEVOTIONAL
“Whose Gift Is It Anyway?”

When I was a kid, my younger sister’s birthday was coming up, and my dad took me to Kmart to buy her a present.  For the first time I was going to pick out a gift for somebody else with my own name on it.  So, we walked through the toy department, and I started looking up and down the aisles.  And everywhere I looked, I kept seeing things I wanted.  I knew what my sister liked. I knew the kinds of toys she played with. I knew what would probably make her happy. But I also knew what I liked.

At the time, I loved WWF wrestling figures. I collected them. I played with them. And somewhere in those Kmart aisles, I found an Undertaker action figure. Immediately, I knew what I wanted to buy my sister.  The Undertaker.

Now, to be clear, my sister did not play with wrestling figures.  She had given me absolutely no indication that what she wanted for her birthday was a plastic Undertaker.  But I had a plan. I figured I would give it to her. She would open it. She would realize she didn’t want it. And then she would probably hand it to me and say, “Here, you can have it.”  To this day, I’m not exactly sure why my dad let me go through with it.  The first gift I remember buying for somebody else was really a gift for myself.

It was what I liked.
What I wanted.
What I hoped to get back.

Sometimes I wonder if we do the same thing with God?  

We say we want to give our lives to Him.
We say we want to serve Him.
We say we want to sacrifice.

But if we’re not careful, we can end up offering God whatever version of obedience already fits comfortably into the life we want.  We give Him what we want to give Him.  We serve where we want to serve.  We surrender what we were already willing to lose.  And then we call it sacrifice.

 It’s the spiritual version of handing God an Undertaker action figure and saying, “Look what I got You.”  In 1 Samuel, King Saul was given clear instructions from God, but Saul did not completely obey them.  When Samuel confronted him, Saul pointed to the sacrifices he intended to make for God.  In other words, Saul had his own idea about what God should want.

 Samuel’s response was simple: “To obey is better than sacrifice.”  God was not asking Saul to invent an impressive offering.  God had already told him what He wanted.  Obedience. That can be difficult for people because many of us spent years arranging life around ourselves. Everything eventually becomes centered around two questions:

“What do I need and what do I want?”

And when we begin following Jesus, that way of thinking does not automatically disappear.

We want to offer God something.  We just want to decide what the sacrifice will be. Romans 12 gives us a different picture.  Paul says, “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.” That means the offering is not simply something I bring. The offering is me.  My plans. My desires.  My future.  My comfort.  The whole thing goes on the altar.  However, a dead sacrifice stays on the altar.  A living sacrifice has a tendency to crawl back off.  We surrender on Sunday and take it back on Monday.  We tell God, “My life belongs to You,” and then immediately start negotiating the terms.  “Anything, Lord—well, except that.”  “I’ll follow You anywhere—except there.”  “I’ll surrender anything—except this relationship.”

That’s not very different from what I did in Kmart.  I knew what my sister wanted.  I just wanted something else more.

So, the question for us is am I giving God what He is actually asking for?

Being in recovery has taught me that surrender is not giving God a carefully selected portion of my life.  Surrender is giving Him the right to choose.  When I bought that wrestling figure, I got to decide what the gift would be, and I chose according to what benefited me.  But a life offered to God says something different: “Lord, You choose.”

PRAYER
God, forgive me for the times I have offered You only
what  was convenient for me. I don’t want to give You a
life arranged around my own desires and call it surrender.
In view of Your mercy, I offer myself to You again. My
plans, my future, my habits,  my relationships, my comfort,
and my will belong to You. Show me where You are asking
for obedience, and give me  courage to say yes. Teach me to
offer not just something to You, but myself. Amen.