The Cost of Worship

I was listening to a podcast sermon and had to post an important point here. The verses on this portion of the sermon are:
II Samuel: 21-24
Araunah said, "Why has my lord the king come to his servant?" "To buy your threshing floor," David answered, "so I can build an altar to the LORD, that the plague on the people may be stopped." Araunah said to David, "Let my lord the king take whatever pleases him and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. O king, Araunah gives all this to the king." Araunah also said to him, "May the LORD your God accept you." But the king replied to Araunah, "No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing." So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them.

The sermon tells us of a women that was to have a baby. In the process of a checkup the doctor found cancer and proceed to tell her that it was so far advanced that she needed Chemotherapy within a week to be able to survive. Of course he told her she needed to abort the baby because the therapy would destroy the baby. She she, "I will have this baby whether I live or die." The doctor told her that by waiting until after birth there was no chance of survival. She told him that she'd take her chances.
She went on to have the baby and soon after she died. The pastor proceeded to say he was sad. He said, "What's really grieving isn't so much that she died so that her child could live but that people live with nothing to die for." Until you have something to die for, you don't really live.
We have chosen the low road and live selfishly. We make choices with the intent of preserving ourselves. What would make it easier to deal with, instead of, what is the right thing to do? She could have had that abortion and lived. People would have thought that was the noble thing to do because the baby would have suffered. How many of us could make that choice right now? I don't know if I could and I'm a guy.
The true point to this post is to make the hard decisions. Let your sacrifices to God cost you something or they mean nothing. I have been in that rut quite often and need reminded that love without some cost, some sacrifice and/or action does not mean anything. I get that wakeup call every so often from my wife. Sometimes I listen and sometimes I pay for it later. Listening is much better!