The Law of Sacrifice

The whole concept of sacrifice has been on my mind lately, so I decided to use my personal study time to explore it a bit.

To sacrifice means "to give up something valuable or precious, often with the intent of accomplishing a greater purpose or goal."  It is a vital part of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I mean...the entire plan of God is based on one sacrifice.  So wouldn't our entire salvation depend on that one sacrifice as well as our willingness to sacrifice?

Of course.

Before the people had to sacrifice animals as a way to look forward to the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  Now God requires a different type of sacrifice: a broken heart and a contrite spirit.  I decided to dive into the meaning of these two phrases and found a lot of stuff.  Some good ol' definitions:

• A willingness to repent
• Feel sorrow for sin and a sincere desire to repent.  
• Desire to serve Jesus Christ
• Desire to put our lives in harmony with God's commandments
• Be humble and receptive to the will of God
• Be receptive to the counsel of those God has called to direct His church.  

Well, I know I have the need to repent all of the time, but this particular study, the definition that stuck out to me more was "be humble and receptive to the will of God."  The tricky part of this one for me is that this definition is not so easy to follow as, for example, "keep the commandments" or "listen to the prophet's counsel."  We can find those things pretty much laid out for us in many places.  But the prophets don't say, "Hey Rachel, you should go to this college.  Hey Rachel, you should apply for this job."  It is our responsibility to seek out the will of God, but that does not mean to just read the scriptures or the words of the prophets and find the black and white stuff and follow it.  It means to take the higher law: to figure out what God is saying to us personally at this time, in this place.  That is a bit trickier, at least for me.

In order to give the sacrifice that God requires of me, I must be willing to sacrifice anything He wants me to.  I must be willing to completely turn my will to His and trust that by doing so, I will receive all of the blessings and promises and goodness that He has in store for me.  Sometimes God requires a lot of us.  Sometimes God's will doesn't seem to make sense with everything else that He says.  But we can trust that as we keep going, not knowing what is ahead of us, God will guide our footsteps to get to where we need to go.  Precisely because we were willing to sacrifice what He required of us.

I found a scripture that I love in Doctrine and Covenants 97:8

"Verily I say unto you, all among them who know their hearts are honest, and are broken, and their spirits contrite, and are willing to observe their covenants by sacrifice--yea, every sacrifice which I, the Lord, shall command--they are accepted of me."

I know that to be accepted by God, we must be willing to sacrifice anything that He requires of us.  Only then are our hearts broken and our spirits contrite.  Even though it can be super duper duper hard to sacrifice what God requires of us, His acceptance is the most important thing in this life.  It will be worth it every time because by doing His will, we will get to where we need to go.

I also know that God doesn't require sacrifices just willy-nilly.  He has a plan.  He has a goal.  And He guides us to reach that ultimate goal.  We can trust Him.  I feel like many people have this false notion that they can't say what they want to God because then He'll send them the opposite.  I heard that so many times on the mission from companions or other missionaries, "I can't say that I want to stay in this area, because He'll take me out."  I found that notion to be so weird because, yes, God doesn't always give us what we think we want, but He doesn't set out to give us exactly what we don't want.  I know that if we take the time to think and work to understand and know God, we will find a loving Heavenly Father who WILL guide us to get what we want.  He may take us on a different route than we were expecting.  And He may have His own timing.  But He will give us what makes us most happy and if we learn how to be in tune with that, we will find that our wants are becoming more and more like His wants.  And that even when we can't see how on earth that we will ever get what we want, He will get us there.  We can trust that even when He does something completely unexpected and hard and scary, it is for a reason.

Am I willing to sacrifice everything to do His will?  Am I willing to take a risk and move forward in darkness?  Am I willing to do that not in fear, but in faith?  I'm working to be that way.  It is scary sometimes, and sometimes it really hurts.  But I will move forward and faith, knowing that God is a Father of love and goodness, and He wants me to be completely happy.  He'll get me there.  He has shown me the goal, and thrown a looptey-loop in the pathway to get there, but I know that all will be okay in His timing.  

I love you,

Rachel