Chapter 49: Sacrifice

When we are sacrificing in Charity, we will experience Adversity but it will be manageable.  It remains manageable as long as we can voluntarily sacrifice in love.  When the sacrifice and thus the Adversity becomes too much for us so that the voluntary nature of it changes into feeling forced, we transition into sacrificing with a grudge.  A grudge is a persistent feeling of ill will or resentment resulting from an insult or injury.  Sacrifice hurts.  It’s uncomfortable.  If we allow it to hurt because we are doing this for love, we maintain our Charity.  But it’s so easy to flip to the other side.  If we become resentful towards the person we’re sacrificing for because of the pain we’re suffering, we are sacrificing with a grudge.  Our selfless sacrifice is overcome by our own natural selfishness.

So selfishness has a bad wrap.  Yes, when we have the strength to sacrifice and we instead withhold or force someone else to sacrifice for us, that's the kind of selfish we don't want to be.  We had a choice and we chose selfishness.  But the other kind of selfishness is childlike selfishness that has it's roots in fear.  It's when we have not yet developed the faith in Jesus Christ that when we sacrifice in His name for others, he has our backs.  But childlike selfishness is also when we don't have the strength or means to sacrifice as much as we're trying to force ourselves to sacrifice.  So either way, if we don't have enough faith in Christ or if we're running faster than we have strength, our voluntary sacrifice turns into a grudge sacrifice.

When we can differentiate between voluntarily sacrificing out of love and sacrificing grudgingly, we can discern between real Adversity and self-inflicted Adversity.  When we can take note of when one is transitioning into the other, we can know when to keep going and when we need to slow things down.  That’s an important skill because self-inflicted Adversity does us no good.  It won’t build our marriage.  It kills love instead of fostering it. 

"For behold, if a man being evil [selfish] giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God.  And likewise also is it counted evil unto a man, if he shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it profiteth him nothing, for God receiveth none such." ~Moroni 7:8-9

"No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father." ~John 10:18