Fasting and Sacrifice

I've always seen fasting as being a small sacrifice, so I wanted to blog about the connection between those two topics, but I couldn't find anything under the subject of fasting that related to sacrifice or under the subject of sacrifice that related to fasting, so I guess I'm on my own this time.

I've always seen fasting as a small sacrifice God asks us to make occasionally, and since we receive blessings when we fast, I've thought of fasting as an exchange. In fact, looking at it that way, all of the commandments become exchanges. But that's not really in keeping with the spirit of sacrifice. In a true sacrifice, we're giving something up without expecting anything in return. But at the same time, it seems foolish to not expect God to bless us for keeping the commandments, including those that involve making sacrifices, because He has promised that He would. If we make a "sacrifice," knowing that God's going to bless us for it, it's not so much a sacrifice as a trade.

But, hey, maybe it is a trade, and maybe that's okay. It still requires an amount of sacrifice between the time we make the sacrifice and the time we receive the reward. And it requires faith to make the exchange. If the purpose of sacrifice is to strengthen our faith, we can do that, even though it's not really just a sacrifice.

This is kind of confusing, and I'm not sure it's really going to help anyone. I don't know enough about sacrifice to say what it's supposed to be or supposed to do. I know that sometimes fasting feels like a sacrifice, and that God tends to bless people who make sacrifices for Him. I've heard that there are three good reasons to keep the commandments, and the expectation of blessings is one of them. I don't think God would promise blessings to the obedient unless He wanted those promises to motivate us to obey. So, is it still a sacrifice if we expect to get blessings for it? That may be a good question for me to ask next week, when we learn about Sacrifice in Gospel Essentials class.