Faith to Make Sacrifices

In his talk Prayers of Faith, President Henry B. Eyring unsurprisingly spoke about faith, a trait I could stand to develop further. Greater faith can help me develop greater motivation to keep the commandments, even to the point of making the sacrifices I blogged about last night. Faith in God includes faith in is promises, including His promises to grant blessings to those who keep the commandments. 

The more faith I have in the certainty and value of eternal blessings, the more willing I'll be to make sacrifices for them. Serving my employer can be seen as a small sacrifice of time and effort, but the money that comes as payment for such service makes the "sacrifice" worthwhile. Similarly, giving up some of that money can be seen as a small sacrifice, but when I expect to get a valuable product or service in exchange for that monetary sacrifice, I'm happy to make the exchange. 

God makes us a similar offer, without the monetary intermediary. God asks us to sacrifice some of our time and effort in service to Him and His children, in return for which, He offers us "products" and "services" in the forms of various blessings. I willingly engage in monetary exchanges because I have faith that the money will be worth my time and that the products I buy will be worth my money. With enough faith, I could actively engage with the Gospel for similar reasons. When I trust that the blessings I expect to receive are worth the sacrifices God asks me to make for them, I am more willing to make those sacrifices.

So I suppose it all comes down to faith. How much faith do I have that God will (at least eventually) grant me those promised blessings and that those blessings will be worth the sacrifices I make for them? Honestly, I'm not sure. Some of God's greater blessings don't actually sound that hot to me, and some of the sacrifices He asks us to make seem pretty great. Yet, there are some blessings I want, and I must admit that I'm not going to get those blessings without making a few sacrifices. Whether those blessings are worth those sacrifices depends on a lot of subjective evaluations. I should give those evaluations a lot more thought before I pass any definitive judgments, but for now, I think I'm willing to say that they're probably worth it.

It takes faith to make sacrifices, and it takes sacrifice to secure blessings. The greater the blessings are, the greater the required sacrifices will be, and the greater the sacrifices are, the greater faith one will need to be willing to make them. To get the greatest blessings, one has to make great sacrifices, which requires great faith. I'm not sure I'm there yet. But I think (and hope) that I have enough faith to make the sacrifices required to get the blessings that I currently want.