Sacrifice and Trust in God, Then Go and Do

Sacrifice and Trust in God, Then Go and Do

Well, it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve bldg so let me catch you all up to speed. For starters, lets go over what we discussed last week. Last week we had our discussion on Sacrifice from Bunnie Kantro. The meaning of sacrifice is giving to the Lord what he is asking from us. Matthew 6:33, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness” Our sacrifice is considered our devotion to God. Sacrifices have been done since the time of Adam. Back then, they were commanded to offer sacrifices of the firstlings flocks, animals needed to be perfect as possible with blemish. This was to remind us that the first-born would come into the world and he would be perfect in every way. He would come into this world and offer Himself as a sacrifice for our sins (Moses 5:5-8). By Christ coming into the world marked the end of the shedding of blood sacrifices. Even though we no longer sacrifice by shedding blood, we are still asked to make sacrifices.

Here is a story about a rich young ruler and sacrifice.

“A rich young ruler asked the Savior, ‘what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus answered, ‘Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.’ And the rich man said, ‘All these have I kept from my youth.’ When Jesus heard this, He said, ‘Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.’ When the young man heard this, he was sorrowful. He was very rich and had his heart set on his riches” (See Luke 18:18-23).

Some sacrifices are easier for us than other. Many of us have suffered hardship and ridicule for the gospel. New members of the church lost friends, and family members. Some have even lost their jobs. But make no mistake, the Lord notices our sacrifices and he promises us, “Everyone that hath forsaken houses, lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life” (Matthew 19:20).

Here are a few examples that the book gives us of sacrifices that members of the church have made:

A member of the Church in German saved his tithing for years until someone with priesthood authority could come and accept it.

A Relief Society visiting teacher served for 30 years without missing an assignment.

A group of Saints in South Africa rode for three days, standing up, to be able to hear and see the prophet of the Lord.

At an area conference in Mexico, members of the Church slept on the ground and fasted during the days of the conference. They had used all their money just to get to the conference and had nothing left for food and shelter.

One family sold their car to get the money they wanted to contribute to a temple building fund.

Another family sold their home to get money to go to the temple.

Many faithful Latter-day Saints have very little to live on, yet the pay their tithes and offerings.

On brother sacrificed his job because he refused to work on Sunday.

In one branch, the youth gave freely and willingly of their time to care for the young children while their parents helped build the meeting.

Young men and women give up or postpone good job opportunities, educations, or sports to serve as missionaries.

In closing, making sacrifice is worth making for it gives us a place in our Heavenly Father’s kingdom.


Now, on to this weeks lesson. This week lesson was on ”Trust in God, Then Go and Do” by President Henry B. Eyring. It’s in the Conference Ensign, page 70 and given to us by Kate Skeen. To start, each of our needs is great and varied. Each of us is a unique child of God and God knows all of us individually. He sends us messages of encouragement, corrections, and direction that are fitted to us and us only and for our needs and only our needs. That is an important message for us to remember.

While we were in the pre-earth, we trusted in God plans and followed his direction and came here on earth while the others chose to follow Lucifer’s plan. They all lacked trust in God’s plan for whatever reason why. We don’t know all of the reasons for Lucifer’s success in inciting these others but whatever it was, he was successful and they are now suffering eternal misery. Many of people have no trust in God nor in his plan and this sadden Him. As one example would be the story of Jonah how rejected the message from the Lord to go to Nineveh and went the other way. Naaman could not trust the direction of the Lord’s prophet to bathe in a river to allow the Lord to heal his leprosy, feeling the simple task was beneath his dignity. The Savior invited Peter to leave the safety of a boat to walk to Him across water.

Having trust in the Lord can and does bless us. The lesson gives a couple of example but I think I am going to share a couple of examples that were shared by our sisters today. The first was shared by one of our sister missionary. When she was in college along with her two other sisters, her father had been at his job for as long as she can remember. One day, he got a 30-day notice that he was going to be laid off. Now he needed to find employment and soon. So with much sacrifice and trust in the Lord and doing what the Lord wanted, he found employment just as his job ended.

Cheryl gave another story. Her parents owned an RV and for years, worked on Sundays. He was battling on whether he should close down on Sunday, the fear being that he might lose business. So after much thought and prayer and more thought, he made the decision to close on Sunday. And what happened? Well, business actually increased. In fact, since many of his customers were families and families that went to church, they were impressed by his decision for choosing to close down on Sunday and respected him more. Business was good and even improved.

Sister Jenskin shared her story of when her husband became sick. She needed to quit work to stay and take care of her husband that required them for living assistant. They had inherence a small inherent and lived off of that for a while until her husband was well enough to go back to work. So the apartment where they lived has living assistant but there is a long waiting list. But through their faith and trust in the Lord, a small miracle happened, they got accepted and their rent was reduced.

Trusting in the Lord is important however, that is not to say that sometimes things happen to us and we trust in the Lord to bless us such as in the case of these stories, but we are not blessed in that way. WE are blessed in other ways that we may not realized at first will actually benefit us. A good example of that is my story. Having been at my job for 14 years, I never thought for a minute that I would be laid off but in fact, I was and I was laid off one week before my son was to leave for his mission. Now I was certain that his lay off was for a good reason and for me to move onto a better job so that I could better support my son on his mission. But in fact, that was not the case. For six to nine months, all I did was hunt for work. Even looking at temporary agencies to do some temp work and they had nothing. Well, this trust that I had for the Lord began to work on me, as I didn’t understand his point. But the message that I kept getting from not finding work was I not having any sort of degrees. So two week before school was to start for college, I went down to Moorpark and saw a counselor, not really expected to start right then, found myself attending the last meeting for the PACE program and enrolling that next day for school and every class that I had signed up for was wide open. Hence starting my career in college and on my way to earring my BA degree. Of course, the job hunting has slowed down quit a bit but I am retraining my skills for a better career for my future. So sometimes, our trust in the Lord will lead us on paths that we never thought that would be on and we won’t understand the message until much later as in my case.

Our Heavenly Father speaks to us and we need to listen with an open heart. We have a living prophet here on earth that speaks to our Heavenly Father and we need to listen to his words too and do as he says to do. So on that note, please feel free to share your thoughts with us on this discussion. We would love to hear from you. You just might uplift someone who may need to read about your experiences. Next week is Ward Conference. Thanks for joining me, until next time…

Kelly