Continuing from ‘A Disciple’s Journey‘:
One day William and Elizabeth stood looking at the beautiful home they had sold a few years earlier to accept their mission call. William asked her if she would like to have her house back. Elizabeth replied, “I would rather [live in a] dug-out with [our mission] filled than [live] in a fine house with [our] mission unfulfilled.”13
Why would Elizabeth feel that way? Her answer says not simply that she was glad that she had survived the hardships but that she honestly believed she was a different and better person because of the way that she and her husband had faced the hardships together. She discovered an important secret about life that is known only to those who give all their hearts to the Lord.
So what is the difference between people like the Kimballs or the Woods and those high counselors who didn’t want to make the sixty-mile drive from St.George to Mt. Trumbull? I believe my father was on to something important when he wrote, “Is a man really converted if he isn’t willing to sacrifice for his religion? . . . Can there be degrees of conversion?”
We talk often about the distinction between active in the Church and being inactive. We should perhaps also talk more about the additional difference between active and being a truly consecrated disciple.
Choosing a life of consecration will of course take us out of our comfort zone, just as it did the Kimballs and the Woods. But if we don’t leave our comfort zone, we won’t stretch our way through all the steps that eventually lead to true joy.
The Lord Himself described the meaning of being truly consecrated: “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. For I, the Lord, will cause them to bring forth as a very fruitful tree which is planted in a goodly land, by a pure stream, that yieldeth much precious fruit” (Doctrine and Covenants 97:8-9).
Those words describe what the Kimballs and the Woods became through their consecration. They had broken hearts and contrite spirits. They were willing to make every sacrifice the Lord asked of them. As a result, the Lord accepted them, and their lives bore much precious fruit.
There is no greater source of inner peace than to know that our lives are acceptable to the Lord. Where does that sense of acceptance come from? In the sixth lecture of faith, Joseph Smith taught: “It is through the medium of the sacrifice of all earthly things that men do actually know that they are doing the things that are well pleasing in the sight of God.” He added that those who are unwilling to accept this spirit of total sacrifice do not know that the course of their lives is acceptable to God. They remain in a state of doubt and uncertainty, which make them unable to “contend against all the opposition, tribulations and afflictions which they will have to encounter in order to be . . . joint heirs with Christ Jesus; and they will grow weary in their minds, and the adversary will have power over them and destroy them.14 (continued)
`Bruce C. Hafen, Spiritually Anchored in Unsettled Times (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2009), 26-28
