What’s sacrifice got to do with overcoming temptation? It turns out, a whole lot. This connecting duo was accentuated for me recently; it originated from following a recent prompting.
I was tired the Saturday morning session of our most recent general conference, as I had worked at my temple cleaning job the night prior and into the morning hours of Saturday. As I did my best to stay attentive to the messages of our prophet and leaders and even more critically vital, to recognize and feel the Holy Spirit’s promptings, I was rewarded.
One admonition I received during general conference was that I needed to participate in the temple’s endowment ordinance more often. I was surprised by this revelation, as I frequent the temple weekly (and regularly, bi-weekly) to participate in ordinances. However, upon reflecting, I realized I partook in the endowment less frequently than the other ordinances.
I took that gentle whisper as occasion to more fully rite my personal ship.
This afternoon I found myself seated in a full 2:00 PM endowment session. I had been conversant with God prior to coming, asking that I might discover the messages that needed to be revealed to me. I feel like the endowment ceremony both conceals and reveals, and I had hoped to have a more revealing experience than a concealing one.
In this I was not disappointed.
One realization that entered both my heart and my mind during the endowment was the power of a more polished and intentional offering of self-sacrifice. This, I felt, would help me finally overcome a reoccurring temptation with which I have struggled for too many years.
Though the endowment pretty plainly teaches this connecting point, somehow it had never quite sunk in like it did today. The cap was kindly lifted on the concealment, and I’m so grateful.
So sacrifice and temptations – how can they possibly be related, and how can the former help combat the latter? For starters, I love, love, love the repeated invitations during the updated endowment to repent, come unto Christ, partake of sacred ordinances, make and keep holy covenants, and endure to the end.
Though our resurrection and redemption are gifts offered to each of us from our self-sacrificing Savior, we must offer something of ourselves to activate the power of His help. In my experience, overcoming besetting temptations that near constantly assail us is absolutely and totally impossible without Supreme Being help.
It’s our willing disposition, our sacrifice of rebellion and pride – in other words, our contrite spirits and broken hearts that align us with the grace of Christ through which we can finally (once and forever) be conquers of fleshy temptations.
“…Thou shalt offer a sacrifice unto
the Lord thy God in righteousness,
even that of a broken heart
and a contrite spirit.”
(Doctrine & Covenants 59:8)
Herein lies a serious struggle for many of us.
I love these words from my friend Heather Farrell about a broken heart and a contrite spirit.
“For a long time, I thought that the word broken meant I had to be heart-broken. Then I realized that a horse is “broken,” not when its spirit has been crushed but when it has become obedient…The Webster 1828 dictionary says that contrite means, “Literally, worn or bruised” and seems to connote the same ideas as heartbroken. Yet as I thought about it, the idea of an old shoe came to mind and how when it has been “worn” and “bruised” it takes on the new shape, conforming more to that of its owner’s foot. I realized that if I want to give God an acceptable offering, one that is “broken” and “contrite,” it would require a transformation of who I was on the inside. My good works and pious efforts might help me in that transformation, but they themselves were not an acceptable offering. The only offering God would accept was me – broken, worn,contrite, and obedient.”
(Farrell, H., “Walking With the Women of the Old Testament,” 2017, 265-66)
And so finding transforming power to really change, to finally and forever put off incommodious and soul hurting temptations comes in offering upward (to the only One who can fully and forever help us) the sacrifice of “broken” as in obedient rather than crushed and in offering the sacrifice of “contrite” as in internally reconfigured, the naturalness worn through and the new creature in Christ emerging.
Those temptations that constantly beset us, the ones about which Nephi spoke (“I am encompassed about because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me” – 2 Nephi 4:18) are so lingering, so fiercely loyal, so undeterred by anything save it be the power of Jesus Christ, accessed by our broken hearts and contrite spirits.
Like me, if you are having trouble flicking away (once and for all) a barnacle attaching temptation to your personal ship, you may wish to try sacrifice.
Of a broken heart. Of a contrite spirit.
The kind about which the temple endowment teaches.
The kind that shoulders your efforts with those of Jesus.
The kind that makes for miracles.
Unto all the world: God help us – one and all – overcome temptation through broken heart and contrite spirit sacrifice.