“For behold, God hath said a man being evil cannot do that which is good; for if he offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except he shall do it with real intent it profiteth him nothing. For behold, it is not counted unto him for righteousness. For behold, if a man being evil giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God.” (Moroni 7:6-8). Cain offered a sacrifice to the Lord and the Lord had no respect for it. Saul offered sacrifices when he wasn't supposed to and against the express commands of the Lord. Ananias and Sapphira sold their property and gave some, but not all, of the money to Peter, claiming that this was the total value. Does God really care about the quality of the sacrifices that we make, in and of themselves? Did not Jesus praise the sacrifice of the two mites of the old widow as being of more worth than all of the rest of the much higher quality offerings? Did not the Lord instruct Samuel to choose David and pass over all of the other more attractive and valuable seeming sons? God has worlds without number. Everything that has and does and can possibly exist belongs to Him. Why should God care if we are giving Him our absolute best or are just giving a half-hearted effort. Just look at the results! Cain’s less than excellent sacrifice stirred up so much resentment and vengefulness inside of him that he murdered his own brother and was exiled from his whole family. Saul’s decision to sacrifice when he should not have caused him to lose his kingdom. Ananias and Sapphira lost their very lives for their duplicitous offerings. When we give gifts grudgingly or with false intent, then sin lies at the door. It turns us into the kind of people that we don't want to become, and certainly God doesn't want us to become either. The first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with ALL our heart, ALL our might, and ALL our strength. When we give a mediocre gift, vainly imagining that we can take a shortcut to promised blessings, then we are not loving the Lord with all our heart and thus we are violating the first and greatest commandment. The businesses that are the most successful and profitable are always the ones that focus the most on providing more and more value to their customers. The businesses that try to eke out more profit by cutting costs and cutting corners are the ones that strip away any value that might have been there in the first place, and they will sooner or later lose all of their profit. There are no Get Blessed quick schemes in the economy of Heaven. We can't hope to trick God or even trick ourselves that giving a gift to God without real intent will profit us anything in the long run. If we sacrifice with only eighty percent of our heart, then this will quickly become the new normal and our capacity to serve and love the Lord will be diminished. And then we give eighty percent of that reduced amount. And then eighty percent of that. It won't be long before we have shriveled up completely and are only capable of small, mean acts of cruelty and malevolence. Sacrificing without profit is just a waste. God doesn't really need our gifts and if we aren't getting anything out of it, then we are just destroying our valuable things for no reason. We have to offer up a more excellent sacrifice. We can't hold anything back and we can't try to use some grudging sacrifice as a bargaining chip to buy off the Lord's indulgence so we don't have to do the thing we know we need to do. The more real we are with our intent, the more good and profit our sacrifices will bring into our lives. Let us truly give with everything that we have so that our Father will give back in return everything that He is. Seems like we're really getting the better end of that deal.
