“I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.” (Mosiah 3:21). I think sometimes get very discouraged and even hopeless when we consider the fact that we are forever indebted to our Savior for the price He paid for our sins and will always owe our Heavenly Father has given us unearned literally everything we have, including the air we breath. There is no way to pay back even the tiniest bit. When we hear that we are unprofitable servants, we might think that we are bad investments and lost causes, that God is just throwing good money after bad, that there is going to be one day when we add up the ledgers and find ourselves in the red - just like every single day of our lives - and finally God is going to get fed up and close up shop on us and cut us off. It's as if we think that somehow God hasn't figured out yet that we haven't ever turned a profit despite all of our best and worst efforts, but the minute He takes a closer look at His books then it's curtains for us. But assuming that the most important thing about us to our Heavenly Father is that we are able to successfully turn a profit is completely the wrong way of looking at things. Yes we are unprofitable. But maybe God doesn't care about making a profit. First of all, He's God. He already owns everything in the universe. What does He need to make money for? Who could he even give it to? It was never about the profit. And it makes sense, right? Think of all of the most important relationships in our lives. Are they based on how profitable that they can be to us? Do we pay our friends and loved ones to be around us? Do we expect any of them to pay us for the privilege of associating with us? God is perfectly content to continue funding our existence without us once ever turning a profit because it has never been about the profit. We are perfectly happy to pour all kinds of money into our hobbies and never see a dime for a return on our investment. So why can't God, who holds us in much higher regard than a mere hobby, be just as eager to pour down His blessings on us without any expectation of payback? If we are holding ourselves back from repenting and returning to the Lord because our life is just an endless sequence of catastrophes and failures and we just keep getting deeper and deeper into debt, we've got it all twisted. When Christ paid our debts, the debts that He paid are the ones demanded by Justice for our sins and misdeeds. But while Justice might be transactional, Mercy is not. Christ does not expect us to pay Him back for the Forgiveness He offers us. We do not owe Christ our love and our loyalty because He paid for it, but because He loved us first. Christ no more wants to think of us in terms of profits than He would have us think of Him in terms of some kind of blank check. Christ loves us and freely gives us His grace for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with how profitable we are, and He hopes that we will come to love Him and give Him our devotion for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with Him paying our debts. I have always been and hope to continue to be first and foremost a Child and an Heir to my Heavenly Father and not merely a failed financial endeavor and I hope that we all will remember that, no matter what the ledgers say, we are of infinite worth to our Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ.
