From the book "The Triumph of Zion" by John Pontius, pages 257-259 - italics in original, bolded parts are my favorite parts:
Purity is in part the result of the Holy Spirit cleansing us of the
baggage of mortality. Quite often this cleansing process involves a
form of bedrock humility which is not native to most mortals. What this
means is that quite often this type of humility and willingness to lay
aside our favorite and most entertaining imperfections is arrived at
through divinely engineered life experiences that
steamroll our pride.
Eventually, such experiences either induce us to rebellion or into
humble obedience to the will of God.
While being
steamrolled is not a willing form of sacrifice, it does eventually,
hopefully, yield humility and place our feet upon the correct path.
However,
there is another form of sacrifice which is willing
and righteous, and which yields the requisite purity without being
flattened by dramatic events. This is when we offer up a broken heart
and contrite spirit to the Lord, and in true humility lay all we are
upon the altar and submit ourselves to any schooling needed to remake us
into a Zion person.
This sacrifice of our will,
pride, fears, and mortal baggage. It is done in mighty prayer. What
will happen after such an offering is a series of events that highlights
our weaknesses, opening them to our view, and gives us a chance to
repent and step away from them. If we are determined to serve God at
all hazards, and if we enter with eyes opened by revelation and hearts
truly joyful in the process, the price paid will not feel sacrificial,
though it may tug at our heart and fears. The price we pay will be to
become pure, which is far less dramatic process that to be compelled to
humility and then be purified. The Prophet Joseph left this powerful
insight:
"Let us here observe, that a religion that does
not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to
produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation; for, from the first
existence of man the faith necessary unto the enjoyment of life and
salvation never could be obtained without the sacrifice of all earthly
things.
It was through this sacrifice, and this only, that God has
ordained that men should enjoy eternal life; and 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. When a man has offered in sacrifice all that he has for the
truth's sake, not even withholding his life, and believing before God
that he has been called to make this sacrifice because he seeks to do
his will, he does know, most assuredly, that God does and will accept
his sacrifice and offering, and that he has not, not will not seek his face in vain. Under these circumstances, then, he can obtain the faith necessary for him to lay hold on eternal life."
Notice
that it is the sacrifice of all things which gives one sufficiently
potent faith to seek the face of the Lord; and since a personal
interview with Christ is the doorway into Zion, sacrifice takes its
righteous place as the initiatory rite of Zion.
This is
the eye of the needle, as it were, the birth canal of righteousness.
This is the point at which hearts faint and knees weaken. No rational
person seeks after ways to sacrifice. The saving principle here is that
the ultimate object we must place on the altar is our broken heart and
contrite spirit (3 Ne 9:20). Since we are mortal and our lives depend
upon mortal things, the only concrete way we can show that humility is
to place everything we are, have, and hope to become upon the altar.
The Lord doesn't need or want our "things." Material objects only get
sacrificed when our mortal weaknesses
attach themselves to physical
objects; then the cleansing process can include watching those things go
up in smoke so we can learn absolute purity and contrition in spirit.
In
the process of Abraham's purification he was asked to sacrifice his
son, who was Abraham's beloved son and his only posterity. without
unduly attempting to read between Abraham's lines, it appears that
Abraham loved Isaac above all things, and therefore Abraham had to
untangle his loyalties and his mortal pride in order to obtain the
supreme blessings he had been promised. Abraham became the father of
all righteous when he raised the knife over Isaac in complete faith,
believing that in obeying God, eh was doing a greater good than the
obvious wrong of sacrificing his son. Abraham's faith was such that he
did not know how God would fulfill His promises regarding Abraham's
posterity, but he believed that if necessary, God would raise Isaac from
the dead (Heb 11:19).
With this faith in his heart and,
I'm sure, fear in his hands, with tears of anguish, Abraham plunged the
life downward with every intent of sacrificing his son. And at that
exact moment when he achieved his diamond-hard resolve to obey, Abraham
overcame his failings and completed his sacrifice.
You see, what God wants isn't our beloved son or our home or our
business, family, or marriage; those are only the things to which we
attach our pride and weaknesses, and thus they can become the false
idols of our lives. God wants us to sacrifice our impurities so we can
see Him and become like Him. So, as soon as Abraham had triumphed, God
sent an angel to save Isaac, and Abraham left the mountain with his son
in his arms.
This test of Abraham's thus became the prototype of all such
tests. For Abraham this was a terrible paradox. God had promised him
great blessings through Isaac. It must have seemed to Abraham that it
just couldn't be true that now God was asking for Isaac's life, yet He
had. Abraham did not know how God was going to resolve the conflict.
That was the paradox. Not mortal logic, not brute force genius can
unravel such a paradox. But faith can, faith did, and faith will. We
will all walk away with our Isaacs if our own triumph of faith occurs as
timely as did Abraham's.
