Offer Your Whole Souls as an Offering Unto Him
This week’s Come Follow Me study included a favorite verse of mine, Omni 1:26, and I couldn’t let the week go by without sharing some thoughts on it.
It reads, “And now, my beloved brethren, I would that ye should come unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him, and continue in fasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved.”
There is so much that could be said about this verse, but for now I’d like to just focus on these words, “Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him.”
Powerful. But what does that mean? How does one offer his whole soul as an offering unto Christ?
Amaleki, who wrote these words, is asking us to give everything to Christ. To give all of us. Not just our possessions, our time, and our talents, but to give Him our hearts, our wills, and our desires because in the end that is really all we have to give God that he doesn’t already posses. Christ wants us to freely give our souls to Him.
C.S. Lewis wrote, “Christ says, give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self---in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.”
Powerful. But again, how do we do this?
Amaleki and C.S. Lewis are speaking about consecration. In his October 1995 address, Elder Maxwell, spoke of this principle as well.
He said, “Consecration is not resignation or a mindless caving in. Rather, it is a deliberate expanding outward, making us more honest when we sing, “More used would I be” (“More Holiness Give Me,” Hymns, 1985, no. 131). Consecration, likewise, is not shoulder-shrugging acceptance, but, instead, shoulder-squaring to better bear the yoke.
Consecration involves pressing forward “with a steadfastness in Christ” with a “brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men … [while] feasting upon the word of Christ” (2 Ne. 31:20). Jesus pressed forward sublimely. He did not shrink, such as by going only 60 percent of the distance toward the full atonement. Instead, He “finished [His] preparations” for all mankind…
Consecration is thus both a principle and a process, and it is not tied to a single moment. Instead, it is freely given, drop by drop, until the cup of consecration brims and finally runs over.”
Drop by drop we can give our whole souls to Christ by turning outward. By losing ourselves in the service of others (not forgetting those closest to us) which is truly serving God.
Elder Maxwell closed with this, “The submission of one’s will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God’s altar. The many other things we “give,” brothers and sisters, are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us. However, when you and I finally submit ourselves, by letting our individual wills be swallowed up in God’s will, then we are really giving something to Him! It is the only possession which is truly ours to give!”
May we follow the example of our Lord and Savior whose will was swallowed up in the will of His father, and give Him everything, even our souls.
