This is something I’ve wanted to write about for some time. I hope I can properly convey the power and importance of this, and somebody will find it helpful.

An Offering of Will

Previously, I wrote about how the “tithes and offerings” mentioned in Malachi have more to do with offering ourselves as an offering on the altars of the temple, than paying money to the Church. In Oct. Conference, 1995, Elder Neal A. Maxwell gave a watershed talk entitled Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father, wherein he thoroughly explained the concepts of personal sacrifice, consecration, and agency.

The basic teaching of the talk is that the only way we can truly become like Jesus and gain entry in the Celestial Kingdom, is to give our will to our Heavenly Father. When we pay tithing, there’s not much true sacrifice involved—at least not in the money itself—because we’re only giving the Lord something that is already His. However, His will (what he wants) is for us to give the 1/10th that he has asked. Thus, if we desire to pay tithing, because we know God wants us to, and we then pay it, we have exercised our agency to do His will. Because of agency our will is truly ours to give to the Lord, or to Satan. When we pay tithing—or do anything that the Lord want’s us to—because He wants us to, we are exercising our agency by choosing to do His will. Each of us individually must choose to follow Christ by submitting our will to the Father, by learning His will and acting according to it, or else we give our will to Satan by default.