Consecration... The ultimate gift.

I have been talked to and talked to about what consecration is on my mission. Some say it is giving up everything for God. Some say it is becoming one with God's will. While both of these are correct, my favorite definition demonstrates the difference from consecration and sacrifice. Sacrifice is giving up everything in order to serve God. Consecration is giving to God. When we are consecrated we are giving God our all. We are allowing Him to take our fears, doubts, trials and afflictions and mold them into the creation He needs us to be. We are literally putting ourselves in His hands. We cannot expect this action to be easy or painless. It is subjecting our desires and motives to His. That is hard! It will take concerted effort and extreme self control. When accomplished, it allows us to become the rock solid disciple that God needs us to be.
This is a life long pursuit. No one can be perfect at it today but we can try a little harder. Lately, I have had this take a huge part of my life. I am on a mission to serve God, but I have always seen it as sacrificing so much to be here. I saw it as giving up my time to become a missionary. With trials and gloomy choices, I have had to realize I needed to not only give up this time but truly give it to God. I needed to give my all to whatever His will is for me. With that step into the darkness, I am now able to be much happier as I give my all knowing this is God's will for me.
While I was in the Missionary Training Center, my teacher told us that this life is really about spending all our time, energy and emotion in building God's kingdom. As we do this God is building our kingdom into something much more elaborate and extraordinary then we could have ever guessed. That is amazing! God loves us that much that He wants to build and create our kingdoms but He can't do it as well if we are in the way.
An apostle of the Lord said, 

Another cosmic fact: only by aligning our wills with God’s is full happiness to be found. Anything less results in a lesser portion (see Alma 12:10–11). The Lord will work with us even if, at first, we “can no more than desire” but are willing to “give place for a portion of [His] words” (Alma 32:27). A small foothold is all He needs! But we must desire and provide it.

"So many of us are kept from eventual consecration because we mistakenly think that, somehow, by letting our will be swallowed up in the will of God, we lose our individuality (see Mosiah 15:7). What we are really worried about, of course, is not giving up self, but selfish things—like our roles, our time, our preeminence, and our possessions. No wonder we are instructed by the Savior to lose ourselves (see Luke 9:24). He is only asking us to lose the old self in order to find the new self. It is not a question of one’s losing identity but of finding his true identity!" (Swoallowed Up in the Will of the Father by Neal A Maxwell)

Those are some amazing blessings! We will find full happiness as we seek to become truly consecrated and we will find our true identity! As Neal A Maxwell also said "Consecration thus constitutes the only unconditional surrender which is also a total victory!"
Let us be like our Savoir Jesus Christ and say " nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done." (Luke 22:42)