Try as you may, you cannot put the Lord in your debt. For every time you try to do His will, He simply pours out more blessings upon you.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that our efforts to serve God do not create a debt or obligation, but instead result in greater blessings from Him.
Ezra Taft Benson's quote highlights the principle that no matter how diligently one attempts to serve or fulfill God's will, they cannot place God in a position of indebtedness. Instead, the more effort contributed towards living a righteous life and following divine guidance, the more continuous blessings and gifts from God are poured into one's life, illustrating a relationship of grace rather than transaction.
In practice
During a sermon discussing the nature of divine grace, one might quote this to illustrate the abundance of God's blessings.
Humility responds to God's will-to the fear of His judgments and to the needs of those around us. To the proud, the applause of the world rings in their ears; to the humble, the applause of heaven warms their hearts. Someone has said, "Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man."
Physical well-being is not only a priceless asset to oneself-it is a heritage to be passed on. With good health, all other activities of life are greatly enhanced. A clean mind in a healthy body enables one to render far more effective service to others. It helps one provide more vigorous leadership. It gives our every experience in life more zest and more meaning. Robust health is a noble and worthwhile attainment.
If you really want to receive joy and happiness, then serve others with all your heart. Lift their burden, and your own burden will be lighter.
Our parents deserve our honor and respect for giving us life itself. Beyond this they almost always made countless sacrifices as they cared for and nurtured us through our infancy and childhood, provided us with the necessities of life, and nursed us through physical illnesses and the emotional stresses of growing up.
We are an overfed and undernourished nation digging an early grave with our teeth.
Every man eventually is backed up to the wall of faith, and there he must make his stand.
History does nothing, possesses no enormous wealth, fights no battles. It is rather man, the real, living man, who does everything, possesses, fights. It is not History, as if she were a person apart, who uses men as a means to work out her purposes, but history itself is nothing but the activity of men pursuing their purposes.
It is true that 'I seem to see a table' does not entail 'I see a table'; but 'I seem to feel a pain' does entail 'I feel a pain'. So scepticism loses its force - cannot open up its characteristic gap - with regard to that which ultimately most concerns us, pleasure and pain.
Adults are only obsolete children.
He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought that the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.
Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.
You can't carve up the world. It's not a pie.
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