You know the reciprocity of Oneness of Love when you give milk to your baby. Serving the baby is serving yourself. Your breast is emptied, and your baby's tummy is full.

That is an example of love and how mutual and natural it is.

And if you give your baby milk from a bottle, still you are giving the love from your heart.

As you serve another, you serve yourself. This is how love works.

This is not to say that you divest yourself in order to serve. To love does not mean to sacrifice. To love does not mean that you are deigned to sacrifice.

You might say that someone who saves your life and loses his own has sacrificed his life. To say he, or she, sacrificed seems to imply that the person did what he did unwillingly and, therefore, at a loss to himself. When someone does what he wants to do, where does sacrifice enter in? He made a choice, and it was a choice he chose to make. Or We can say there was no decision to make, so full of love was his heart. Let it be so.

I am opposed to sacrifice. In giving, there is truly gain, to the one who gives and to the one who receives. Giving does not mean loss. Giving up something is sacrifice, and so sacrifice means giving the appearance of love in a spirit of less than love. Don't sacrifice. Love instead.

Giving love is feeding another and nourishing yourself.

I don't ask you to give up anything. I don't ask you to carry the feeling that you must give up something. On soap operas, someone may be long-suffering as he gives up what he wants for the sake of another. I say to be true to your heart.

When a child of Mine feels he is sacrificing, he is sacrificing his own honor. Give but do not carry the idea of sacrifice. Do not even carry the idea of duty. Carry the idea that you are here for more than duty. Be dutiful in that you obey your parents, yet when you obey and grumble about it, you are not being dutiful. You are being resentful. Be agreeable instead. Duty protested is duty you impose upon yourself. Then duty becomes unwilling obligation.

Give with joy, beloveds, or it is not giving.

You are not looking for the title Hero. That is so little. When you serve from fullness of heart, even if no one else knows what you gave or even knows that you gave at all, you can know you did something that enriches you. Labels are not so helpful to you, beloveds.

Desire to have a full heart. Desire to do good for others and so for the world. Have ideals before you, and yet do not desire to be hailed a hero. A hero doesn't conquer. What is there to conquer when all are One?

I dismiss sacrifice because sacrifice says you are giving more to someone else than you are giving to yourself. Have joy in giving, or you are sacrificing joy.

Nor are you to make sacrifices to Me. I ask you to accept more, not less. Give from your heart, or you are not giving. When you sacrifice, somewhere in the back of your mind you have the idea that you are now owed something, and so you are looking for a payback.

Give when you can give without expecting a return. The act of giving itself is meant to be your return. Do not impose debt upon another. No one owes, and you do not owe. Sacrifice is not a cycle you want to enter into. Giving is something else, and you are growing towards becoming a great giver.