Peterson on Sacrifice and Faith.

"Sacrifice is to faith what eating is to nutrition; it is the action that we engage in that is transformed within ourselves invisibly and unobserved into a life lived in responsive obedience to the living God who gives himself to and for us, sacrifices himself for us. Faith, of which Abraham is our father, can never be understood by means of explanation or definition, only in the practice of sacrifice. Only in the act of obedience do we realise that sacrifice is not diminishment, not a stoical "This is the cross I bear" nonsense. It does not result in less joy, less satisfaction, less fulfillment, but in more - but rarely in the ways we expect."

- Eugene H. Peterson, The Jesus Way. p51. Hodder and Stoughton, London (2007).