This is one of the best talks on the enabling power of the Atonement I have ever read. It is also very practical in the approach…In short, it is VERY, VERY, VERY good.
Category Archives: Becoming
the challenge to become
The Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts—what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughts—what we have become. It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions. The commandments, ordinances, and covenants of the gospel are not a list of deposits required to be made in some heavenly account. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become.
Dallin H. Oaks, “The Challenge to Become,” Liahona, Jan. 2001, 40; Ensign, Nov. 2000, 32.
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
Look to God for What Is Needed Each Day
Looking to God Daily for Our Needs Nurtures Faith
Trust in the Lord—Solutions May Come over Time
never act in haste
Man is endowed with power and wisdom sufficient, if he will exercise them, to silence his tongue, and cause his hands to cease their operations. His feet may be swift to shed blood, but he has power to pause, and combat and conquer the enemy; for good is present with him also and he is influenced in a greater or lesser degree by the Spirit of the Lord. You experience these two opposites of good and evil in yourselves every day you live, you are tried, tempted and overtaken in sin, by saying and doing that which is wrong. Now from this time henceforth, pause, and whatever you do, let it be done in a spirit of reflection, never again act in haste, but let your actions always be the result of mature consideration.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 1:92
obedience is the first law of Heaven
As the Great Exemplar and Daystar of our lives, is it any wonder that Christ chooses first and foremost to define himself in relation to his father–that he loved him and obeyed him and submitted to him like the loyal son he was? And what he as a child of God did, we must try very hard to do also.
Obedience is the first law of heaven, but in case you haven’t noticed, some of these commandments are not easy, and we frequently may seem to be in for much more than we bargained for. At least if we are truly serious about becoming a saint, I think we will find that is the case.
Let me use an example from what is often considered by foes, and even by some friends, as the most unsavory moment in the entire Book of Mormon. I choose it precisely because there is so much in it that has given offense to many. It is pretty much a bitter cup all the way around.
I speak of Nephi’s obligation to slay Laban in order to preserve a record, save a people, and ultimately lead to the restoration of the gospel in the dispensation of the fulness of times. How much is hanging in the balance as Nephi stands over the drunken and adversarial Laban I cannot say, but it is a very great deal indeed.
The only problem is that we know this, but Nephi does not. And regardless of how much is at stake, how can. he do this thing? He is a good person, perhaps even a well-educated person. He has been taught from the very summit of Sinai “Thou shalt not kill.” And he has made gospel covenants.
“I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but . . . I shrunk and would that I might not slay him” (1 Nephi 4:10). A bitter test? A desire to shrink? Sound familiar? We don’t know why those plates could not have been obtained some other way–perhaps accidentally left at the plate polishers one night or maybe falling out the back of Laban’s chariot on a Sabbath afternoon.
For that matter, why didn’t Nephi just leave this story out of the book altogether? Why didn’t he say something like, “And after much effort and anguish of spirit, I did obtain the plates of Laban and did depart into the wilderness unto the tent of my father?” At the very least he might have buried the account somewhere in the Isaiah chapters, thus guaranteeing that it would have gone undiscovered up to this very day.
But there it is, squarely in the beginning of the book–page 8–where even the most casual reader will see it and must deal with it. It is not intended that either Nephi or we be spared the struggle of this account.
I believe that story was placed in the very opening verses of a 531-page book and then told in painfully specific detail in order to focus every reader of that record on the absolutely fundamental gospel issue of obedience and submission to the communicated will of the Lord. If Nephi cannot yield to this terribly painful command, if he cannot bring himself to obey, then it is entirely probable that he can never succeed or survive in the tasks that lie just ahead.
“I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded” (1 Nephi 3:7). I confess that I wince a little when I hear that promise quoted so casually among us. Jesus knew what that kind of commitment would entail, and so now does Nephi. And so will a host of others before it is over. That vow took Christ to the cross on Calvary, and it remains at the heart of every Christian covenant. “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded.” Well, we shall see.
In all of this we are, of course, probing Lucifer’s problem–he of the raging ego, he who always took the Burger King motto too far and had to have everything his way. Satan would have done well to listen to that wisest of Scottish pastors, George MacDonald, who warned: “There is one kind of religion in which the more devoted a man is, the fewer proselytes he makes: the worship of himself” (C. S. Lewis, ed., George MacDonald: An Anthology [New York: Macmillan, 1947], p. 110).
But Satan’s performance can be instructive. The moment you have a self there is the temptation to put it forward, to put it first and at the center of things. And the more we are–socially or intellectually or politically or economically–the greater the risk of increasing self-worship. Perhaps that is why when a newborn baby was brought before the venerable Robert E. Lee and the hopeful parents asked for this legendary man’s advice, saying, “What should we teach this child? How should he make his way in the world?” the wise old general said, “Teach him to deny himself. Teach him to say no.”
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland “The Will of the Father in All Things” (BYU Devotional, January 17, 1989)
http://speeches.byu.edu/reader/reader.php?id=7027&x=54&y=7
the world’s last night
In King Lear (III, vii) there is a man who is such a minor character that Shakespeare has not even given him a name: he is simply called “First Servant.” All the characters around him–Regan, Cornwall, and Edmund–have fine long-term plans. They think they know how the story is going to end, and they are quite wrong. The servant, however, has no such delusions. He has no notion how the play is going to go. But he understands the present scene. He sees an abomination (the blinding of old Gloucester) taking place. He will not stand for it. His sword is out and pointed at his master’s breast in an instant. Then Regan stabs him dead from behind. That is his whole part: eight lines all told. But, Lewis says, if that were real life and not a play, that is the part it would be best to have acted.
The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when Christ will come and the world drama will end. He may appear and the curtain may be rung down at any moment–say, before we have filed out of the devotional this morning. This kind of not knowing seems to some people intolerably frustrating. So many things would be interrupted. Perhaps you were going to get married next month. Perhaps you were to graduate this spring. Perhaps you were thinking of going on a mission or paying your tithing or denying yourself some indulgence. Surely no good and wise God would be so unreasonable as to cut all that short. Not now, of all moments!
But we think this way because we keep on assuming that we know the play. In fact, we don’t know much of it. We believe we are on in Act II, but we know almost nothing of how Act I went or how Act III will be. We are not even sure we know who the major and who the minor characters are. The Author knows. The audience, to the extent there is an audience of angels filling the loge and the stalls, may have an inkling. But we, never seeing the play from the outside (as Sister Holland has just suggested), and meeting only the tiny minority of characters who are “on” in the same scenes as ourselves, largely ignorant of the future and very imperfectly informed about the past, cannot tell at what moment Christ will come and confront us. We will face him one day, of that we may be sure; but we waste our time in guessing when that will be. That this human drama has a meaning we may be sure, but most of it we cannot yet see. When it is over we will be told. We are led to expect that the Author will have something to say to each of us on the part that each of us has played. Playing it well, then, is what matters most. To be able to say at the final curtain “I have suffered the will of the Father in all things” is our only avenue to an ovation in the end.
Elder Jeffery R. Holland “The Will of the Father in All Things” (BYU Devotional, January 17, 1989)
(see “The World’s Last Night,” in Fern-Seed and Elephants and Other Essays on Christianity by C. S.Lewis, ed. Walter Hooper [Great Britain: Fontana/Collins, 1975], pp. 7677)
Evil cannot develop into good
I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A [mathematical] sum [incorrectly worked] can be put right; but only by going back till you find the error and then working it fresh from that point. [It will] never [be corrected] by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot “develop” into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: Macmillan Co., 1973), p. 6
if you wish to go where God is, you must become like God…
When faith, prayer, love and humility become a living part of us…
I have personally verified that concepts like faith, prayer, love, and humility hold no great significance and produce no miracles until they become a living part of us through our own experience, aided by the sweet prompting of the Holy Spirit. In early life I found that I could learn gospel teachings intellectually and, through the power of reason and analysis, recognize that they were of significant value. But their enormous power and ability to stretch me beyond the limits of my imagination and capacity did not become reality until patient, consistent practice allowed the Holy Spirit to distill and expand their meaning in my heart. I found that while I was sincerely serving others, God forged my personal character. He engendered a growing capacity to recognize the direction of the Spirit. The genius of the gospel plan is that by doing those things the Lord counsels us to do, we are given every understanding and every capacity necessary to provide peace and rich fulfillment in this life. Likewise, we gain the preparation necessary for eternal happiness in the presence of the Lord.
Elder Richard G. Scott, October 2010 General Conference
“…have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received His image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?…[and] if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask you, can ye feel so now?”
Alma 5:14, 26
Becoming what we want to be
Elder Richard G. Scott, October 2010 General Conference