My talk today begins with this powerful quote taken from Elder Uchtdorf's talk in 2018 entitled Behold the Man
"Those who find a way to truly behold the Man find the doorway to life’s greatest joys and the balm to life’s most demanding despairs.
So, when you are encompassed by sorrows and grief, behold the Man. When you feel lost or forgotten, behold the Man. When you are despairing, deserted, doubting, damaged, or defeated, behold the Man.
He will comfort you.
He will heal you and give meaning to your journey.
He will pour out His Spirit and fill your heart with exceeding joy.
He gives “power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength."
When we truly behold the Man, we learn of Him and seek to align our lives with Him. We repent and strive to refine our natures and daily grow a little closer to Him. We trust Him.
We show our love for Him by keeping His commandments and by living up to our sacred covenants.
In other words, we become His disciples. His refining light saturates our souls. His grace uplifts us. Our burdens are lightened, our peace deepened.
When we truly behold the Man, we have the promise of a blessed future that inspires and upholds us through the bends and bumps in life’s journey.
Looking back, we will recognize that there is a divine pattern, that the dots really connect.
As you accept His sacrifice, become His disciple, and finally reach the end of your earthly journey, what will become of the sorrows you have endured in this life?
They will be gone.
The disappointments, betrayals, persecutions you have faced?
Gone.
The suffering, heartache, guilt, shame, and anguish you have passed through? Gone.
Forgotten.
Is it any wonder that “we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ … that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins”?
Is it any wonder that we strive with all our hearts to truly behold the Man?"
My favourite scripture which is the epitome of beholding the man is found in Ether where because of his faith and knowledge of the power of God, the brother of Jared rends the veil of unbelief and actually sees the Lord.
We might not have any expectation or even belief that this could happen to us but surely we can hold it up as the most perfect outcome and at the very least a desirable goal.
Ether 3:20 reads
20 Wherefore, having this perfect knowledge of God, he could not be kept from within the veil; therefore he saw Jesus; and he did minister unto him.
Pres Nelson in Oct last year said:
"I plead with you now—to take charge of your own testimony of Jesus Christ and His gospel. Work for it. Nurture it so that it will grow. Feed it truth. Don’t pollute it with false philosophies of unbelieving men and women. As you make the continual strengthening of your testimony of Jesus Christ your highest priority, watch for miracles to happen in your life."
In April 2021 he spoke of the charge for us to be worthy and willing to help prepare the world for the Second Coming of the Lord. Today I will use four points taken from Pres Nelson, 2017 talk entitled Drawing the Power of Jesus Christ into Our Lives to show how we can become worthy and willing to receive the Saviour into our lives.
1."We begin by learning about Him. In D&C 131:6 we find that “It is impossible for [us] to be saved in ignorance.” The more we know about the Savior’s ministry and mission—the more we understand His doctrine and what He did for us—the more we know that He can provide the power that we need for our lives."
How do we do this? I have 3 powerful quotes to answer that question…
1.President Russell M. Nelson
“The very first word in the Doctrine and Covenants is hearken. It means “to listen with the intent to obey.” To hearken means to “hear Him”—to hear what the Savior says and then to heed His counsel. In those two words—“Hear Him”—God gives us the pattern for success, happiness, and joy in this life. We are to hear the words of the Lord, hearken to them, and heed what He has told us!
“As we seek to be disciples of Jesus Christ, our efforts to hear Him need to be ever more intentional. It takes conscious and consistent effort to fill our daily lives with His words, His teachings, His truths.
“We simply cannot rely upon information we bump into on social media. With billions of words online and in a marketing-saturated world constantly infiltrated by noisy, nefarious efforts of the adversary, where can we go to hear Him?
“We can go to the scriptures. They teach us about Jesus Christ and His gospel, the magnitude of His Atonement, and our Father’s great plan of happiness and redemption. Daily immersion in the word of God is crucial for spiritual survival, especially in these days of increasing upheaval. As we feast on the words of Christ daily, the words of Christ will tell us how to respond to difficulties we never thought we would face.”
(“Hear Him”)
2.Elder Robert D. Hales:
“For when we want to speak to God, we pray. And when we want Him to speak to us, we search the scriptures; for His words are spoken through His prophets. He will then teach us as we listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
If you have not heard His voice speaking to you lately, return with new eyes and new ears to the scriptures. They are our spiritual lifeline.”
(O 2006, Holy Scriptures: The Power of God unto Our Salvation)
3.Elder Richard G. Scott:
Our Father in Heaven has given us tools to help us come unto Christ and [hear Him]… [One such] tool is to study the word of God in the scriptures and the words of the living prophets. We talk to God through prayer. He most often communicates back to us through His written word. To know what the voice of the Divine sounds and feels like, read His words, study the scriptures, and ponder them. Make them an integral part of everyday life. If you want your children to recognize, understand, and act on the promptings of the Spirit, you must study the scriptures with them.
Don’t yield to Satan’s lie that you don’t have time to study the scriptures. Choose to take time to study them. Feasting on the word of God each day is more important than sleep, school, work, television shows, video games, or social media. You may need to reorganize your priorities to provide time for the study of the word of God. If so, do it!
(October 2014, Make the Exercise of Faith Your First Priority)
Personal experience of young mum and scripture study
2."As we invest time in learning about the Savior and His atoning sacrifice, we are drawn to participate in another key element to accessing His power: we choose to have faith in Him and follow Him."
How do we increase our faith in Jesus Christ?
I have studied much on faith including the Lectures on Faith and the simplest conclusion I have come to is this;
1.We must believe in the words of Jesus Christ, that the scriptures are literal. That the words and promises of our Saviour are written for us and will be fulfilled in our lives. Scriptures include the standard works plus the holy words of our Prophets beginning with our dispensation head Joseph Smith right up to our current Prophet Pres Nelson. D&C 1:38 "What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same." We must trust that through these Prophets, ancient and modern, our Saviour Jesus Christ is speaking to us and we must believe what He says to be literal and true. If we spiritualise away the words of God, we will never have the faith as the Brother of Jared to rend the veil of unbelief.
2.As we believe in His words and trust in His ability to lead us in our lives, we follow the promptings and direction we are given. I have learnt the more we participate in this; or the more we act on those thoughts and moments of enlightenment, the more we receive them. Simply put, the more we look to the Saviour to guide our lives, the more He does
Pres Nelson says…
"We pray that you will begin anew truly to hear, hearken to, and heed the words of the Savior. I promise that decreased fear and increased faith will follow."
"There is nothing easy or automatic about becoming such powerful disciples. Our focus must be riveted on the Savior and His gospel. It is mentally rigorous to strive to look unto Him in every thought. But when we do, our doubts and fears flee."
3."We also increase the Savior’s power in our lives when we make sacred covenants and keep those covenants with precision. Our covenants bind us to Him and give us godly power."
In the Liahona last Oct Pres Nelson wrote an article entitled The Everlasting Covenant. In this article he taught us about the word hesed. It was a very powerful talk. If you havent already, I invite you to read it. Amongst other things he taught us that "because God has hesed for those who have covenanted with Him, He will love them. He will continue to work with them and offer them opportunities to change. He will forgive them when they repent. And should they stray, He will help them find their way back to Him. Once you and I have made a covenant with God, our relationship with Him becomes much closer than before our covenant. Now we are bound together. Because of our covenant with God, He will never tire in His efforts to help us, and we will never exhaust His merciful patience with us. Each of us has a special place in God’s heart. He has high hopes for us." This article brought great comfort to me as I understood more about our covenantal relationship.
Pres Nelson has been pleading with us to overcome the world, one of my favourite talks from him is this very title, instead of reading you the whole talk, I will summarise it with the most powerful line in the whole talk;
"Overcoming the world means growing to love God and His Beloved Son more than you love anyone or anything else."
But of course I cant just stop there…
"The truth is that it is much more exhausting to seek happiness where you can never find it! However, when you yoke yourself to Jesus Christ and do the spiritual work required to overcome the world, He, and He alone, does have the power to lift you above the pull of this world. Now, how does overcoming the world bless our lives? The answer is clear: entering into a covenant relationship with God binds us to Him in a way that makes everything about life easier. Please do not misunderstand me: I did not say that making covenants makes life easy. In fact, expect opposition, because the adversary does not want you to discover the power of Jesus Christ. But yoking yourself with the Savior means you have access to His strength and redeeming power."
In summary, "Covenant-keeping men and women seek for ways to keep themselves unspotted from the world so there will be nothing blocking their access to the Savior’s power."
4. "Another element in drawing the Savior’s power into our lives is to reach up to Him in faith. Such reaching requires diligent, focused effort."
Pres Nelson then goes on to talk about my favourite scripture story in the new testament of the woman with the 12 yr blood issue who believed that if she just touched the hem of the Saviours garment, she would be healed.
"This faithful, focused woman needed to stretch as far as she could to access His power. Her physical stretching was symbolic of her spiritual stretching. Many of us have cried out from the depths of our hearts a variation of this woman’s words: “If I could spiritually stretch enough to draw the Savior’s power into my life, I would know how to handle my heart-wrenching situation. I would know what to do. And I would have the power to do it.” When you reach up for the Lord’s power in your life with the same intensity that a drowning person has when grasping and gasping for air, power from Jesus Christ will be yours. When the Savior knows you truly want to reach up to Him—when He can feel that the greatest desire of your heart is to draw His power into your life—you will be led by the Holy Ghost to know exactly what you should do. When you spiritually stretch beyond anything you have ever done before, then His power will flow into you."
Then just last weekend Pres Nelson said this powerful statement to us all; "I know that His power is descending on His covenant-keeping people, who are armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory." Note the present tense. Do you feel or recognise the Lords power in your life?
At this Easter time when we focus on our gratitude for all that our Saviour did and is doing for us, are we showing our appreciation by doing all we can to receive His power into our lives?
Brothers and Sisters, I testify that the Lord blesses us with the desires of our hearts. However our desires must be coupled with action to show our willingness to receive. When we truly find the ways to behold the Man, we will receive his power in our lives and through this priesthood power we will rend the veil of unbelief and bring about miracles in our lives. I would love to finish with this powerful quote from our beloved Prophet;
"In coming days, we will see the greatest manifestations of the Savior's power that the world has ever seen. Between now and the time He returns “with power and great glory,” He will bestow countless privileges, blessings, and miracles upon the faithful.
I invite each of us to do all we can to qualify to receive His power, even rend the veil of unbelief and receive Him into our lives in the name of Jesus Christ Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment