Tuesday, September 9, 2014

I felt motivated to share this:

I was recently having a conversation with a friend and the topic of motivation to repent came up. I started out with an intended brief discussion about reading scriptures that sort of snowballed into this, so I hope you get something from it. I know I did. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The greatest motivation to repent is the knowledge that heavenly Father is beckoning you back. But you can't know that if you aren't actively looking for that knowledge. But when we aren't happy with ourselves we also aren't the most keen on being close to heavenly Father because it reminds us of our guilt. But God does not want us to feel guilty. Guilt is a negative emotion instilled in us by the adversary to keep us away from heavenly Father. God wants us to feel peace and joy. And for that reason he provided Christ as a sacrifice so that we wouldn't have to shoulder the burdens of our sins alone. But if we desire his assistance we need to ask for it. He won't force us to have our burdens made light. That would be contrary to the laws of agency. A lot of people have this idea in their head that Christ suffered so we could be made clean, which is true BUT it is only a half truth. The two-fold purpose of the  atonement is to allow us to be made clean AND to allow us to have a friend to help us carry our burdens. And that friend is Christ. When Christ suffered in the garden of Gethsemane, he wasn't only suffering the eternal consequences of your sins, he was suffering ALL the consequences of your sins. That means any temporal pain and suffering you feel as a result of your perceived failures was also shouldered by Christ in the garden. He is the only one of God's children who know exactly what you are going through, down to every last headache. When we are suffering, we tend to seek out others who have been through similar things because we feel like they understand us, and feeling understood and loved helps us to feel at peace with ourselves. But true peace can't come from other people, because those people are merely types and shadows of Christ. True peace and true joy come from the knowledge that we aren't alone. The knowledge that in this infinite universe, there is someone who understands us entirely. That someone is Jesus Christ. And by extension, our Father in Heaven. And despite that perfect understanding of our guilt and imperfections, He loves us more than we can comprehend. And nothing we can do will make Him love us any less. Because we are His children. We are his joy and His light and His glory. And nothing can diminish that.