Prelude to Spiritual Rebirth

          Goals are the bedrock of spiritual progress.  Elder Ballard once said:  "I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the technique of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential."

        That's a powerful statement.  It made me feel uncomfortable every time I read it until I finally got behind the concept of goal-setting and started building toward my eternal future.  If we set goals to allow the Atonement to purify us from the desire to sin, we will be able to do anything the Lord wants us to do, including obtaining eternal life.  Many people dramatically underestimate the requirements of eternal life.  Joseph Fielding Smith once said,

           "The man who does only those things in the Church which concern himself alone will never reach exaltation. For instance, the man who is willing to pray, to pay his tithes and offerings, and to attend to the ordinary duties which concern his own personal life, and nothing more, will never reach the goal of perfection."

         Think about Abraham.  In order to gain exaltation, he was required to sacrifice his only son.  Would it be just for God to give us the same eternal reward as him if we were not eventually willing to pay a similar price?  D&C 101:4-5 even states:

Therefore, they must needs be chastened and tried, even as Abraham, who was commanded to offer up his only son.  For all those who will not endure chastening, but deny me, cannot be sanctified.

          There are two principles that, if properly understood, will completely evaporate any discouragement caused by the last two examples.  The first is that God is omnipotent.  When He says he can do anything, he means anything.  He can turn the sky green, reverse gravity, and take away a weakness from you without any effort on your part.  It's natural to think:  "Overcoming weakness takes incredible effort!  The Lord can only step in after we do our part.  Faith without works is dead."  Actually, works without faith is dead too.  Works qualify us to be changed by God, but works themselves won't change us in any lasting way.  Ever.  They do point our agency in the right direction and build our faith.  Then God responds to our faith by changing us, eventually to the point of exaltation.

          Do you have faith that God can change you to love your enemies, to kick your bad habits, or develop patience?  Repent, follow both the commandments and the promptings of the Spirit to the highest extent of your abilities, and pray to God with faith, and He will bless you in the way you request.  It may be that the change comes through further obedience to promptings of the Spirit after the prayer, but it inevitably comes, often far sooner than expected.   In order to keep the change we must exercise the spiritual gift God has just given us.  For example, if God blesses us with the gift to see opportunities to serve others, we can keep that change by serving every time we see someone in need.  Through those works we obtain the approval of  God and develop faith sufficient to qualify for future blessings.

        The second principle is that God loves us.  He wants us to have spiritual blessings far more than we want to receive them.  He will never withhold a righteous desire from us unless we lack faith or the desire is not truly righteous.  Those that understand this principle see that the sky is the limit.  Why not ask for the gift to work miracles on others' behalf?  Or the gift to be the means of bringing thousands of our brothers and sisters into the Celestial Kingdom?  Or the gift to lose all of our desires to sin?  There is a name for that last gift.  It is called being born again.  

          Mosiah 5:2 explains,  "[T]he Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent...has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually."  As well as Mosiah 27:25:  "[A]ll mankind, yea, men and women, all nations, kindreds, tongues and people, must be born again; yea, born of God, changed from their carnal and fallen state, to a state of righteousness"  At first glance this sounds like baptism, but think about it.  How many baptized members of the Church do you know that whose actions can only be described as "carnal and fallen?"  Compare those people to your stake patriarch or mission president.  Which of the two groups would you say have put off the natural man and become saints?  Which are more likely to do the same things Abraham did and inherit the same reward?  Spiritual rebirth in a deeper, more complete sense than simply receiving the Holy Ghost is a requirement for exaltation.  President David O. McKay related the following vision, which he received off the coast of Samoa:

“In the distance I beheld a beautiful white city. Though far away, yet I seemed to realize that trees with luscious fruit, shrubbery with gorgeously tinted leaves, and flowers in perfect bloom abounded everywhere. The clear sky above seemed to reflect these beautiful shades of color. I then saw a great concourse of people approaching the city. Each one wore a white flowing robe, and a white headdress. Instantly my attention seemed centered upon their Leader, and though I could see only the profile of his features and body, I recognized him at once as my Savior! The tint and radiance of his countenance were glorious to behold! There was a peace about him which seemed sublime—it was divine!

“The city, I understood, was his. It was the City Eternal; and the people following him were to abide there in peace and eternal happiness.

“But who were they?

“As if the Savior read my thoughts, he answered by pointing to a semicircle that then appeared above them, and on which were written in gold the words:

“These Are They Who Have Overcome The World—Who Have Truly Been Born Again!”

(Cherished Experiences, comp. by Clare Middlemiss, Deseret Book Co., 1955, p. 102.)

Spiritual Impossibilities

          I was struck with the undeniable impression this week that I should interrupt my existing plan of posting installments of Miracle Girl to specifically address  the topic of spiritual impossibilities.  I hope that whoever in my small audience this is intended for will feel the Father's love for them and His desire to share with them some of the important truths of His Kingdom.

          When we think of things that are spiritually impossible, we are inclined to focus on states of being that are contradictions in terms, such as "happiness in wickedness,"  or "receiving a witness before the trial of one's faith."  These spiritual situations can never exist because they come into direct conflict with divine law.  However, there are other spiritual accomplishments that are impossible for us to reach simply because we do not have enough power to complete them on our own.  For example, King Benjamin asserted:  "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord..."

                Here King Benjamin declares that the only way we can ever put off the natural man is by yielding to the enticings of the Holy Spirit.  Why?  Because we become a saint through the Atonement of Christ, not through our own efforts.  The Savior illuminated another impossibility in Mathew 19:  "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.  When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?  But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."

          In other words, it is impossible for a man who has riches to have the spiritual willpower, of his own volition, to sacrifice them so that he can enter the Kingdom of God.  Only God can lift such a man to such a high plane of thought and spiritual power so as to be able to make a decision of that caliber.  If he tries to do so without divine aid, he will fail.

          I believe that there are many, many other things that are impossible to do without grace from God that is far above what we deserve.  For example, loving our enemies, forgiving those who have committed atrocities, serving out of pure selflessness, having faith to call down miracles, overcoming ways of thinking that stretch as deep as the marrow of our souls, being worthy to have the Holy Ghost with us always, and permanently changing the nature of who we are, are all things that are impossible for us to do without the Atonement of Christ.  So often we think "I have to change myself, and then Christ will forgive me of my sins," or "I have to make X amount of progress, and then God will help me change that weakness."  In reality, true change and progress of great magnitude is spiritually impossible for a lone person.

          "And behold, there were divers ways that he did manifest things unto the children of men, which were good; and all things which are good cometh of Christ; otherwise men were fallen, and there could no good thing come unto them." (Moroni 7:24)

          The phrase "no good thing" seems pretty inclusive.  To me this means that even our righteous desires, efforts, and decisions could not exist without the Atonement.  It helps me understand why those who chose Lucifer's plan have fallen to the point that their only desire is to make others miserable like unto themselves.  They utterly rejected Christ's plan and Atonement, and the consequence is that it is impossible for them to be or do good things.

          "And I, John, bear record that I beheld his glory, as the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, even the Spirit of truth, which came and dwelt in the flesh, and dwelt among us. And I, John, saw that he received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace; And he received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness; (D&C 93:11-13)"

          Elder Bednar has said that the word "grace" in the scriptures can often be replaced with the phrase "enabling power."  In other words, for Christ to become perfect and live a perfect life, He required help from a power greater than His own.  Even with a perfectly innocent conscience, more was required for Him to reach perfection the way God the Father defines it.  If even Jesus Christ could not progress without help, why do we so often assume that we can do so?

          What, then, is our purpose?  What is the role of works in our eternal progression?  The answer is that although God can transform us into a perfect being without the slightest effort on our part, and although He is the only being who can do so, He will not do so against our own agency.  Works are important because they are the means by which we align our agency, our wills, and the talents and capacities we have been blessed with through the Atonement, with the will of God.  It is then by our exercise of faith in the omnipotence and love of God that we pull down power from heaven to rise toward Him.  When He sees our faith in His power demonstrated through our works, He reaches down and makes the true change. 

          In other words, it is by using the good that God has already given us to the best of our abilities that we qualify for the greatest possible endowment of enabling grace.  This means that while failures and mistakes are to be expected, if we repent and exercise faith God will quickly lift us above them through the covenants we have made with Him that bind us to Christ's Atonement.  That lifting is performed through a gift of the Spirit.  President George Q Cannon once said, "If any of us are imperfect, it is our duty to pray for the gift that will make us perfect. … No man ought to say, ‘Oh, I cannot help this; it is my nature.’ He is not justified in it, for the reason that God has promised to give strength to correct these things, and to give gifts that will eradicate them."

                There is a reason why Paul said of the Savior, "...that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus... By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith (Romans 3:26-27)."   Although works are required, they have limited power to change us directly.  Rather, it is by faith in the power of Christ that we are transformed.  Our works are both confirmations that our faith is genuine and opportunities to use our agency, but they are often not the principle means by which we are changed.  Faith without works is dead, but works without faith in Christ is also dead.

          I know that as we have true faith in Jesus Christ and pull down the power of the Atonement upon ourselves, we will be empowered beyond what is humanly possible.  We will perform feats that were previously beyond our abilities and marvel and the strange, miraculous person that the Lord has made us.  Give yourself to the Lord; your thoughts, decisions, and desires.  Give Him your love, time, and attention.  Give them to Him in your heart, even if He never requires them in the flesh, so that if He were to ask anything of you you could say, "Of course.  My (time, attention, desire, ambition) is already Thine to do with what Thou wantest because I already gave it to you in my heart long ago."  I promise that as you do so, God will make more of you than you could possibly make of yourself.  You will never regret any decision to give yourself to the Lord.  I never have.

          Listen for God's voice whispering to you these divine truths in my future blog posts, as well as in all areas of your life, and you will hear them.