It is astonishing what we can learn when we look a little closer at our Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation and exaltation, the plan of happiness, for His children. When we feel insignificant, cast off, and forgotten, we learn that we may be assured that God has not forgotten us—in fact, that He offers to all His children something unimaginable: to become “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”2 What does this mean? That we will live forever, receive a fulness of joy,3 and have the potential to “inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers.”4 It is so humbling to know that this magnificent and supernal future is possible—not because of who we are but because of who God is. Knowing this, how could we ever murmur or remain embittered? How could we ever keep our eyes on the ground when the King of kings invites us to take flight into an unimaginable future of divine happiness?
As we pull away from what we know to be true, it will become more and more difficult for us to commonly define what and who we are. In the absence of social definitions anchored in facts, we will drift further away from consensus and into multiple, different, and infinite directions.
Alone and without an anchor, we are more prone to harm ourselves physically, mentally, and socially in pursuit of comfort and stability that cannot be found because it doesn’t exist in the places in which we seek it. We may experience temporary relief, but it is almost always short-lived.
As we come to trust God, sometimes through pleading in our darkest, loneliest, most uncertain moments, we learn He knows us better and loves us more than we know or love ourselves.
As I handled these awards and read the inscriptions, I thought how wonderful it would be if we could have medals for fighting in the war with Satan. Then I realized: We do. They’re called Temple Recommends.
Your temple recommend is a badge of honor like no other. It certifies so many faith-filled choices you have made. To carry this tiny document in your wallet is to affirm your love of the Lord, your honesty, your commitments, sacrifices you have made, and so much more. It says you have stood up to temptation, you have repented when you’ve tripped up, you continue to renew your covenants with God, you are a good citizen, you are actually a formidable force in the struggle against Lucifer. You are on the right path.
We have a divine heritage. Knowing that we are children of God and that He wants us to return to His presence is one of the first steps on the journey back to our heavenly home.
Trust the guides you have been given from Him, rather than turning solely to the world to measure your personal worth and find your way.
Knowing who you are changes what you feel and what you do.
Jesus Christ sees people deeply. He sees individuals, their needs, and who they can become. Where others saw fishermen, sinners, or publicans, Jesus saw disciples; where others saw a man possessed by devils, Jesus looked past the outward distress, acknowledged the man, and healed him.
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest … most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. … There are no ordinary people” (C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory [2001], 45–46).
As with all gifts the Father so willingly offers, seeing deeply requires us to ask Him—and then act. Ask to see others as He does—as His true sons and daughters with infinite and divine potential. Then act by loving, serving, and affirming their worth and potential as prompted. As this becomes the pattern of our lives, we will find ourselves becoming “true followers of … Jesus Christ.”8 Others will be able to trust our hearts with theirs. And in this pattern we will also discover our own true identity and purpose.
I speak of hope in Christ not as wishful thinking. Instead, I speak of hope as an expectation that will be realized. Such hope is essential to overcoming adversity, fostering spiritual resilience and strength, and coming to know that we are loved by our Eternal Father and that we are His children, who belong to His family. When we have hope in Christ, we come to know that as we need to make and keep sacred covenants, our fondest desires and dreams can be fulfilled through Him.
Eventually, the veil that now encloses us will be no more. Neither will time. (D&C 84:100.) Time is clearly not our natural dimension. Thus it is that we are never really at home in time. Alternately, we find ourselves wishing to hasten the passage of time or to hold back the dawn. We can do neither, of course, but whereas the fish is at home in water, we are clearly not at home in time—because we belong to eternity. Time, as much as any one thing, whispers to us that we are strangers here.
The veil (which is both the film of forgetting and the border between mortality and eternity) will, one day, be shown to have been a succoring screen for us earthlings. Were it possible to breach it on the wrong terms, we would see and experience, before we are ready, things that would moot much of the value in this mortal experience. Remember, we are being proven as to our faith and fitted for strenuous chores to be done elsewhere. To change the nature of this necessary experience by premature commingling would mean that we would not be suitable company for those we yearn to be with, nor would we be ready to go where they are ready to go, nor to do the things that they have painstakingly learned to do. There is no other way!
The future duties to be given to some of us in the worlds to come by an omniscient God will require of us an earned sense of esteem as well as proof of our competency. Thus the tests given to us here are given not because God is in doubt as to the outcome, but because we need to grow in order to be able to serve with full effectiveness in the eternity to come. Further, to be untested and unproven is also to be unaware of all that we are. If we are unknowing of our possibilities, with what could we safely be entrusted? Could we in ignorance of our capacities trust ourselves? Could others then be entrusted to us? Thus the relentless love of our Father in heaven is such that in His omniscience, He will not allow the cutting short some of the brief experiences we are having here. To do so would be to deprive us of everlasting experiences and great joy there. What else would an omniscient and loving Father do, even if we plead otherwise? He must at times say no. Furthermore, since there was no exemption from suffering for Christ, how can there be one for us? Do we really want immunity from adversity? Especially when certain kinds of suffering can aid our growth in this life? To deprive ourselves of those experiences, much as we might momentarily like to, would be to deprive ourselves of the outcomes over which we shouted with anticipated joy when this life's experiences were explained to us so long ago, in the world before we came here.
We should, therefore, without being artificial, regularly give deserved, specific praise. One of the reasons for doing this is that we are all so very conscious of our shortcomings that it takes a persistent pattern of appreciation to finally penetrate. We are so certain, sometimes, we do not really have a particular skill or attribute that we severely discount praise. One of the reasons we need regular praise from "outside auditors" is to offset the low level of self-acknowledgment most of us have.
Commending communications ought to flow from us without too much concern with "the balance of trade." There is a straight and narrow path of communication, and off to each side are the perils and pitfalls of poor communication that is too caustic, too flattering, too little, too much, too general, too narrow, too soon, and too late. In the case of commendation in particular, sometimes it comes too late to be maximally helpful. Further, if we are not careful (and there is this tendency sometimes in the Church), we may be a little artificial and flowery. We are quick to discern undeserved praise, which we then discount—along with the credibility of the giver. Sometimes we even communicate too soon. We have all had the experience as parents of being so anxious to praise our children that we sometimes overpraise them before their job is done.
We ought to build a climate around us in which we are, in all situations, open to the comments of others. We should not make it too expensive emotionally for others to try to communicate with us. If it is too hard to do so, people will just pull back. If we are too well protected and too well defended, they are not going to extend themselves overmuch in an effort to communicate with us. It is difficult to say which is most dangerous—the mote in one's eye or the moat around his "castle" that keeps out the needed communications, involving correction, counsel, or commendation.
Our Heavenly Father wants us to love ourselves—not to become prideful or self-centered, but to see ourselves as He sees us: we are His cherished children. When this truth sinks deep into our hearts, our love for God grows. When we view ourselves with sincere respect, our hearts are open to treat others that way too. The more we recognize our divine worth, the better we understand this divine truth: that God has sent us right here, right now, at this momentous time in history, so that we can do the greatest possible good with the talents and gifts we have. This is our time!
We are the sons and daughters of Almighty God. We have a destiny to fulfill, a life to live, a contribution to make, a goal to achieve.
The shape of who we are
It may seem that culture is so heavily embedded in our thinking and behavior that it is impossible to change. It is, after all, much of what we feel defines us and from which we feel a sense of identity. It can be such a strong influence that we can fail to see the man-made weaknesses or flaws in our own cultures, resulting in a reluctance to throw off some of the traditions of our fathers. An overfixation on one’s cultural identity may lead to the rejection of worthwhile—even godly—ideas, attributes, and behavior.
The prophets have taught that it is necessary to leave behind anything in our old cultures that is inconsistent with the culture of Christ. But that doesn’t mean we have to leave behind everything. The prophets have also emphasized that we are invited, one and all, to bring our faith and talents and knowledge—all that is good in our lives and our individual cultures—with us and let the Church “add to it” through the message of the gospel.
We can, indeed, all cherish the best of our individual earthly cultures and still be full participants in the oldest culture of them all—the original, the ultimate, the eternal culture that comes from the gospel of Jesus Christ.
a taste for battle, an ethic of intellectual honesty
It is astonishing what we can learn when we look a little closer at our Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation and exaltation, the plan of happiness, for His children. When we feel insignificant, cast off, and forgotten, we learn that we may be assured that God has not forgotten us—in fact, that He offers to all His children something unimaginable: to become “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”2
What does this mean?
That we will live forever, receive a fulness of joy,3 and have the potential to “inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers.”4
It is so humbling to know that this magnificent and supernal future is possible—not because of who we are but because of who God is.
Knowing this, how could we ever murmur or remain embittered? How could we ever keep our eyes on the ground when the King of kings invites us to take flight into an unimaginable future of divine happiness?
Missing Reference