G is for Grace

Grace. It's a word most of us hear a lot but many of us do not fully understand. It has a lot to do with the atonement and Christ's charity for us. By definition, grace is "divine means of help or strength" and it is "given through the bounteous mercy of Jesus Christ" (Bible Dictionary "Grace").

In order to fully understand grace, we must understand what mercy means because mercy is part of grace. As found in the Webster's Dictionary, mercy has three definitions: "1. A kind and gentle treatment of a wrong doer or some unfortunate person. 2. A kind, sympathetic disposition; willingness to forgive, spare or help 3. A blessing as an act of divine love." So grace is Christ having great compassion and love for each of us.

To further our understanding of grace, we must also understand that there are three main parts of the grace of our Savior. The first is that through His grace, we will be resurrected. This means that after we die, our bodies will be reunited with our spirit once more, never to be separated again (see Alma 11:45 and Bible Dictionary "Grace") Second, through grace, the atonement, and repentance, we will receive "strength and assistance to do good works that [we] otherwise would not be able to maintain if left to [our] own means." (Bible Dictionary "Grace"). Third, grace allows us to gain eternal life, which means we get to live with God and our families forever (see Bible Dictionary "Grace" and http://mormon.org/values/family)

These two explanations further our understanding of grace and how we are fully dependent on it. However, this all might just be sounding like a bunch of words to you my dear reader. Allow me to illustrate grace with a parable, or a story. There's something about parables that make things just resonate with us more. Jesus Christ, the Master Teacher, showed us this by using parables constantly throughout His earthly ministry. The parable I found for grace goes as follows:

"Christ’s arrangement with us is similar to a mom providing music lessons for her child. Mom pays the piano teacher. Because Mom pays the debt in full, she can turn to her child and ask for something. What is it? Practice! Does the child’s practice pay the piano teacher? No. Does the child’s practice repay Mom for paying the piano teacher? No. Practicing is how the child shows appreciation for Mom’s incredible gift. It is how he takes advantage of the amazing opportunity Mom is giving him to live his life at a higher level. Mom’s joy is found not in getting repaid but in seeing her gift used—seeing her child improve. And so she continues to call for practice, practice, practice.

If the child sees Mom’s requirement of practice as being too overbearing ('Gosh, Mom, why do I need to practice? None of the other kids have to practice! I’m just going to be a professional baseball player anyway!'), perhaps it is because he doesn’t yet see with Mom’s eyes. He doesn’t see how much better his life could be if he would choose to live on a higher plane.

In the same way, because Jesus has paid justice, He can now turn to us and say: 'Follow me' (Matthew 4:19); “Keep my commandments” (John 14:15). If we see His requirements as being way too much to ask, maybe it is because we do not yet see through Christ’s eyes. We have not yet comprehended what He is trying to make of us.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has said, 'The repenting sinner must suffer for his sins, but this suffering has a different purpose than punishment or payment. Its purpose is change' (The Lord’s Way [1991], 223; emphasis in original). Let’s put that in terms of the child pianist: The child must practice the piano, but this practice has a different purpose than punishment or payment. Its purpose is change...

 'But don’t you realize how hard it is to practice? I’m just not very good at the piano. I hit a lot of wrong notes. It takes me forever to get it right.' Now wait. Isn’t that all part of the learning process? When a young pianist hits a wrong note, we don’t say he is not worthy to keep practicing. We don’t expect him to be flawless. We just expect him to keep trying. Perfection may be his ultimate goal, but for now we can be content with progress in the right direction. Why is this perspective so easy to see in the context of learning piano but so hard to see in the context of learning heaven?

There should never be just two options: perfection or giving up. When learning the piano, are the only options performing at Carnegie Hall or quitting? No. Growth and development take time. Learning takes time. When we understand grace, we understand that God is long-suffering, that change is a process, and that repentance is a pattern in our lives. When we understand grace, we understand that the blessings of Christ’s Atonement are continuous and His strength is perfect in our weakness (see 2 Corinthians 12:9). When we understand grace, we can, as it says in the Doctrine and Covenants, 'continue in patience until [we] are perfected' (D&C 67:13).

Grace is not a booster engine that kicks in once our fuel supply is exhausted. Rather, it is our constant energy source. It is not the light at the end of the tunnel but the light that moves us through the tunnel. Grace is not achieved somewhere down the road. It is received right here and right now." (Brad Wilcox "His Grace is Sufficient")

So you see, grace is a part of our lives every day. It's not something we're waiting to receive, rather it's something we are constantly receiving. In the words of Stephen E. Robinson: "By his grace, we live and breathe. By grace, we are spiritually begotten children of heavenly parents...By grace, a plan was prepared and a savior designated for humanity when Adam and Eve fell. By grace, the good news comes...and by grace we have the agency to accept it by grace that comes through faith in Christ, we start the repentance process; and by grace we are justified and made part of God's kingdom even while the process is still incomplete. The grace of God has been involved in our spiritual progress from the beginning and will be involved in our progress until the end. It therefore belittles God's grace to think of it as only a cherry added at the last moment as a mere finishing touch to what we have already accomplished on our own without any help from God. Instead the reverse would be a truer proposition: Our efforts are the cherry on top added to all that God had already done for us." ("Believing Christ": by Stephen E Robinson, May 1993).

It is by and through grace that all things are possible and gives us the strength to endure to the end and hope that we can return to our Father in Heaven once more.

F is for Faith

Faith. To have faith is a hope in things which are not seen which are true (see Hebrews 11:1 and Alma 32:21). "To have faith is to have confidence in someone and something or someone" and it "must be centered in Jesus Christ in order to produce salvation" (Bible Dictionary "Faith").

Faith is our first stepping block. It is because of faith that everything else is possible. Faith leads us to action. Faith leads us to repent using the atonement which leads us to the desire to be baptized, receive the Holy Ghost, and then endure to the end.

Faith, as mentioned above, requires confidence. Confidence in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That He lives and that He is ready to help us do incredible things, that without Him would be impossible.

I'm reminded of a story from the Bible of Peter:

"And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray : and when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer ; it is I; be not afraid. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid ; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith , wherefore didst thou doubt ? And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased" (Matthew 14:22-32). 

Now there are several things that I just love about this story. The first is that Jesus waited until the fourth watch to go to his disciples. The had to endure the first three watches before Christ came. Similarly, our faith needs to be tested for "weak things become strong unto [us]" (Ether 12:27).

Next, I want to focus on Peter, who desired to walk on the water and come unto Christ. He started to walk on the water but when he looked away from the Savior, he began to sink. In this moment, he cries out to the Master and pleads for help and the Master stretches forth His hand.

In our own lives, we sometimes shift our focus off of the Savior. When we do so, we begin to sink. We must then cry out for His help and He will freely give it if we ask. However, even in crying out for help is exercising faith in Him who is mighty to save (2 Nephi 31:19).

We must remember though, our faith is what produces miracles and not the other way around. "The Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith" (Mosiah 23:21) and then according to our faith, we are blessed (see Matthew 9:29). In my life, my faith has been tried time and time again. My most faith building moments have most often come through my most difficult times in life. Interesting how that works.

My companion had an experience in her last area that proved to strengthen her faith despite the whirlwind it put her faith through. Here is what she said of the experience:

"It was a hot Saturday and my companion and I were contacting people in a neighborhood near where we lived just before lunch time.
We were walking down a sidewalk when we spied a man trimming his bushes in his front yard. He immediately caught our interest not just because we are missionaries and we talk to everyone, but because this man was trimming his bushes with a machete. 
So I called out to him and asked him what he was doing. He friendlily responded that he was trimming his bushes, and asked us if we wanted to try it. We answered in the affirmative (how many chances were we going to get to trim bushes, let alone with this cool sword thing!). He showed us how to hold it and swing it and we discovered his name was Scott.
After chatting for a bit, while swinging his machete around, Scott asked us who we were and why we were out and about. We told him we were missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and now Scott's interest was peaked. He told us of a good encounter he had with a Mormon who was a cop. He got out some lawn chairs and we sat and talked on his porch. The discussion we had, plus a few others we had with him after that, put many questions and doubts in my mind.
Scott, as it turned out, was a faith healer. Not the kind you see on TV who yell and lay hands on someone who faints, then jumps back up again screaming that they've been healed, but a very soft spoken one who lives 1 Corinthians 14:40 in all he does. Scott also didn't have a religious affiliation because he believed that God's church, in it's correct form wasn't on the earth. He had a kind of cynicism against churches because of man's corrupting touch (not an uncommon view today), but Scott lived his life according to the Bible.
In discussions with Scott, one couldn't deny the miracles he had experienced. Every time we would meet with him, he would tell us of those he met who were healed, his daughter's boyfriend with a broken leg being one of them. 
He would ask the person wanting to be healed two questions: "Do you believe in God?" and "Do you believe that God can heal you?" He would then pray in the name of Jesus Christ that they would be healed. There were quite a few who weren't healed but there were also many who were. There was no doubt that there was something to what he said.
As we read the scriptures with Scott, differences in interpretation became evident. We shared The Book of Mormon with him and explained that with the Bible and the Book of Mormon together, the fullness of the Gospel was on the earth and there was only one way to interpret the scriptures when both of these are put together (see 2 Nephi 3:12). We told him that the Book of Mormon is a second witness of Christ (see 2 Corinthians 13:1). It is evidence that we have modern day Prophets and Apostles who guide this church. They also ensure the interpretation of doctrine is not corrupted (see Ephesians 4:11-14). We invited him to read and to pray about the Book of Mormon and seek an answer from God, not man, if it was true (see Moroni 10:3-5 and James 1:5).
Unfortunately, he did not. Instead he went to places on the internet where man had thought they had proven that Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet. Scott shared with us the 'evidences' he had come up with, told us that we needed to rethink our position, and prayed with us before we left.
My faith was left a little shaken. Not from what he had shared with us about what he'd found--I had already know about it and was actually surprised that he had chosen something so little and inconsequential to base his decision off of. 
I had gathered a very big list of questions of the different fine points of doctrine that we discussed and the very fact that he had healed people without holding the Priesthood Authority to do so, which sparked even more questions.
Fortunately for me, I knew to whom I should ask these questions to--doubting my doubts first, before I doubted my faith (see "Come Join with Us" President Dieter F. Uchtdorf)
I first started with my testimony of the Book of Mormon. Examining it and recounting experiences I'd had with it. After several weeks, I came to the definite conclusion that I knew it was true, for there are countless times where I have felt the 'fruits of the spirit'(Galatians 5:22-23) when I had read it. I learned of the truthfulness of it by experience (see John 7:17).
Because I know that the Book of Mormon is true, I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I still have a few questions left unanswered about this experience with Scott, but since last summer I have read the scriptures, prayed, and received answers for a majority of them.
Day by day I'm continuing to have my questions answered as I 'experiment upon God's word' (Alma 32:27-29). I'm so grateful to know that God continues to speak--through a Prophet today, and to us personally."

So you see, our faith can be tested in many ways, but these moments of hardship and testing make weak things become strong unto us (Ether 12:27) and as we go forward in faith, we will truly see that our trials are more precious than gold (1 Peter 1:7) because they strengthen and mold us.

When we are patient through our trials, our faith grows and we find ourselves stronger than we were before. Faith doesn't mean we will never doubt, as we shift our glance away from the Savior as Peter did, but we must "doubt [our] doubts before [we] doubt [our] faith ("Come Join with Us" President Dieter F. Uchtdorf)

E is for Endure to the End

Endure to the end. It's probably a phrase most of us are familiar with. It is similar to the principle of diligence. It means to continue in following the example of Christ the rest of our lives. The first way we follow Christ is through baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost (see Bible Dictionary "Holy Ghost"). It's after that process though, that enduring to the end kicks in.

Enduring to the end means that we must be "continually exercising faith in Jesus Christ, repenting, making commitments, and following the Spirit" (Preach My Gospel: Lesson 3: Endure to the End)

Enduring to the end also makes me think of sports. You have to keep playing your hardest until the end of the game, not just to half-time, in order to achieve the desired results.

I'm reminded of a time years ago, back in my freshman year of high school. I was a part of the freshman girls basketball team which consisted of five girls, myself included. For those of you less familiar with the sport of basketball, this is a very small number for a team, teams usually hold 10-15 players. Five is the number of players on the court for each team at one time, so we had barely enough. Needless to say, we had our work cut out for us. It was a season that I learned a lot from in many ways and it was during this season the I experienced some of the best and worst times of my basketball career.

One game in particular, I recall like it was yesterday as it is experience not many can say they have. Our small team of five had a player sick that day so our game was a forfeit since you must start the game with five players. We were asked if we wanted to continue to play, of course we did and so the game commenced. Our team of four girls, and our opponents, having a team of twelve girls (3 times as many players). Despite the odds against us, we managed to pull ahead. Then, at the beginning of the third quarter, our best player fouled out (meaning she reached the maximum number of violations and so was forced to sit out the rest of the game), so there was just the three of us on the court. We managed to maintain our lead and then another teammate had an asthma attack leaving just me and one of my teammates on the court. And do you know what happened? We won that game by fifteen points.

At the end of the game, we were all exhausted and were on the verge of collapsing, because enduring takes a whole lot of work and effort. But, we had our reward, the victory. In the same sense, after we pass through this life, if we endure faithfully to the last second through Christ, we "shall stand before him; then shall [we] see his face with pleasure, and he will say unto [us]: Come unto me, ye blessed, there is a place prepared for you in the mansions of my Father" (Enos 1:27).

Our little team of five girls got third place in the league that year because we never let anyone tell us that we couldn't. We put our trust in our coach and in each other and endured faithfully to the end of each game, no matter how often we appeared to be the underdog.

That's how this particular basketball season had such a great impression on me. It  helped me to understand on a more personal level that enduring to the end means to push through and choose to fight the good fight, even when all the odds seem against you. I also came to understand that you don't have to endure to the end on your own. God gave us teams, and he calls them families. You gain charity and love for people when you go through difficult things together.

In this same basketball season, during the pre-season training, I was diagnosed with athletically-induced asthma. This proved to be a great stumbling block for me as I had to go through several brands of inhalers before we found one that was effective and it took me several years and a couple of hospital trips to actually recognize when I needed to stop and to get it under control. Yet, I continued to play the sport that I love. After my freshman year, I played a year on the junior varsity squad and then did two years on the varsity team. Why? Because I had the principle instilled in me that you always endure to the end. You don't just give up when the first obstacle is thrown in your path. Was it easy? No, far from it. It took a lot of dedication and patience and will-power, as does any sport or anything you want to achieve in life.

On a similar note, Elder Richard B. Maynes stated:

"To play basketball successfully, you need to get into good shape. Being in good physical condition comes at a price, and that price is dedication, perseverance, and self-discipline. Spiritual endurance also comes at a price. It is the same price: dedication, perseverance, and self-discipline.

A testimony, like your body, needs to be in shape if you want it to endure. So how do we keep our testimonies in shape? We cannot get our bodies into good basketball shape by simply watching basketball on television. Similarly, we won’t be able to get our testimonies in shape by simply watching general conference on television. We need to study and learn the fundamental principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then we must do our very best to live them. That is how we become disciples of Jesus Christ, and that is how we build an enduring testimony" ("The Strength to Endure" Elder Richard B. Maynes, General Conference October 2013).

Now you may be thinking that enduring to the end is impossible because we are all imperfect beings. 'Tis not so my dear readers! You endure step by step and become better each day. We slip and fall sometimes, but our Heavenly Father knows that we'll take a detour or two. As such, He has mercifully given us multiple ways to get back on the right path, mainly through the atonement.

I'm reminded of another story my father shared with me about a freeway detour he had to take late at night while heading home from a football game in Irvine due to some freeway construction. He said the following of the experience:

"Small signs marked the route of our detour as we traveled though lightly populated areas near the Pacific Ocean. I relaxed a bit, regarding the detour, and felt confident of eventually getting back to the freeway due to the high number of vehicles following the same route we has to follow. Not long later, I noticed that traffic had thinned considerably and we were in areas of heavy night life crowds, but not traffic. Clearly I had missed a sign, and with it our detour route leading back to the 405 freeway. Anxiety began to set in as we were in unfamiliar areas, having never been in the particular area, I felt that if I continued on in the direction we were heading, we might come across something familiar. Not long passed, and my confidence was restored as we entered areas I was a bit familiar with decades earlier. Making the correct adjustments to our driving route, and traveling down memory lane a bit back to a time my mother, brother & I had visited the area, we eventually found our way back to the 405 freeway...
Seems clear to me that our journey home from Irvine mirrors life in the following regard. Often times in life we are faced with a detour which leads us away from our desired path. These detours can be of our own making or come about due to the influences of others. Sometimes they are just plain hurdles meant to make us stronger. Either way, these detours lead us away from the route we want to take. As we continue the journey sometimes we lose our focus...just like I did on the way home from Irvine. This loss of focus then leads us seemingly farther away from where we want to go. Yet, by refocusing and continuing on the path we know is right we end up back on the right rout despite the temporary loss of focus. Just as memories from my past helped me along our journey of getting back to the 405 freeway, knowing who we are helps guide our path here on earth. The knowledge that we are spiritual beings having a mortal experience humble us enough to understand that, through prayer, we have access to Heavenly guidance."

I testify to each of you that you can endure to the end day by day. Sometime we will stumble and fall but as we seek Heavenly guidance, we will be directed back to the one and true path which will lead us back to our Heavenly home.

Heed the invitation of Christ for He said, "Look unto me, and endure to the end, and ye shall live; for unto him that endureth to the end will I give eternal life" (3 Nephi 15:9).