Given while I served as Bishop of the Heritage Ward
I am a child of God
Primary has learned this all year. Next week they will present to us what they
have learned. I hope I don’t detract at
all from what they will teach us but this is an important subject to
understand.
Lets review some of the doctrine that is central to our
faith. Before this world was we all
existed in a premortal state; spirit children of our Heavenly Father.
Heavenly Father had prepared a plan for us. He would create an earth, send his children
to this earth to gain a body and have experiences. We would be given agency so we could decide
for ourselves the path we would follow.
If we exercised out agency in following the commandments, God would
provide a Savior for us so we could return to Him. Satan opposed the plan. Jesus Christ embraced the plan and led the
righteous in a fight against Satan and his followers. Christ and his followers triumphed, and Satan
and his followers were cast out.
Under the direction of heavenly father Jesus created this
earth for us. He then created a physical
body for our spirits to inhabit. After
adam and eve transgressed the commandment they had been given they were cast
out of Gods presence but it opened the way for them to have children and for
all of us to be able to come to earth and participate in the plan. We are now all fully engaged in Heavenly
Fathers plan.
So what does this mean to us? We have the privilege of calling upon the
atonement of Jesus Christ in our lives.
The atonement is provided for us to help us return to our Heavenly
Father’s presence. We can return to his
presence both in this life and in the next.
As we develop of gifts and talents, as we are obedient, and we minister
to those who are around us, we grow closer to our Heavenly Father and are
entitled to feel of his presence. In the
next life, we will literally be allowed to be in his presence.
I think there are a couple of important truths in this plan
that I would like to emphasize today.
The first is that the plan was designed so we could succeed. No one can say I am not good enough or I
can’t do all that is required. That
leads to the second important truth and that is that we are children of our
Heavenly Father. We are literally his spirit
children. We each have within us the
divine nature of our Heavenly Father.
And because of this we can succeed and return to His presence. He loves us and wants us to return. He will do all that he can to help us return.
Just because we CAN do it doesn’t mean it is easy. We know from our earthly experience that
really wonderful results require a tremendous amount of effort. Lanta has talked about some of the challenges
that we will face as we go through life.
As I look at our youth as an example, I can see this truth. You don’t learn to dance like Mallory or
Diana with lots of practice. You don’t
excel in cross country and track like Michael and Nicholai without lots of
practice. You don’t learn to act or
perform like Savannah without lots of practice.
You don’t excel in academics like many of our youth with applying effort
to your school work. This names just a
few and we can look to the adult in our ward for other examples of performing
well in different aspects of life and it has taken a great amount of effort.
Succeeding at the plan of our Heavenly Father will also take
a great amount of effort. We become
better bit by bit as we practice and perform those things we have
practiced. It is something we will work
on our whole lives.
But I think the key is to always keep the plan in mind. Everything we do influences our success with
the plan. As we consider the decisions
we make we need to also look at them through the lens of the plan. Big decisions like education and career
decisions will require you to looks at things such as will it use the strengths
I have, will it allow me to support a family, will it be conducive to family
life or other things that are important.
But also we need to consider how it will impact our success with the
plan. Can you grow closer to Heavenly
Father while pursuing this goal? The
small decisions in life are the same.
There are always lots of things to consider but also include the plan in
your decision. When you do, you will see
Heavenly Father guiding you and helping you in making the best decisions that
will have the best long-term results which ultimately is living in the presence
of our Heavenly Father.
Now sometimes these decisions aren’t really obvious and may
actually seem at odds to the plan but if we are patient and endure to the end,
we will see the bigger picture someday.
Some examples if time permits.
