Its been a really long time…so much has happened. A lot of it not so good. However, I am here to share my joy. I had a speaking assignment yesterday and wanted to share my thoughts. I talked about when I met Mark. I had met him a couple of times but did not get introduced. We also had mutual friends who would talk to me about him but I didn’t know him. I also didn’t realize that I personally knew his parents and sister. I really didn’t know the same man I had met and started talking to was a friend and relative to all these other people in my life. Maybe it was the hair dye I used regularly, I don’t know. Finally I saw what car he drove and only partially realized who he was, it took our first date to figure all those little connections out. Good thing was that he owned that black mustang because I don’t know if I would have been interested if he showed up in his farm truck! As you can see I didn’t really know who he was. As I spent time with him talking, sharing life experiences I realized I would go anywhere with him, and I have.
Now the scripture I was giving was John 17:3 And this is life eternal that they might know thee the only true and living God and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent. Now in this case in order to get to know Heavenly Father you have to prayer, scripture study, pondering things, listening to uplifting music. Michael John U Teh said: “we need to recognize that knowing the savior is the most important pursuit of our lives”.
Here is the crux of it as said by Neal A. Maxwell: “So it is that real, personal sacrifice never was placing an animal on the altar. Instead, it is a willingness to put the animal in us upon the altar and letting it be consumed! Such is the ‘sacrifice unto the Lord….of a broken heart and contrite spirit’ (doctrine and covenants 59:8) a prerequisite to taking up the cross, while giving away all [our] sins’ in order to ‘know God’ (alma 22:18) for the denial of self-precedes the full acceptance of Him.”
In Mosiah 5:13 it says: “For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart?” Basically telling us if we don’t develop relationship with someone in this case Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, then we won’t know them and what they want. We also won’t love them because we don’t know them.
In my story I related how everyone around me knew Mark yet I didn’t. Is this how we are sometimes? We attend church and we do the right things but we don’t take the time to develop a love story with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I get it sometimes we have bad things happen to us and blame him for bringing us to this or that problem. The thing is he loves us. He loves us enough to help us grow, we can’t grow if we don’t have challenges. Learning to trust him is crucial. He sees the whole picture and we might want something that isn’t the best. Because he does see that whole picture he knows that his plan is infinitely better. If we get what we want now we might limit what we could have later. We truly have to come to him and lay aside our selfish wants and allow him to direct our lives.
We are here to learn how to love him and to essentially have the greatest love story every and have a personal relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. This is accomplished by doing what he asks us to do, giving away all our sins and following him. Following Christs example is what we need to do. He did all of the fathers will even though really bad things happened to him, even He was not exempt in the pain and suffering department.
I quoted two songs. The first one was To know him is to love him sung by the Teddy Bears. The most important lyrics are: To know know know him is to love love love him. The second song I quoted was I will follow him made popular by little Peggy March the lyrics are as follows: “I will follow him, follow him wherever he may go And near him, I always will be For nothing can keep me away He is my destiny. I will follow him Ever since he touched my heart, I knew There isn’t an ocean too deep A mountain so high it can keep Keep me away Away from his love.” When we know someone we will follow them. We have to be willing to become vulnerable enough to allow love to happen. Giving away all of our sins is a great place to start.