Thursday, August 30, 2012

Beginning A Study of Atonement

One of the things I am beginning to study right now in my free time is the Atonement.  The Atonement was one of the most influential and long lasting events to ever occur and impact mankind in the history of the world.  It in short was the life and death and resurrection of the Savior, Jesus Christ.  He lived a perfect life as the Son of God.  He willingly laid down His life to suffer and die for the sins, pains, and afflictions of the world, taking on all and every kind of temptation that we will possess, but He did it for each and every one of us individually.  There is no person who has had to endure more and has been perfectly innocent.  The reason He committed to this sacrifice was out of love for all of us.  We would not be able to overcome the eternal consequences of our mistakes and so He offered himself a sacrifice for sin.  Then to expand this miracle of forgiveness to greater depths, He was able through His perfect obedience and His right as the Son of God to take back His own life and perform the resurrection.  This act alone means that all men and women who have ever lived, live, or will live have the free gift through His grace of immortal life.  We all shall live again after we pass on and we shall gain perfect immortal bodies, our old bodies made perfect, of flesh and bone that will never die.  I have a testimony of the truthfulness of this message but my study has been more to understand what that means for me right now as I struggle through this existence.

In mortality, we fail.  We struggle and try and do the best we can but in the end we do not reach or meet all the expectations or commandments that God has given us.  This is why the Atonement is so important!  The Atonement allows us to repent, to change our very natures, and to be made a new creature.  This is important... So what does it mean!  Repentance works such that when we acknowledge how we have fallen short or the area in which we need help that for a brief time we must understand how this affects us now and in the future.  We need to be sorry for our mistakes and also mercifully be given time to heal from our wounds and our afflictions.  This process works for all things... for example, things that are physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.  Once we have done that, we have to seek and give forgiveness wherever it is required and then commit to live after the path that Christ set for us.  His commandments and His life are the ways to happiness and peace and love and joy.  We must realize that we will face these issues again in the future so we must recognize and commit to do our best to endure and endure well when that opportunity comes that we will be tested.  It is during this change where we are seeking to forgive and be forgiven, to redirect our lives to follow Christ, that we have what is a change of desire.  Without this change in desire and an ability to forgive one's self then it is almost impossible to progress.  These two are the keys to changing our very natures and becoming new creatures.

I have always been taught that a study of the doctrine will change behavior better than a study of behavior will change behavior.  Now we have to understand... Who are we?  Where did we come from?  What is the purpose in this life?  These are deep and complex questions that can start with very simple answers.  We are all children of God, Our Heavenly Father, or the father of our spirits.  We left His presence and came to this earth to gain a body and be tested to see if we could learn to control it.  However, we make mistakes so this is again why we have a Savior, because without the sacrifice of the Atonement... God is perfect and no imperfect thing can abide in His presence.  This means as a Child of God, each of us must go through life learning how to become like Him by following the example of Jesus Christ and using His Atonement when things go wrong.  This life is about self-discovery and growing into what a child always becomes.  And when this life is over we will pass on and be resurrected in our own perfected bodies to return to live with God if we have chosen to follow Him and thereby gain the heart, will, and desires of God... changing our very natures.

It is this time when we make mistakes, the time that we are seeking forgiveness, and also that time that we continually fight to endure that is most difficult I think.  Especially if we don't understand who we are and that even when we fall short we still can move forward.  The key to forgiveness is that if we think of a wooden board as a record of our life, we make mistakes and punch a hole into it, there is a nail that comes loose or is bent, etc.  The way the Atonement works is not that Christ pulls out the nail and putties the whole or that new scraps of wood are put in to fix it with caulk.  Christ when He sees that our repentance is true and real, takes down the old beat-up board and replaces it with a brand new one.  God does not keep the holes.  When we repent He forgives us and forgets our sins and they are no more a part of us.  Our mistakes do not define us.  This same idea helps when we try to understand why He would be so merciful.  If we think of ourselves, children of a loving Heavenly Father, image ourselves as a $20 dollar bill.  That note no matter how crinkled it gets over time, how old it becomes, how ripped, torn, folded, crinkled, bent, smudged, pressed... The value of that note is still $20 dollars.  God knows who we are.  He loves us.  And it is up to us to trust in Him and His promises and know that we are never too far gone.

The resurrection is a beautiful thing.  Imagine that after you have died you are able to receive this gift, this beautiful perfect and immortal body.  Now think for a moment about our lives... What does that mean for us now?  It means that if Christ's Atonement has the power to perfect and heal our bodies then, He has the power to heal us now.  He can heal you.  He can change your heart, heal your body, and purify your soul.  The only condition is that we humble ourselves enough to have the faith that we will let him.  We each have a choice.  We can choose to believe whatever we wish and act on those beliefs.  But if we will exercise our faith now, in this life, and trust in God and trust God that He can do these things for us, they will happen.  We need to let him guide us and accept His will for us.  If we do this we can be clean and pure and once again find joy and happiness in this life and in the life to come.  God loves us.  So we too must learn to love ourselves and understand ourselves... our weakness, our faults, the blessings that we have received, and our dependance on our Father in Heaven.  We then can learn to love ourselves and then we are able to love one another.  I still have a lot to learn in this life and I have only scratched the surface on understanding what God has done for me.  I am very young but I have begun to understand who I really am.  Who are you and what are we to be doing in our lives?  These are the questions we all need to understand.

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