The Atonement Blog

He Puts a Little of His Love into Us

dvan — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:41:14 +0000

Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if he chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen. Very well, then, we must go through with it. But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it. Now if we had not fallen, that would be all plane sailing. But unfortunately we now need God’s help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all–to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God’s nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God’s leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.

But supposing God became a man — suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person — then that person could help us. He could surrender His will and suffer and die, because He was a man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God’s dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God’s dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.”

C.S. Lewis

Mere Christianity, “The Perfect Penitent”, page 57-58

Tweet/Email/Share This Post

Religious Faith is a Store of Light, Knowledge and Wisdom

dvan — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:29:36 +0000

Religious faith is a store of light, knowledge, and wisdom and benefits society in a dramatic way when adherents engage in moral conduct because they feel accountable to God.

Elder Quentin L. Cook
Saturday Morning Session, General Conference, October 2010

Tweet/Email/Share This Post

We Must Trust in the Atonement

dvan — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:19:49 +0000

We must trust in the Atonement. Our only real affirmation of the Atonement is our own repentance. Otherwise, we mock God. President Kimball also said, “God is good. He is eager to forgive. He wants us to perfect ourselves and maintain control of ourselves. He does not want Satan and others to control our lives.” We don’t want other people to control our lives. God doesn’t want Satan and other wicked people to lead us into doing things that are not good. “We must learn that keeping our Heavenly Father’s commandments represents the only path to total control of ourselves, the only way to find joy, truth, and fulfillment in this life and in eternity.” In the video The Faith of an Observer, a documentary about Hugh Nibley, that splendid man said with the accumulated wisdom of his seventy-five years, “There are only two things we can do with distinction in this life: repent and forgive.” I would suggest that we cannot understand the one without experiencing the other.

Ann N. Madsen

“A Voice Demands That We Ascend”-Dare the Encounter: Building a Relationship With God – included in “As Women of Faith: Talks Selected from the BYU Women’s Conferences” edited by Mary E. Stovall, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989

Tweet/Email/Share This Post

Selflessness is Righteousness

dvan — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:05:16 +0000

Selfless service projects are the projects of the gospel. They have continuity. They are not one-time special events based on entertainment and fun and games. They need not be regimented nor regulated. Selfless service projects are people-to-people projects. They are face-to-face, eye-to-eye, voice-to-ear, heart-to-heart, spirit-to-spirit, and hand-in-hand, people-to-people projects.

We must remember that we are social beings. Our eternal destiny is welded to the destiny of our fellows. Within this social system, there is always a desire for recognition, and this is as it should be, if that desire is kept within its bounds.

Elder Marvin J. Ashton once related that during a meeting a woman seated behind him passed him a note. It simply said, “Would you please turn around and look at me?” Then he said, “Everyone needs to be looked at.”

. . . .

Selflessness is righteousness. It embraces the true spirit of companionship. It is the very essence of friendship. It is the portrayer of true love and oneness in humanity. Its reward is the freeing of the soul, a nearness to divinity, a worthiness for the companionship of the Spirit. Every requirement that God’s plan for our salvation places upon us is based on the giving of one’s self.

The only way under the heavens whereby a person can be sanctified is in selfless service.

Elder William R. Bradford
“Selfless Service“, Ensign, Nov. 1987, 75

Tweet/Email/Share This Post

Book Review

dvan — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:58:02 +0000

I Need Thee Every Hour – Applying the Atonement in Everyday Life received a good review from best-selling LDS author, Heather Moore, who also writes as H.B. Moore.

Heather has written books like Alma and Abinadi. I have had the opportunity to read a pre-release copy of her upcoming non-fiction book, Women in The Book of Mormon, and it is excellent. The picture she paints of the mothers of the stripling warriors is incredibly insightful.

Again, let me reassure regular visitors that this is not going to become a blog that spends all its time pitching my books.

Tweet/Email/Share This Post

We Must be Firmly Attached to Him

dvan — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:43:57 +0000

Tweet/Email/Share This Post

]]>

What Pains He Had to Bear

dvan — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:29:41 +0000

We may not know, we cannot tell,
What pains he had to bear,
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.

There is a Green Hill Far Away

Hymn 194

Tweet/Email/Share This Post

How Can I Find Happiness?

dvan — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:19:21 +0000

If you don’t see a video below, click HERE

Tweet/Email/Share This Post

Clean Hands and a Pure Heart

dvan — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 22:59:53 +0000

We are commanded and instructed to so live that our fallen nature is changed through the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost. President Marion G. Romney taught that the baptism of fire by the Holy Ghost “converts [us] from carnality to spirituality. It cleanses, heals, and purifies the soul. … Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance, and water baptism are all preliminary and prerequisite to it, but [the baptism of fire] is the consummation. To receive [this baptism of fire] is to have one’s garments washed in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ” (Learning for the Eternities, comp. George J. Romney [1977], 133; see also 3 Nephi 27:19–20).

Hence, as we are born again and strive to always have His Spirit to be with us, the Holy Ghost sanctifies and refines our souls as if by fire (see 2 Nephi 31:13–14, 17). Ultimately, we are to stand spotless before God.

The gospel of Jesus Christ encompasses much more than avoiding, overcoming, and being cleansed from sin and the bad influences in our lives; it also essentially entails doing good, being good, and becoming better. Repenting of our sins and seeking forgiveness are spiritually necessary, and we must always do so. But remission of sin is not the only or even the ultimate purpose of the gospel. To have our hearts changed by the Holy Spirit such that “we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually” (Mosiah 5:2), as did King Benjamin’s people, is the covenant responsibility we have accepted. This mighty change is not simply the result of working harder or developing greater individual discipline. Rather, it is the consequence of a fundamental change in our desires, our motives, and our natures made possible through the Atonement of Christ the Lord. Our spiritual purpose is to overcome both sin and the desire to sin, both the taint and the tyranny of sin.

Prophets throughout the ages have emphasized the dual requirements of (1) avoiding and overcoming bad and (2) doing good and becoming better. Consider the penetrating questions posed by the Psalmist:

“Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?

“He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully” (Psalm 24:3–4).

Brothers and sisters, it is possible for us to have clean hands but not have a pure heart. Please notice that both clean hands and a pure heart are required to ascend into the hill of the Lord and to stand in His holy place.

Let me suggest that hands are made clean through the process of putting off the natural man and by overcoming sin and the evil influences in our lives through the Savior’s Atonement. Hearts are purified as we receive His strengthening power to do good and become better. All of our worthy desires and good works, as necessary as they are, can never produce clean hands and a pure heart. It is the Atonement of Jesus Christ that provides both a cleansing and redeeming power that helps us to overcome sin and a sanctifying and strengthening power that helps us to become better than we ever could by relying only upon our own strength. The infinite Atonement is for both the sinner and for the saint in each of us.

Elder David A. Bednar

“Clean Hands and a Pure Heart,” Ensign, Nov 2007, 80–83

Tweet/Email/Share This Post

He Died for You Individually

dvan — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:56:23 +0000

God is not hurried along in the time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world.

C.S. Lewis

Mere Christianity, page 168

Tweet/Email/Share This Post