"Awake My Soul, Rejoice O My Heart!"
Christine Geddes
October 5, 2004
I have a son who is a very deep sleeper. When he was little, he would talk in his sleep. His brothers and sister loved having conversations with him while he was asleep and even recorded some of them to prove to him that they really happened. He would also walk in his sleep, which was rather frightening and very dangerous. In the middle of one winter night our next-door neighbors heard a child crying outside. They looked out and saw our little boy lying in the street in freezing weather in his pajamas. They picked him up and brought him into our house and put him in the nearest empty bed. When they called and told us about it the next day, we were horrified, as well as exceedingly grateful since they had clearly saved his life. As he grew into his teenage years, it became increasingly difficult to get him up in the mornings. We would call and coax, play loud music, jump on his bed, and bribe with wonderful-smelling breakfasts. When he left on his mission he took three alarm clocks with him and wrote to us that he had instructed his companions to set the alarm clocks and then hide them from him each night so he would be able to wake up the next morning.
Of course, none of you students has ever slept through an alarm, right? Certainly, you have never slept through a class here at BYU-Idaho – you might miss something crucial. Although, I have heard of teachers who occasionally feel the need to check for vital signs in their classes.
It seems that the Lord must also go to great lengths to wake us up and save our eternal lives. It’s amazing how frequently the scriptures use this metaphor suggesting that we, in the mortal, natural man state are spiritually asleep and very difficult to awaken to God’s saving realities. Nephi is keenly aware of this principle, and in 2 Nephi 4:28 he cries, “Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul.”
Please turn with me to 2 Nephi chapter 1. Starting with verse 13, Lehi pleads with his sons:
O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe.
Awake! and arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave…(2 Nephi 1:13-14)
Now skip to verse 23:
Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust.
In Jacob 3:11, as he teaches the people at the temple about materialism, pride, and immorality, (which are, incidentally, the three big temptations of our time as well ) Jacob exhorts:
O my brethren, hearken unto my words; arouse the faculties of your souls; shake yourselves that ye may awake from the slumber of death; and loose yourselves from the pains of hell that ye may not become angels to the devil, to be cast into that lake of fire and brimstone which is the second death.
King Benjamin, Alma, Mormon, Isaiah, Paul and others warn their people and us to awaken from an “endless sleep” (Mormon 9:13) to a sense of our utter dependence on the Lord (Mosiah 4:5); “to awaken [from] a lively sense of our guilt” (Mosiah 2:38) to righteousness
(I Corinthians 15:34); and to awaken to a remembrance of our duty to God (Alma 4:3, Alma 7:22). (See also Isaiah 51:9 and Romans 13:9)
Modern servants of God plead with us to “wake up” with the same intensity. Listen to President David O. McKay:
With all our boasted civilization, there never was a time when spiritual awakening and spiritual ideals were more needed. Mankind needs a spiritual awakening, brothers and sisters; the carnal minded are causing heartaches and threatening the extinction of the race . . . My faith in the ultimate triumph of the gospel of Jesus Christ assures me that a spiritual awakening must come. It will come through the acceptance of Jesus Christ and obedience to the gospel (“Spiritual Awakening.” Best Loved Talks of the LDS People. Ed. Jay A. Parry. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2002:444, 447).
Elder Melvin Hammond tells the story of camping with his young son, who in the darkness of the night felt a little insecure and asked, “Dad, are you awake?” Our families and loved ones, Elder Hammond teaches, need to know that we are awake “to the things that are most important;” the eternal realities of keeping God’s commandments, crucial family relationships, and sacred covenants (“Dad, Are You Awake?” Ensign. Nov. 2002: 97-98.)
It is as if these servants of God ancient and modern are begging us, “Come on.” “Wake up!” “You don’t get it!” “Hello!” “Can you hear me now?” “If ya snooze, ya lose.” They want us to see things as they really are, as Jacob teaches in Jacob 4:13: “. . . for the Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not [unlike the enemy of our soul] Wherfore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be.”
“In the end,”says Elder Neal Maxwell, “we will have either chosen to act in accord with things as they really are –or we will have opted for the fleeting things of this world. And this is a dying world” (Things as They Really Are. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1978:18).
Do you remember the movie, The Truman Show? It’s about a character who is placed in a fake world where every element of his environment is controlled from the time he’s born for the sole purpose of having an interesting TV show. It’s like a soap opera, only with a real person’s life, but Truman doesn’t know it. At the end he finds the exit sign on the elaborately designed set, realizes his world is not the real world, and escapes.
Could it be, brothers and sisters, that many of us are putting stock in the vain imaginations of an unreal world? Are we sleep-walking our way through our one chance at mortality, not realizing that we are drowsily following popular values, behaviors, fashions, attitudes, and opinions of those who never trusted or believed in God or in what President Spencer W. Kimball calls “Absolute Truth?” He explains that
[God’s] realities will not go away just because some have doubts about them… Opinion cannot change laws or absolute truths. Opinion will never make the earth to be flat, the sun to dim its light, God to die or the Savior to cease being the Son of God (“Absolute Truth.” Ensign. Sept. 1978: 3-7).
A few years ago around Christmas time, I was standing in line at the grocery store and saw a Time magazine cover that said something like “Jesus Christ; Son of God or Great Teacher?” I read the article and was hurt to hear so many people, even professed Christians and religious leaders, say that he was merely a great teacher. Some recent best-selling novels base their whole story on this same premise. C. S. Lewis contends that this is a lot of rubbish:
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher . . . He would either be a lunatic on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher (Mere Christianity. New York: Touchstone, 1996:56).
There are many forces at work which delight to “lullaby” us away, keep us deeply and ignorantly asleep, and obscure our vision of things as they really are. In his eighteenth century masterpiece The Dunciad, Alexander Pope writes of the Great Goddess Dullness who prevents inspiration and keeps her subjects from light and truth predominantly through the words and writings of base minds. Nor is she content with dull and sleeping subjects, but forces evil and filth about them to keep them captive:
Dullness o’er all possessed her ancient right,
Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night.
Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind,
She ruled, in native Anarchy, the mind.
Still her old Empire to restore she tries,
For, born a Goddess, Dullness never dies. (381)
And who the most in love of dirt excel,
Or dark dexterity of groping well.
Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around
The stream, be his the Weekly Journal bound. (405)
(In Selected Poetry and Prose. Ed. William Winfatt. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1951. 381- 449.)
We don’t have to look very far to see that the great Goddess Dullness is alive and well today. Much of our popular culture, diffused by the entertainment industry and the media, appears to worship at her feet. Some reality TV programs for example, portray reality all right –Dullness’s reality in a striking parade of immorality and greed. David Nyhan, a columnist and associate editor for the Boston Globe, decries TV as “an open sewer coursing through our homes [that has] caused an alarming deadening of moral sensitivity” (qtd. in Rodney Keller. Aims and Options. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.). Unfortunately, consumers don’t see labels on all media like are found on prescription drugs. Some definitely should say, “Warning: may cause spiritual drowsiness!” Elder M. Russell Ballard adds his voice of warning about our media
Family-destructive viewpoints are regularly portrayed as pleasurable, as stylish, as exciting and as normal …We must not allow virtual reality to become our or our children’s reality.”
. . .[This] intelligent evil causes a tolerance for perverted, addictive behavior and abominations before the Lord (“Let Our Voices Be Heard.” Ensign Nov. 2003: 16-17).
Embracing these abominations enslaves us to the Goddess Dullness and the master of darkness whom she serves, puts us to spiritual sleep, and causes our souls to droop in sin and ignorance of absolute truths.
Nothing is weightier than the burden of sin (Jeffrey R. Holland. Trusting Jesus. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003:65). Nothing robs us of reason to rejoice more than breaking God’s absolute laws. We are mortal and by virtue of our fallen nature we have the predisposition to sin. Not many of us, last time I looked, are on a list of people to be translated. How dare we be so human? How dare we make mistakes? Making mistakes is, however, part of our mortal experience. But we need not continue in sin and error (JST 1 John 3:9). One of the breathtakingly beautiful realities of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the gift of repentance. In the Hebrew of the Old Testament the word for repentance is shube, which means to turn. We turn our hearts to God and present him with our wills, which Elder Maxwell assures us is the only thing we really have to give him which is not already his (Things as They Really Are. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1978:18).
In the Greek of the New Testament the word for repentance, metaneoeo, “denotes a change of mind, i..e, a fresh view about God, about oneself, and about the world” (Theodore M. Burton. “The Meaning of Repentance.” Ensign Aug. 1988: 5-9:1,2; see also LDS Bible Dictionary. Salt Lake City: Intellectual Reserve, 1998:760). When we repent, we adopt a new point of view, God’s point of view; we see things as they really are. We abhor the sins that offend God (Alma 13:12) and bury them just as the Anti-Nephi-Lehis buried their weapons (Alma 24:17). We also focus on turning away from the other daily weaknesses of the flesh such as pride, ego, pettiness, anger, jealousy, revenge, bitterness and all our other emotions that come to us by means of our fallen state. We turn away from the attractions of an unreal, fallen world and adopt God’s way of thinking, His way of feeling and His way of loving.
When the spirit prompts us and we make this turn, when we finally “get it,” we can do tremendous good. Sister Sherri Dew, who does much good, relates how a young lady came up to her after a talk and said, “I’ll bet when you get up every morning the devil says to himself, ‘Oh no! She’s awake again!’” (God Wants a Powerful People. Compact Disc. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2004). But we need to watch out! The devil, in league with Dullness and her minions, will do all that he can to tempt us to push the snooze button and roll back over in lazy creature comfort. This is exceedingly dangerous since if we give in, if we don’t repent – just as when we sleep in class – we may miss out on something crucial.
There is a perfect example of this lost opportunity in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, in the book called The Last Battle. A group of dwarves who have been self-centered and nasty throughout the whole story are in a heavenly place that is surrounded by beautiful sky and trees and flowers. Their mind-set, however, remains as always, negative and clouded, and they think they are trapped in a dark, filthy little stable where someone is trying to get the better of them. “The dwarves are for the dwarves,” they yell out in typical, belligerent fashion. The Christ figure in the series, Aslan, provides them with a marvelous feast, “but they think they are eating only the kinds of things you might find in a stable” (The Last Battle. New York: Scholastic Inc. 1956:168,169). He gives them veritable manna, and they take it for dung. Because of their dark, limited little minds, they will not be helped, they refuse communication with heavenly beings, and consequently, they miss out on so much; they miss out on heaven!
What is it, brothers and sisters that we are missing out on when we do not allow the spirit to teach us absolute truths or help us understand things as they really are, or when we refuse to adopt God’s view? Could it be that, when in our dark, little stables of mortal drowsiness and ignorance, we risk missing out on the greatest of all the gifts of God?
Elder Orson F. Whitney tells about how he almost missed out. When he was a young, yet unconverted missionary, he was being enticed by the vain imaginations of the world. He was more interested in writing for newspapers than studying and preaching the gospel. One night, he had a dream that he was in the garden of Gethsemane standing behind a tree and witnessing the Savior’s pain and agony. Elder Whitney was heartbroken as he watched the tears stream down the Savior’s face. He recounts, “My whole heart went out to Him. I loved Him with all my soul and longed to be with Him as I longed for nothing else.” He watched the Savior walk to where the apostles Peter, James, and John waited -- fast asleep! The Savior shook them gently, awoke them, and without any anger or unkindness asked them if they could not watch with Him one hour. “There He was,” continues Elder Whitney, “with the weight of the world’s sin upon His shoulders, with the pangs of every man, woman and child shooting through His sensitive soul – and they could not watch with Him one hour!” Elder Whitney listened as the Lord admonished, “Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).
Suddenly the circumstances in the dream changed. The apostles were about to ascend into heaven with the Savior. Elder Whitney could stand it no longer. He ran out from behind the tree and fell at the Savior’s feet and begged to go with them. “‘No my son; these have finished their work, and they may go with me, but you must stay and finish yours.’”
“‘Well, promise me that I will come to you at the last.’” [The Savior] smiled sweetly and tenderly and replied, “‘That will depend entirely upon yourself.’” Elder Whitney then awoke with a sob in his throat. He vowed after that experience never to be found “asleep at his post” again, losing the chance to do his duty to God, magnify a calling or accomplish righteousness. Think about it. He would have missed out on being an apostle of the Lord and ultimately on the chance to ascend with the Savior (Orson F. Whitney.“The Divinity of Jesus Christ.” Ensign. Dec. 2003: 6-11. 10, 11).
This picture by Pierro della Francesco is called Resurrection. Again we have the central act in all human history, yet the guards are sleeping through it! Here, then, is the question for the day: Will we embrace the reality of the atonement or will we sleep through it (Vaughn Stephenson. Remarks in Gospel Doctrine class. Rexburg. 1998)? Will we allow the unrepented and unhealed weaknesses of the flesh to cause us to miss out? President James E. Faust makes this very strong statement, “Our salvation depends on believing in and accepting the Atonement. Such acceptance requires a continual effort to understand it more fully” (“The Atonement, Our Greatest Hope.” Ensign Nov. 2001: 18-20). Will we forfeit the enabling, healing power of the atonement in this life and the exalting, glorifying power of the atonement in the next life? As the Savior answered Elder Whitney, that depends entirely upon you.
Sister Elaine Sorensen, Dean of the College of Nursing at BYU, explains that “healing is active. It requires all the energy of your entire being. You have to be there fully awake, aware, and participating when it happens.” She goes on to explain that spiritual healing requires similar, active participation. It takes us and the Lord working together to orchestrate the miracle. She continues, “We can partake of the healing medicine of the Atonement of our Savior who promised, ‘I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears; behold, I will heal thee’” (2 Kings 20:5, as quoted in “Learning the Healer’s Art.” BYU Magazine. Spring 2003: 50-55.; emphasis added). But, it does depend entirely upon us.
This picture is Christ the Consolator by Carl Heinrich Bloch. The word “consolator” comes from Latin and then through the thirteenth century French word, consolateur, which means the one who gives intense soothing (“Consolator.” Chambers Dictionary of Etymology. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1988:210). The painting depicts people of all ages and walks of life who have come to the Lord. I love how relieved they look. They have come wounded and heavy laden. They are now “intensely soothed” and healed of their burdens through the grace of His love. We, too, can come to Christ the Healer, Christ the Consolator, but we must be awake and aware of things as they really are. We must actively want to be healed. We must desire to come unto the Savior with a broken heart and a contrite spirit (3 Nephi 12:19). Do you remember the lawyer Zeezrom in The Book of Mormon who lay sick at Sidom with a burning fever? “…his mind was exceedingly sore because of his iniquities” after hearing the word of God. And when he saw Alma and Amulek, “he stretched forth his hand, and besought them that they would heal him. . . . Alma said unto him: Believest thou in the power of Christ unto salvation . . .? If thou believest in the redemption of Christ thou canst be healed” (Alma 15:3-8).
The woman who was plagued with an issue of blood for twelve years is another stunning example of someone who believed in the power of Christ and merely had to reach out and touch the hem of the Savior’s garment in order to be made perfectly whole at last (see Mark 5:25-29).
In 3 Nephi 9:13 the Lord says to the righteous who were spared, “will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you?” He requires our permission and our participation in our own healing; we have to be awake enough to believe in it, awake enough to ask for it, or awake enough to reach out and obtain it.
Nephi agonizes in 2 Nephi 4:17-19:
O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.
I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and sins which do so easily beset me.
And when I desire to rejoice my heart groaneth because of my sins; nevertheless [and here is the key] I know in whom I have trusted.
Nephi understands God’s reality, knows from whence true healing comes, and knows that his soul needs no longer droop in sin or discouragement, all because of the atonement of the great Consolator. In verse 35 he says, “Yea, I know that God will give liberally to him that asketh. Yea, my God will give me, if I ask not amiss: therefore I will lift up my voice unto thee; Yea, I will cry unto thee, my God, the rock of my righteousness.”
One of the temptations that may have so easily beset Nephi was the temptation to lose hope in the face of his many trials. Is it possible that despair and hopelessness are another kind of sin since they deny the enabling power of the atonement? But Nephi believed what his father, Lehi, had taught his brother in 2 Nephi 2:2: “Nevertheless, Jacob, …thou knowest the greatness of God; and he shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain.”
Sometimes our afflictions, brothers and sisters, are like wake-up calls that get us to focus on things as they really are. When we have nowhere else to turn, we turn to the Lord, who then can enable us, bear us up and heal us as we experience the growing pains and wounds of mortality. C.S. Lewis exclaims that “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pain” (The Problem of Pain. New York: Touchstone, 1996:83).
Years ago, Sister Chieko Okasaki came to Ricks College as a devotional speaker. During the luncheon before the devotional she shared with us how in her life she had learned to place her afflictions on the altar of God and consecrate them to His service. For example, she said that things were difficult during World War II. She agonized over the treatment of her people, but decided to ask the Lord how she could turn over this pain to His will. The Lord taught her to use her ethnic background to teach the sisters of the church about the beauty of our diversity in a world-wide church, which she has done so well in her writings and her calling in the general Relief Society. She also had a very difficult time when she lost her husband, Ed. They were very much in love and very close, but instead of remaining alone in her grief, she began to visit other widows in her area to bring them comfort and understanding. Sister Okasaki was able to awake to the healing reality of the atonement in her life and allow the Lord to consecrate her afflictions, not only for her gain, but also for a great blessing in the lives of His other children (Letter to Christine Geddes. July, 2004).
Exercising Christ-like love for others is another absolute truth. As covenant members of the Lord’s kingdom, and as part of our duty to God, we are under the sacred obligation to lift and help one another. Elder Jeffrey Holland puts it this way, “The church is not a monastery for the isolation of perfect people. It is more like a hospital provided for those who wish to get well.” He says that if we truly wish to come unto the Savior to be healed ourselves, if we truly wish to become like Him, then we need to feel after the pain of our brothers and sisters and “comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God” (Trusting Jesus. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003: 66,67). Plus, once we are awake to his healing kindness to us, we strongly desire to return the same gentleness to each other.
During our 12 years in Hawaii we learned so much from those wonderful Polynesian people. The analogy of how to catch sand crabs stands out in my mind. It’s so easy. You just dig a hole in the sand and stick a bucket in the hole. You put some bait in the bucket, then you watch as a little, unwary sand crab comes walking along and falls in. Pretty soon another and another do the same until before you know it, you have a full bucket. You don’t even have to put a lid on the bucket because as soon as a crab starts to crawl out, another one jumps on him. Then if a crab on the other side tries to escape, two more come along and pull on his legs so he cannot get out. So when people are acting unkind, back-biting, being jealous, exclusive, judgmental, or tempting one another to break God’s absolute laws, the Polynesians say they are acting like crabs in a bucket. They will not let one another ascend.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, life can be challenging; mortality can be painful. But why make it harder for each other? Why pull each other down? Why not accept Elder Holland’s apostolic charge? As he spoke to BYU students he said,
I ask you to be a healer, be a helper, be someone who joins in the work of Christ in lifting burdens, in making the load lighter, in making things better. Someone sitting within reasonable proximity to you [today] is carrying a spiritual or physical or emotional burden of some sort or some other affliction drawn from life’s catalogue of a thousand kinds of sorrows. (70)
In the spirit of Elder Holland’s challenge, may I , in turn, invite us today to not be like the crabs in the bucket, but to wake up to the work of the Great Physician and do what He does best – lift, strengthen, and succor those around us (see Alma 7:11).
Another very potent medicine available to us is the word of God which has an amazing power to “awake and arouse our faculties” (Alma 32:27). It invites the spirit into our lives, entices us to turn and adopt God’s view, and brings us to the Christ. Unlike the words inspired by the Great Goddess Dullness that anesthetize and paralyze, the pleasing word of God invigorates the spirit and “healeth the wounded soul” (Jacob 2:8). Alma the Elder’s people at the waters of Mormon were healed:
Behold [the Spirit] changed their hearts; yea he awakened them out of a deep sleep, and they awoke unto God. Behold, they were in the midst of darkness; nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word (Alma 5:7).
President Ezra Taft Benson expounds on this verse stating, “We need to use the everlasting word to awaken those in deep sleep so they will awake unto God” (A Witness and a Warning. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1988:320).
Let me tell you about two students I had here at BYU-Idaho. One young man came to our campus with a rather negative attitude. He had a dark countenance. He was critical of his teachers and vocally abusive to his peers. He was having trouble with his roommates and trouble with his grades. He told me that he wasn’t happy with his life and wrote on an assignment that he was deeply involved in sin. I hoped that with priesthood counsel and sincere study of the scriptures he would find consolation. Unfortunately, he refused help and would not turn to the Lord. He would not make the necessary effort to experiment upon the word. He left here spiritually asleep and still very much unhealed.
Contrast this with a young lady who was also troubled. The Goddess Dullness had deceived her and she had broken God’s absolute law of chastity. When she read the very verse about the power of the pleasing word of God to heal the wounded soul, she opened her heart and mind to the word and began taking her study of the Book of Mormon very seriously. She had an awakening experience and began to apply the atonement to her personal situation. She took the necessary steps and went to her bishop. She made a 180-degree turn and shared with me that she was making great changes in her life and was so grateful for the healing that was taking place. Her soul was awakened; it no longer drooped in sin. Her heart rejoiced in the amazing gift of repentance and the fact that she could adopt God’s view and no longer feel shame before Him. She knew that the last part of Moroni 7:48 applied now to her, too: “…when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he [really] is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure.”
How poignant are the last words of our beloved Elder Maxwell, as he must have known his time with us was limited. Of all the realities he could have reemphasized, he chose to leave written indelibly in our hearts and minds the absolute truth and reality of God’s love for each of us. Savor with me the tender message he shared from this very pulpit last spring, as well as in the Priesthood session of General Conference:
I testify to you that God has known you individually…for a long time (see Doctrine and Covenants 93:23). He has loved you for a long, long time. He not only knows the names of all the stars (see Psalm 147:4; Isaiah 40:26); He knows your names and all your heartaches and your joys! By the way, you have never seen an immortal star; they finally expire. But seated by you [today] are immortal individuals – imperfect but who are, nevertheless, ‘trying to be like Jesus!’ (“Remember How Merciful the Lord Hath Been.” Ensign, May 2004: 44- 46.)
How blessed we are to have been taught at the feet of one who knew and exemplified the absolute truth of God’s love.
The prophet Moroni concludes his message with these words in Moroni 10:30-31:
And again I would exhort you that ye would come unto Christ and lay hold upon every good gift, and touch not the evil gift, nor the unclean thing.
And awake, and arise from the dust, O Jerusalem; yea, and put on thy beautiful garments, O daughter of Zion; and strengthen thy stakes and enlarge thy borders forever, that thou mayest no more be confounded, that the covenants of the Eternal Father which he hath made unto thee, O house of Israel, may be fulfilled.
The bottom line to all of this is quite simply, “if ya snooze, ya lose!” If you sleep walk and lie down in the freezing roadway of sin, the vital warmth of your spirituality will soon ebb away, and you may never again awake– to the bright and beautiful rays of the Eternal Son. On the other hand, if you wake up unto Christ, all that the Lord has is yours. But once again, as the Lord said to that young Orson F. Whitney when he was about your age, it all depends on you.
My sweet young brothers and sisters, I would like to add my fervent testimony today that Jesus Christ really is who He says He is. His work can and does accomplish what He promises. You and I may become glorified, exalted, radiantly beautiful, powerful, and joyous beings like He is if we will but awaken our souls to His atoning reality, remember our duty to God, and shun the Goddess Dullness in all her many forms so that our souls will no longer droop in sin or discouragement or sleepy ignorance. I believe with all my heart that because of His unfathomable love, we may come unto Him and be healed by His pleasing word and by participating in his work and glory to love and heal His family, our precious brothers and sisters. Then will our hearts rejoice and with the psalmist we shall sing, “As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness” (Psalm 17:15). In the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.