During devotionals, I have often found myself yearning to add my testimony and experience about the principles I hear presented in devotional. Recently, Brother Teichert shared his tender experience serving the widows in his ward as a youth. I, too, had a similar experience taking chocolates to the dozen or so widows in my home ward as a youth with my father. After this pattern, as I speak today, I also invite you to similarly share your testimonies with the Lord and, perhaps this week, with someone near you. I pray and expect that the Lord must have something for me to share—some perspective, some experience, some part of this message which will have meaning to you.
Some of my perspective has come from my experience taking and then teaching a course using guided Socratic inquiry. In that experience, I have discovered that sometimes what we think are difficulties with the complexities of concepts are actually with understanding basic principles deeply enough to apply them.
For example, my partner in the course was completely stuck trying to describe how the sun moves in the sky. It took several days to discover that she was held up because she did not understand the terms “north,” “south,” “east,” and “west” deeply enough to apply them. I wonder if we have similar difficulties with our faith, that we don’t understand something simple deeply enough to apply it in our lives.
A large part of my purpose today is to discuss the Atonement and help you renew your feelings and expressions of gratitude to our Savior for the blessings of His Atonement.
Please review with me three things about the Atonement: The Atonement allows us to repent and learn from our own sins and mistakes. The Atonement heals us, including from things beyond our own control. The Atonement can enable us, can strengthen us in our efforts to grow and follow the Savior.
The Atonement Allows Us to Learn from Our Own Sins and Mistakes.
To illustrate this first point of how the Atonement helps us to learn from our own sins and mistakes, let me share another result from my experience with that inquiry course. I have developed a much deeper appreciation of the plan of happiness and, in particular, the role of the Atonement.
When I teach this course, my job is to not give answers, but to reflect what students say and think back to them, to direct with questions. Their own experience, observations, and thinking are the standards for an idea being correct. In this manner, the thinking and the benefits which accompany that effort belong to them.
Students apply their ideas by predicting the brightness of each of the bulbs in a simple circuit made of a battery and bulbs. Then they set up the circuit and test their predictions. Then I interview them. What did you predict? What did you observe? Is that consistent with what you thought before? How do we have to think about the circuit in order to predict the brightness correctly? What would you predict if . . .?
While lectures expose students very efficiently to a lot of content, I find that my lecturing on a subject tends to only weakly help students change the ideas they already have. But giving students the opportunity to express their ideas, to test them, to make mistakes, and to communicate clearly what they understand powerfully changes their thinking.
That is, generally students learn the most when they incorrectly predict what will happen—when they make their own honest mistakes and correct them. This learning tends to be meaningful, deep, and lasting.
It strikes me that this echoes part of the purpose of this life. I understand that one of the purposes of this life is to learn by our own experiences, to learn faith and obedience. This sounds similar to the example I shared with the electric circuit in the sense that this seems to require that we need to be able to make mistakes and resolve them.
As a missionary, and in other callings I have held, I have encountered people who were seeking to repent from tragic mistakes and sin. I have been struck by how deeply the Spirit communicates our Heavenly Father’s love for them on these occasions. And we have all fallen short of the mark. We are commanded to repent, to try to set things right.
Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
Learn to do well; see judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.[1]
But as we understand these verses in Isaiah, we alone cannot set things right. The Savior Himself told the Nephites: “O all ye . . . will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you?”[2]
We know that no unclean thing can enter the kingdom of God. Alone, these very mistakes which seem necessary for our learning would disqualify us for His presence. Our Brother, Jesus Christ, agreed to provide us that opportunity to learn by our own mistakes. Before this life, He agreed to pay for our sins and misdeeds on condition of our repentance, that we might not suffer, that we had a space in which to repent. And, oh, the cost was high.
Let me share a story which has helped me feel this most personally.
My dad carried some great burdens himself because of his service in World War II. Though only a radio operator for an artillery unit, he experienced very difficult things on Saipan and other campaigns in the South Pacific. As a result, Dad instructed us kids never to touch him when he was asleep.
As a junior in high school, I was considering serving my country in the military. Realizing this, my dad counseled me that he and my mother felt that I could make a more important contribution by getting an education and raising a family instead. “If you were drafted and called up, we would expect you to go. But I would volunteer to go in your stead. I have been in combat and would be better able to survive than you. There is no point in more than one in our family being affected by combat.”
I never understood that experience until some five years later. I visited him in the hospital recovering from bypass surgery. Previously, a nurse had quietly entered his dark room to take his vitals, quietly so as not to disturb him. He sensed that she was there and startled so dramatically that she was frightened and shortly taped a sign on the door: “Turn on lights before entering.” The stress and anxiety of his service experiences were still close to the surface 45 years after the war. Dad offered to bear that burden in my place. It still moves me to think about. That experience is a type of our Savior’s love to me.
Hear the Savior’s own words: “For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; . . . Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both in body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the biter cup, and shrink.”[3]
Yes, we must remember that this space in which we can grow came at great cost to our Savior. It is truly a great gift!
My friend Todd Lines tells me that in the great literature, that in pattern or type, nearly all of the great stories are fundamentally repetitions of the Christ story of redemption. I don’t know if that is perfectly true or not, but his observation that the Savior’s story of redemption resonates so universally with mankind seems consistent with what we know from Job about our shouting for joy in our pre-earthly life when the plan was announced in the council in heaven.[4]
The Atonement is to Heal Us from Our Sins and Even from Things Beyond Our Control.
We need to learn to submit our will to our Heavenly Father in our trials. Trials probably most often ought to be thought of as opportunities for growth and not always as consequences for our behavior. They are evidence of a loving Father in Heaven. Indeed, in my extended family, we have seen miracles given even to those for whom it is not appointed that the bitter cup should pass.
I keep getting glimpses and insights into the depth and power of that gift of healing, which is beyond my capacity to understand. This is one of the many profound and important aspects of the Atonement which I don’t have the time to discuss.
The Atonement Can Enable Us, Can Strengthen Us in Our Efforts to Grow and Follow Him.
Elder Bednar, among many others, has taught us about the enabling power of the Atonement. When you are facing difficulty, whether it be to overcome sin or to rise to the responsibilities you carry, meet emotional challenges, whenever you are tempted to give up, please remember that you are not alone. My experience is that the Lord is pleased with any honest effort to follow Him. His grace is available to us. But it is often predicated upon our asking in faith and according to His will. But if we do, we need to understand how willing God is to bless us.
Or what man is there of you, who, if a son ask bread, will give him a stone?
Or if he ask a fish, will give him a serpent?
If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?[5]
(I notice in this example, that the son is given nourishment and strength from the gifts: bread, fish—not candy or cake. We are blessed with things which are good for us.)
Many of those challenges we meet are prepared for us individually, as is the grace He gives to overcome them.
For example, I personally received a tender mercy when witnessing the sealing of a friend and neighbor. Being the timid sort, it was a pivotal moment in my experience which I didn’t know I needed. At that time, I received a strong witness that A) marriage was ordained of God, and B) that it was something I was capable of participating in successfully. The witness was sufficient that I felt confident marrying my wife, Darla, shortly after.
This is only one example. I have received myriad tender mercies, small and great, over the course of my life which have helped me grow and fulfill the responsibilities the Lord has given me.
I hope that you have begun to feel again a bit of the scope and magnitude of this great gift which the Atonement of Jesus is for us. I hope that you have felt some of the deep stirrings of gratitude in your heart which often move me.
Let me call you to action: Demonstrate your gratitude to our Savior. How might we do that? Here are a few ways among many: Show your love for the Savior by accepting His gifts. Repent. I was deeply impressed with Brother Teichert’s address last week in which he gave a tender explanation of how we should think of repentance. Improve in your ability to keep His commandments. Respond to His invitations to grow. Recording your experiences with His Spirit in journals and letters is another way in which we show our gratitude. Listen to His servants. Study His words. Serve Him in His kingdom and our Father’s other children. Lift others around you. I wonder sometimes if this is part of what He meant when He said:
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.[6]
Prepare for and participate in saving ordinances. Attend the temple and stand as saviors to those who cannot perform those ordinances themselves. Fulfill your callings faithfully. Heroics are not required. You would be astonished at how impressed and grateful your bishop is for your service if you simply show up and fulfill your calling faithfully. I think that is a reflection of how our Heavenly Father feels.
Now, I fully expect that you will find some things about your callings will be difficult. That is a perfect opportunity to experience the enabling power of the Atonement. With practice, that very difficulty we feel can begin to be recognized as the hand of the Lord in our lives to lift us. Most things of value which we can do, even the small and simple things, are at least a little bit hard.
Let me share an analogy of this principle. My cousin and friend experimented with radio-controlled gliders made of poster board. They are launched into the air with a hundred feet or so of surgical tubing acting as a gentle catapult.
For quite a long time he was frustrated. The best he could do was launch his glider several hundred feet into the air with the tubing and simply steer them to the ground. Yet the hawks and eagles soared a thousand feet above, lifted up by the upwelling of air known as “thermals” which comes from the sun’s heat.
One day he noticed that the glider was a little sluggish turning left. It was a little difficult. The inspiration hit him that it must have been sluggish because the left wing was being lifted! It was in a thermal that could lift his glider! With that key, he eventually learned to fly thermals almost as small as the hawks and eagles could fly, and he could climb faster!
This amazing ability to literally soar with the eagles would never have been possible without the skills he developed by noticing that it was a little hard to turn and not being afraid to turn into it.
Now, don’t turn into things that cause you harm. But professionally, much of my success has come from turning into the thermals.
Successfully turning into thermals has been particularly important in my relationships with my family members and others. It has helped me to overcome my pride and restore or preserve relationships which otherwise might have gone adrift. It has blessed me greatly to turn into the thermal of taking the extra bit of effort to act rather than to react to those around me. This, whether it is saying something kind or encouraging to someone I notice in the hall or whether it is being more patient to what seems like a slight or insult.
Fulfilling the callings I have had, I am amazed at how satisfying it has been to turn into that bit of discomfort, that bit of resistance, that something I fear. I am amazed at the blessings that follow.
That is, I have been the recipient of our Savior’s grace on many occasions, fortifying and strengthening me over many years. Otherwise, I might not have had the faith to accept this opportunity to address you. In other words, “thermals” can be a sign to us of the Lord’s hand and love in our lives.
I was gratified by all the discussion board comments about the many and varied experiences which help you feel grateful to the Savior and how this has moved you to act. In one example of so many, Tonya Judd shared, “In times of sorrow and loneliness, I have felt upheld by the Savior. I have taken much comfort in the fact that He knows who I am and what my needs are. These needs are sometimes met by others who are in tune.” Tonya then shared that she tries to reach out and pray for others she serves. Many of you expressed the desire to serve as the Savior did.
Before I close, let me add one final way in which we can show our love for our Savior. This is one of the ways He appointed Himself.
While Darla and I served in Cub Scouts, we recited the Scout Oath and Law in our weekly meetings. I loved making those commitments to live a virtuous and honorable life. One Sunday, as we were preparing to sing the sacrament hymn, I was reflecting upon my feelings for the Savior. Thinking of the Scout Oath and Law, I wished for just that kind of an opportunity to show my love and commitment to the Savior.
Some of you are smiling at me because you are quicker than I was. But before the hymn was over, I realized—I was taught by the Spirit—that the ordinance of the sacrament was exactly that opportunity which I sought.
Take that weekly opportunity to review your love for the Savior and the great blessings which His Atonement has wrought for us. Express your commitment to Him. Ponder the words of the sacrament prayers found in Doctrine and Covenants 20:77–79 or Moroni 4 and 5.
I will end by echoing the call to action and the promise of blessings which you will find in those prayers. Keep His commandments. Always remember Him “that [ye] may always have His Spirit to be with [you].”
It is my prayer that you will find ways to apply the Savior’s Atonement meaningfully in your life. I testify that there is none other name under heaven whereby we may find this joy. Truly, beside Him there is no Savior. I commend Him to you as the author and finisher of our faith, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes
[1] Isaiah 1:16–18.
[2] 3 Nephi 9:13.
[3] Doctrine and Covenants 19:16, 18.
[4] See Job 38:6–7.
[5] 3 Nephi 14:9–11.
[6] Matthew 11:28–30.