I was up from about 6 the morning prior, till 2 that morning; I travelled from Waterloo to Copeland to Brampton to Kitchener to Waterloo, back to Kitchener and back to Waterloo, throughout the day before; I attended the temple, taught part of a course on condominium law, and went to my wife's concert in the evening. These were all enjoyable things, and I even liked the long drives, but it made for a long day. So I had set my alarm for 10 a.m., figuring I’d give myself about 8 hours to sleep before getting ready and coming to Church. But for some reason, I awoke just after 8:30 a.m. Just, woke up. I grabbed my phone to see whether my alarm had gone off early for some reason. It hadn’t, and the phone was still set in silent sleep mode; but then I saw that its little red light was flashing. So I opened it up and discovered that just a few minutes earlier, my branch president had sent me a message saying, essentially, “Hey, you have to give a talk today.” Then I was awake.
As second counsellor in the branch presidency, it was my turn to conduct the Sacrament meeting. We knew that our speakers might be short-winded, and the president had joked the day before that I might need to be ready to fill some time. The gist of his Sunday morning text, however, was that the concluding speaker - the one with the most time to fill - had called in sick, and, since I was conducting, I was going to need to take his place.
It’s no accident when things like that happen. They happen in all people’s lives, but they happen most often in relation to the Church and gospel in the lives of latter-day saints.
By “things like that”, I mean coincidences that seem far too coincidental. Things like waking up just moments after an important text was sent to you, even though the sound on your phone is off. Things like just happening to round a corner in the temple looking for something to do, when someone says, “Ah, we were just looking for you.” Or when you decide, finally, to phone that individual you home or visit teach, and they respond saying, “how did you know I needed help just now?” Or when you think about a friend or family member and feel a need to pray for him or her, and then find out that at that moment he or she had received some difficult news and needed extra support.
We tend to dismiss coincidences as just that, but for those who know the mind and will and heart of the Lord, coincidences of this sort are recognized as the influence of His Spirit in the world, making better our lives, and bringing about His purposes.
Latter-day Saints are particularly prone to these experiences. We should even be seeking them, asking for them, and ensuring that we are ready for them each and every day. This takes a vigilance we often don’t exercise, but that we should. This is part of what it means when it says in the scriptures that we need to be valiant in the testimony of Christ.
Every baptized Latter-day Saint has made a commitment to God.
Ecclesiastes chapter 5 warns us not to be hasty or impulsive when making promises to God; because He will call you on it. He will expect you to measure up.
Our baptismal covenant includes the promise to stand as a witness of God "at all times and in all things and in all places that ye may be in". There’s no getting out of that one. So maybe it’s best if we know what it means, and what it takes for us to do it.
Typically, we think of being a witness in just the missionary sense, of bearing testimonies and teaching people about the things we believe. These things are, of course, important, and they are, of course, one aspect of being a witness of God and Jesus Christ. We ought to be involved in sharing the gospel with our friends, family and even strangers, as the Spirit leads us and as opportunities arise. We should even seek those opportunities out, sometimes, or, at certain stages of life, decide to make the commitment to serve in that role full-time for 18 to 24 months. But that’s not all that it means to be a witness.
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf once quoted a statement that is often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, that goes like this:
preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.
As it turns out, there is no record of St. Francis ever having said this precisely. The closest is Rule XVII of the rules for his order of monks, which admonishes that they should preach the gospel through their deeds.
But, regardless of whether or not St. Francis ever said it, we know today that President Uchtdorf did, and we can rely on the direction and counsel he gave. He continued by sharing these thoughts in General Conference:
Implicit in this saying [attributed to St. Francis\ is the understanding that often the most powerful sermons are unspoken. |
The first part of that expectation, is that we should be living gospel standards. The second part is that we should radiate joy in so doing.
The first part, we can accomplish simply by managing our behavior. We can choose to act according to models, standards and rules that we understand exemplify good conduct. On a surface level, we can obey the Word of Wisdom, attend church meetings, pay tithing and fast offerings, fulfill callings and assignments. On a slightly deeper level, we can obey ethical and moral principles by such things as being honest, chaste and kind. In these ways, we accomplish that first part of being examples of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Radiating joy, however, while also under our control to a certain extent, is not as easily done.
Joy has to be real to be radiated.
Radiating joy results not merely from doing the right things, but from doing them for the right reasons. It results not merely from acting righteously, but from having a heart conformed to God’s heart.
Sometimes we don’t realize how difficult this is. Sometimes life seems easy, and we feel happy. We are pleased with the circumstances of our lives. We can do the things we want, we are loved by the people we want to be loved by, we aren’t threatened or afraid, and it is easy to feel blessed, and to feel certain that God must be on our side, and therefore we must be doing things right. And, in principle, there’s nothing wrong those feelings, and they can be justified – those things can, in fact, be blessings that come from our Heavenly Father, by virtue of His kindly grace. But sometimes, we forget that it is just a gift, and that the real project of life is not fulfilled by these experiences, is not completed simply by having easy, pleasant or happy circumstances and feelings, and that our satisfaction with those things can become a barrier to, and an excuse for complacency in, doing what we really should.
The gospel message is one of continual repentance.
This is one of the most profound lessons that we need to learn in life, and the younger we are when we grasp it and choose to live by it, the longer we will have to enjoy it and develop a life in which not mere happiness and pleasure, but genuine joy becomes our most radiating characteristic.
Ironically, real joy comes from real penitence. This is ironic, because real penitence comes from first acknowledging how bad we really are.
The Apostle Paul, Moses, Nephi, and many other prophets, have made no bones about the fact that human beings – all of us – are flawed, corrupt, damaged creatures who can only progress in this life by grace through Jesus Christ. Even the best of us can and should say with Nephi and with Paul,
“O wretched man [or woman] that I am.”
I don’t gamble, but I would bet that each and every person who reads this is guilty of some sin from the past week, or even the past day. I will bet there’s been, for each of us, some moment of selfish interest, of laziness, of indulgence, of a failure to keep a promise or do whatever we knew was most right in a particular time and place. I would even bet that for most of us, we don’t even know what some or any of those sins were. In this regard, King Benjamin taught his people,
And finally, I cannot tell you all the things whereby ye may commit sin; for there are divers ways and means, even so many that I cannot number them. |
I am daily daunted by the task of being good. I fail continually. Sometimes I fail knowing that I am failing, but find no greater strength, character or understanding in myself to do better in the moment. It’s because of this that daily I can beat my chest and groan in sorrow for the things that I do. I question my choices often. I am often uncertain about whether I am doing what God wants, or what I should do in any sense. For there are diverse ways and means of sinning, even so many that I cannot number them.
Depressing, right. How can that be where joy emerges?
Well, it’s not, yet. I had said, “real penitence comes from first acknowledging how bad we really are.” Thank goodness, there’s a second step.
Part two of repentance, is then acknowledging how good we can really be.
When we understand the gospel of Jesus Christ, we come to know certain facts that are essential to succeeding in the project of life.
Two of these facts are to know (1) that God is our Father and (2) that he loves us.
That God is our Father teaches us that His perfection is not necessarily outside of our reach. It teaches us that we are eternal beings, offspring of an eternal being, of the same species or type as God and as angels, and that we can become like them. We have eternal potential.
Knowing that God loves us includes knowing that His love is not dependent on who we are or what we do in this life. He loves us regardless. We cannot, however, always feel that love, or receive its blessings, because of choices we make that shield us from it. Yet we can be confident that on the other side of those self-constructed barriers, His love for us persists. It can always be relied upon.
A third fact the gospel teaches us is that as a result of that love, God sent His son, Jesus Christ, into the world, to teach, bless and sanctify us, so that the barriers we create between us and His love, and between our conditions now and our eternal potential, can be torn down and permanently eliminated.
Through Jesus Christ we can obtain the grace – enabling and ennobling power and assistance – to be transformed from merely flawed mortal beings, to children of God on the path of perfection.
Parts three, four and five of repentance, then, are to bear these two truths in our hearts and let them govern our lives: First, that we are flawed and sinful people, disobedient children, prone to error, ignorance and unkindness. Second, that we are the eternal children of a Heavenly Father who is perfect, and who loves us anyway, and who has provided a way for us to overcome all sin and error to become like Him.
And there is a further thing to consider here. Sometimes, some of us are unable to see with clarity our sins simply because we are altogether too focussed on our suffering that is not our own fault, that does not arise from our choices or actions. Sometimes we are put upon and made to suffer sorrows, difficulties and sicknesses despite our best efforts, solely or largely because of the misdeeds of others or, simply, rotten luck. Jesus Christ's atonement covers those things too.
Alma chapter 7 teaches us that Jesus Christ came "suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind...[taking] upon him [our] pains and sicknesses...[and] infirmities." All these, along with our sins and errors, are to be placed on the altar of the Atonement to be healed and handled by His holy grace.
It is when we have grasped these truths and have begun to live by them, that we become true witnesses of Jesus Christ.
This is because it is only when we are actually relying in faith on His grace that we come to understand the profound depth and limitless expanse of His love. It is then that we will experience, and therefore can radiate, real joy; not mere pleasure with our circumstances, but the kind of happiness that is independent of external circumstance and finds its source in the internal peace and comfort of the companionship of God throughout our sometimes difficult, dark and distressing lives.
It is my testimony that Jesus Christ is our Saviour, and that by following Him without delusion regarding our failings and without denying our eternal possibilities, we will find, feel and have joy in our lives that will radiate to the view of all people, that we will then be true witness of Him and His gospel because we are true recipients of His grace.