Kinda an odd title, but that's the question I want to ask from my studies today. Seems to be my unplanned theme as of late- Heavenly Father has a way of telling me what I need to hear. Yes indeed he does.
You ever have a situation where you are frustrated? At yourself? At someone else? Erry single body on this planet has been frustrated to one degree or another. And sometimes that leads to forgiveness issues. I know this is a deeply rooted problem I have, for many reasons. I feel that I am extremely hard on myself, as well as other people for certain actions we may do. And I asked myself today, why is that? Why are we so hard on ourselves and other people?
Honestly, I don't feel like that's something I can answer in one sitting, the list goes on and on, but another question that came to my mind was why is do we need to forgive?
In D&C 64 (one of my favorite chapters), Christ lays it out plain and simple- just the way I like it! He tells us that EVERY single person on earth has sinned. Bam no excuses, out in the open. He then goes on to tell us that He paid the price for every single one of those mistakes, whether intentional or unintentional on our part: "There are those among you who have sinned...I have forgiven you your sins." Later he states
"I the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men." (64:10)
Christ is the ONLY person who has walked this earth and literally gone through everything we have experienced. He is able to forgive us our trespasses because he has been there, he knows the circumstances and he has been selected as our savior. Through his atonement, we can admit our faults and mistakes and become whole again. All of us need His forgiveness at one point or another. Nobody is perfect. Oh wait, what? That's right- no body is perfect! Because we don't know the whole story behind why someone acts the way they do, but more importantly, because we are not perfect, we need to forgive others there trepasses against us. That also includes forgiving ourselves for the mistakes we make. If we choose not to abide by this commandment, christ has told us we are committing "the greater sin."
I love this next promise: "I the lord will not hold any guilty that shall go with an open heart...for I the Lord require the hearts of the children of men." (64:22)
He doesn't want our money, our clothes, our cars, houses, job- He wants US. ALL of us- and most importantly, our hearts. It made me think of the purpose of the commandments, and how they are given to us to point us to Christ. By living the law of tithing, we show we are not attached to our material possessions, that we do not love wealth or objects above the Lord, and that even when it seems impossible to make ends meet, we trust God will provide the way. By living the law of Chastity, we show our love for the Lord, love for the body he has given us, and love for the other person with whom we are involved. I could go on and on with each commandment, but you get the idea.
God wants our heart. And it is pretty dang hard to give it to him when we are harboring negative feelings to one another.
I know this is something I most definitely need to work on. I am really glad the spirit led me to this study today, I learned a lot of new things about the importance of centering my heart on Christ.
Love you so so much!
Emily
Dearest Emily, this is such a great topic, and it happened to be in line with the story of Moroni that I read today. He forgave those Lamanites time and time again, and it wasn't like the Lamanites did something horrible and Moroni went home, pondered about it, and then forgave them. Moroni forgave them and kept their eternal potentials in mind, even in the middle of the conflict. That is SO HARD! I struggle with this. But I love what you said. That we have to remember that we all make mistakes and that we don't know why people do what they do. I think another thing that helps is remembering those eternal potentials like Moroni did. So if we remember that we are all in the same boat and the BIG eternal goal and everyone's potentials to get there, we should be able to forgive. Easier said that done, but Moroni did it, so I know that with practice, we can learn how to do it too. Love ya!
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