THROUGH OUR TRIALS, GOD CAN MANIFEST HIMSELF IN OUR LIVES (John 9, Christ Heals A Blind Man)

In John 9, when Jesus and His disciples come upon a man who was born blind, His disciples asked,

Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

When we are faced with trials and tribulations that are hard to bear, in looking for an explanation for why these things have come upon us, we can be assured that there is a purpose in the bigger scheme of things and that at least part of that purpose is that “through our challenges, God can manifest Himself in our lives.” (Come Follow Me 2019, April 29-May, John 7-10)

As baptized members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are all covenant sons and daughters of God.  What does it mean to be a covenant son or daughter?  It means that not only have we made covenants or promises to Him, but He has also made covenants or promises to us.  As we have promised to always remember Him, He has promised to always remember us.  He is bound to do so, by the Priesthood authority under which the covenant was made.  He was bound to do so by the love He felt for each of us as He suffered the Atonement on our behalf:

          But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. 

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?  Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.

Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.  (Isaiah 49:14-16)

When we experience hardships, troubles, challenges, tribulations in our lives, the Lord is perfectly aware of us and what has befallen us and cares with a love we cannot even begin to comprehend.  We can be assured that He is standing next to us, ready to bless us.

When we are on the covenant path, striving to keep the promises we have made to Him, we put ourselves in a position to be able to receive His blessings.  We can put our faith and trust in Him, fully expecting that He will help us as we seek to move forward.

This thought has come to me:  When we are on the covenant path, there is always hope, there is always a way, or a path, forward.  As we put our trust in the Lord and call upon Him, He will always show us that path and bless us with the strength we need to walk it.  The journey we take along that path will prove to be a defining experience in our life—by walking with Him at our side, we will become acquainted with the Him as our minds are enlightened with His guidance and our hearts receive His comfort and our body and spirit receive His strengthening influence.  We will learn things we could not have learned in any other way.

Think of Nephi when he was faced with the challenge to build a ship.  What did He learn about the Lord from that experience?  As he had to depend upon the Lord for every step of building that ship, beginning with learning where he could find ore for the tools he would need and getting help to recruit his brothers’ support, he learned day by day and week by week that the Lord was there to give him answers and resources and skills that were needed to accomplish the task:

The Lord had said to Nephi:  And I will also be your light in the wilderness; and I will prepare the way before you, if it so be that ye shall keep my commandments; wherefore, inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall be led towards the promised land; and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led. (1 Nephi 17:13)

We have the same promises from the Lord as Nephi did.  He will lead us through our wildernesses and prepare the way before us if we keep His commandments.  Indeed, He will lead us to our promised land which is salvation and exaltation in His Kingdom.

Only the Lord knows what He wants of us.  Only He can guide us to do it.  It may not be in the way of the world that He guides us (see 1 Nephi 18:2), but it will be in the way that He has prepared for us, in order for us to learn what He wants us to learn.

Truly, through our trials, God will manifest Himself to us, and in that way, those trials will become blessings in our lives.

We Were There

WE WERE THERE

Today in Sacrament meeting I had a thought come to me that I had never thought in just that way before. 

We were there.  Each one of us was there when Christ suffered the Atoning Sacrifice.  Each of us was part of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

Then I tied that thought to other truths I have contemplated many times before:

He suffered for each of us, one by one, in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the Cross of Calvary. 

He suffered for our sins, but not only for our sins. He also suffered all that we individually would suffer during our mortal experience—our pains, sicknesses, trials, tragedies, injuries, mistakes, accidents, doubts, fears, disappointments, sadness, sorrow, grief, anxiety, despair, depression, shame, regret, heartache, injustice, abuse, separation, loneliness --and he suffered these for each one of us individually, exactly as each of us would suffer them, from our unique perspective, given all our strengths and weaknesses, given all the givens from our individual life experiences, good and bad.

And as He did so, He was aware of each one of us, individually.  He was mindful of us, but more than aware, more than mindful.  He actually saw us (see Mosiah 15:10, Isaiah 53:10).  With the perfect omniscience and foreknowledge of a God, for He was a God, He beheld each one of us and with all the love He held in His heart for us, He lived our mortal sufferings in just the way we would live them. He experienced what we would experience, He went through what we would go through, He felt what we would feel.

Why did He do this?

He suffered for our sins to satisfy the demands of justice by paying our debt to justice for us so that He could apply mercy on our behalf and forgive us when we repent, forgive us of our sins, cleanse us from our sins, and remember our sins no more.

He suffered all that we would suffer so that He would understand perfectly according to the flesh how to succor us when we needed help.  He suffered all that we would suffer so that He would understand us perfectly when we stand before Him to be judged according to our works and the desires of our hearts at the last day.

I believe that as we receive the ordinances and covenants of the gospel “one by one,” and as we partake of the Sacrament to renew those covenants each week “one by one,” the act of doing so “one by one” is symbolic of Christ suffering the Atonement on behalf of each of us “one by one.”

The Atonement of Jesus Christ was infinite in its scope.  As Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote, “Its effects cover all men, the earth itself and all forms of life hereon, and reach[es] out into the endless expanses of eternity.”  The Atonement is also intimate in its effect in that it reaches out and embraces every being who ever lived or will yet live on the earth, “one by one.”

See Mosiah 14 and 15 (Isaiah 53), Alma 7:11-12

While serving in the Presidency of the Seventy, Elder Merrill J. Bateman taught that the Atonement was an intimate, personal experience through which Jesus Christ came to know perfectly how to help each of us:

“For many years I thought of the Savior’s experience in the garden and on the cross as places where a large mass of sin was heaped upon Him. Through the words of Alma, Abinadi, Isaiah, and other prophets, however, my view has changed. Instead of an impersonal mass of sin, there was a long line of people, as Jesus felt ‘our infirmities’ (Hebrews 4:15), ‘[bore] our griefs, … carried our sorrows … [and] was bruised for our iniquities’ (Isaiah 53:4–5). …

“The Pearl of Great Price teaches that Moses was shown all the inhabitants of the earth, which were ‘numberless as the sand upon the sea shore’ (Moses 1:28). If Moses beheld every soul, then it seems reasonable that the Creator of the universe has the power to become intimately acquainted with each of us. He learned about your weaknesses and mine. He experienced your pains and sufferings. He experienced mine. I testify that He knows us. He understands the way in which we deal with temptations. He knows our weaknesses. But more than that, more than just knowing us, He knows how to help us if we come to Him in faith” (“A Pattern for All,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2005, 75–76).

Read Mosiah 15:10–12 and the following statement by Elder Merrill J. Bateman, an emeritus member of the Seventy:

“The prophet Abinadi … states that ‘when his soul has been made an offering for sin he shall see his seed’ (Mosiah 15:10). Abinadi then identifies the Savior’s seed as the prophets and those who follow them. For many years I thought of the Savior’s experience in the garden and on the cross as places where a large mass of sin was heaped upon Him. Through the words of Alma, Abinadi, Isaiah, and other prophets, however, my view has changed. Instead of an impersonal mass of sin, there was a long line of people, as Jesus felt ‘our infirmities’ (Hebrews 4:15), ‘[bore] our griefs, … carried our sorrows … [and] was bruised for our iniquities’ (Isaiah 53:4–5).

“The Atonement was an intimate, personal experience in which Jesus came to know how to help each of us” (“A Pattern for All,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2005, 75–76).

Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught concerning the Savior’s mortal experiences: “There is no physical pain, no anguish of soul, no suffering of spirit, no infirmity or weakness that you or I ever experience during our mortal journey that the Savior did not experience first. You and I in a moment of weakness may cry out, ‘No one understands. No one knows.’ No human being, perhaps, knows. But the Son of God perfectly knows and understands, for He felt and bore our burdens before we ever did. And because He paid the ultimate price and bore that burden, He has perfect empathy and can extend to us His arm of mercy in so many phases of our life. He can reach out, touch, and succor—literally run to us—and strengthen us to be more than we could ever be and help us to do that which we could never do through relying only upon our own power” (“In the Strength of the Lord” [Brigham Young University devotional, Oct. 23, 2001], 7–8; speeches.byu.edu).

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland wrote of Christ’s compassion and ability to help us: “Christ walked the path every mortal is called to walk so that he would know how to succor and strengthen us in our most difficult times. He knows the deepest and most personal burdens we carry. He knows the most public and poignant pains we bear. He descended below all such grief in order that he might lift us above it. There is no anguish or sorrow or sadness in life that he has not suffered in our behalf and borne away upon his own valiant and compassionate shoulders” (Christ and the New Covenant [1997], 223–24).