He Lives! All Glory to His Name!

It’s almost Halloween. Be sure to join us on the 30th for our annual Halloween Ward Festival. Event begins at 6:00. Missionary updates… Elder Douglas Harker comes home on, October 27th, 3 more days, Elder Vince Darly will be coming home on December 1st and Elder Daniel Ribble will be home on December 18th. Any other good minutes, share them with us on our blog. We would love to hear.

Today, we had another discussion from Debbie Adams, He Lives! All Glory to His Name! By Elder Richard G. Scott. It’s taken from the Conference Ensign and it is on page 75.

Debbie starts off by reading the following: “It is Easter morning, that holy day designated throughout all Christendom to commemorate the victory of Jesus Christ over death. His Resurrection broke what to that point had been the unyielding chains of death. He opened the path whereby each of Heavenly Father’s children born to earth would have the opportunity to rise from death to live again” (pg 75).

What a glorious plan our Heavenly Father has for us, for our brother, our Savior who “shattered the chains of death” for us so that we could all be resurrected and the Atonement. Our Savior was the one who was chosen. As we were in the spirit world, we were told of the plan and we accepted. Everyone who has a body all accepted the plan of our Heavenly Father. As we came down here to receive our physical body our Savior had to do the same. Jesus being born to a mortal mother and an immortal father, had to be the one who could give us the gift. It’s important to know that every one will be resurrected, not just us. Everyone! It is our free gift from our Heavenly Father. It doesn’t matter who you are either.

If you pull out your scriptures, look up the follow scriptures for more explanation: 2 Nephi 9:21-22, Alma 34:9-16, D&C 82:10 and D&C 132:5.

Jesus paid the price for all of our sins. He suffered the pains for every one. In 2 Nephi 2:6-7 it says, “Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth. Behold, he offereth himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the law unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit; and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered.” Jesus is a resurrected being and “he has the capacity to communicate love that is so powerful, so overwhelming as to surpass the capacity of the human tongue to express adequately. He gave His life to break the bonds of death. His Atonement made fully active the plan of happiness of His Father in Heaven” (pg 76). Jesus created the balance between justice and mercy. We have the choice to follow in our Heavenly plans and if we do, we have been promised imaginable blessings. As it states in D&C 82:10, ‘I am bound when ye keep my commandments, but when ye do not keep my commandments, ye have no promise’. I hope I got that right. I didn’t look it up but that is what it says in a nutshell. So in other words, if we do our part, obey the commandments, our Heavenly Father has to honor his promise for ‘he is bound’ by his words. However, if we don’t keep his commandments, then we ‘have no promise’ but we will have to face justice. If we don’t repent of our sins, we have to pay the price as again, our Heavenly Father is bound by rules of justice. It’s interesting how this whole system works. It’s also nice to know that we can count on Heavenly Father to keep his promise. Something that a lot of people don’t seem to keep nowadays! With the Atonement, Heavenly Father’s plan could not move forward. The Atonement gives us the “opportunity to overcome the consequence of [our] mistakes made in life” (pg 76). When we obey the commandments, we receive a blessing. We may not know what those blessings are as we are not told what they are and many times we may not always see the blessings until later, but we can be assured that for every deed we do right, our Heavenly Father is keeping a tally, if you will, and he blesses us. However, the same principal applies for when we do not obey his commandments, “when we break a law, there is nothing left over from prior obedience to satisfy the demands of justice for that broken law” (pg 76). The Savior’s Atonements allows us to repent of our sins and avoid the “penalties that justice would have imposed”.

We must understand that our Savior had to face three challenges. These challenges were required for him to go through in order for us to receive this special free gift of the Atonement and being resurrected. And those challenges were (1) responsibility. We read, “Except it be done perfectly, not one of his Father’s children could return to Him. They were be forever banished from His presence since there would be no way to repent for broken laws and no unclean thing can exist in the presence of God. His Father’s plan would have failed, and each spirit child would have been under the eternal control and torment of Satan” (pg 76).

Second, He had to “personally feel the consequences of all that mankind would ever encounter, even the most depraved, despicable sins” (pg 76). You have to understand that this is every sin of mankind. We know that throughout history, humans have not been very nice to other humans.

Three, he had to be tempted by his brother, Satin himself, “He had to endure the vicious attack of Satin’s hordes while physically and emotionally pressed to the limit”.

We must ponder these thoughts, ponder the scriptures, we must come to fully understand the gift of the Atonement, this priceless gift that we have been given. We must renew our spirit each week. We must teach these things to our children. We cannot rely on schools for churches to do it for us; it is our responsibility to teach our children. We can use the “church as a righteous tool to strengthen [our] home” but we must recognized that as parents it is our responsibility. We must allow ourselves to be guided by the Lord in helping us to bring up our children and to prepare them for the challenges that they will encounter and we know what challenges are out there in the world. We can’t lock them up in the house and hope they never grow up. That just is not going to happen. We have to educate them, teach them, give them the tools and the truth and encourage them to always “do the right thing”, prepare them for the outside world. If we do our part and have hope and faith, they will be all right, no matter “how severely the world is shaken”, they will be all right. I know it may be hard at times and many times we may find ourselves in situations that we thought we would never be in and we see our children being torn between two worlds but if we educate them of the truth and pray and have faith that they will one day see and understand, they will choose the right path. I know that I have found myself in such a situation and through my prayers and finding created ways to educate my children and reading the scriptures to them, I am happy to report that they have chosen the right path. We must be strong and not give up and encourage our children to “always do the right things” and let the consequences follows. And yes, I’ve had to let them go and make wrong choices that and shut my mouth, not give them guilt or the guilt speech but to remind them of the consequences that they must be prepared to face and give them my love and let them go just as our Heavenly Father did to us. Again, with the blog, we have the opportunity to share our experiences and trials with each other. Do take the time to do so. You never know whom you will be helping.

Next week discussion will be lead out our Bishopric as it is the 5th Sunday. Take some time out, grab some healthy snacks and have a tall glass of water and read the discussion we had today. It will inspire you and you will be uplifted by the message from Elder Richard G. Scott. Enjoy, and thanks for reading. Until next time…

Kelly