Being “an example of the believers,” living a life of kindness and compassion, keeping your covenant “to mourn with those that mourn,” and serving others can all have powerful effects on those around you.
In time, you will one day look down at the shoreline of your life and see it washed clean, purified, and sanctified, and in the water’s reflection you will see the image of Christ in your countenance.
So you see, the rigorous change required by the gospel of Jesus Christ is not meant to be disheartening or exhausting; it is exciting and exhilarating! The plan of salvation is the ultimate adventure.
This is a very strong statement: if we refuse to forgive, there remaineth in us the greater sin. How can this be? As I hope to explain, our salvation is conditioned on forgiving others because when we refuse to forgive, what we are really saying is that we reject, or don’t quite trust, the Atonement. And it is our acceptance of the Atonement that ultimately saves us.
Book of Mormon prophets teach that Christ’s Atonement was infinite, eternal, and all-encompassing. Christ’s Atonement covered all sin, all transgression, all wrongdoing. And because He suffered for our sins, He can come before the Father in the Day of Judgment on behalf of those who have repented of their sins to offer intercession,
So grace is not a booster engine that kicks in once our fuel supply is exhausted. Rather, it is our constant energy source. It is not the light at the end of the tunnel but the light that moves us through the tunnel. Grace is not achieved somewhere down the road. It is received right here and right now. It is not a finishing touch; it is the Finisher’s touch.
Making dreams become reality requires great sacrifice and determination. Most people are content to just coast along. Many don’t like to apply their talents and abilities or to put in long hours of work. But to achieve any dream and to make something truly remarkable happen in our lives, we must face adversity head-on, and we must overcome all of the obstacles in our pathway.
Hope is a most powerful influence in our lives. Yes indeed, we do live in a troubled and challenging world. But we live in one of the greatest periods of time in all the history of the entire world. It is a time that I believe every prophet since the creation of the earth prophesied of and looked forward to. We have every reason to be optimistic and full of hope—hope for this life, hope for our children, and hope for the eternities to come.
Every one of us, in one way or another, great or small, dramatic or incidental, is going to spend a little time in Liberty Jail—spiritually speaking.
Today I will talk about some of the trials we are given and the power of deliverance available to us as we pass through them. There are many different tests, but today I will speak of only three. You may be in one of these tests now. For each, the power of deliverance is available—not to escape the test but to endure it well.
His suffering proves His love, but it does more. It is the means He uses to get us to “repent and come unto him.” When we come to have some sense of what Christ has done for us—and, in particular, what He has suffered for us—our natural reaction as children of God is to want to show our gratitude and love by giving our lives to Him, by obeying Him.
Remember the great gifts of mortality: the physical body, additional light, and the eternal family. These gifts are sacred. May the Lord bless you during this wonderful phase of life that is yours to live so that you may receive all three of these great promises in their fulness.
It is because of the Atonement of Christ that we can recover from bad choices and be justified under the law as if we had not sinned.
Loving the Lord with our mind implies pondering and thinking about spiritual issues. With the instruction to “always remember Him,” the Lord does not want some form of general, always-sort-of-in-the-back-of-the-mind kind of remembering. God the Father expects that we frequently have full mental attention and specific thoughts of His Son.
What a blessing it is to be living in a day when we are privileged to have such “a wonderful flood of light” by which we may live. I testify to you of the truthfulness of the restored gospel and that we are led by a living prophet of God.
I pray that the . . . the power of the Atonement in Lazarus, Sonya, Raskolnikov, Theany Reath, and Kats Kajiyama and millions of others will give us courage to “stand forth” and to allow our graveclothes to be removed; and that we might also be both the healers and the healed, the unbinders and the unbound.
As you and I come to understand and employ the enabling power of the Atonement in our personal lives, we will pray and seek for strength to change our circumstances rather than praying for our circumstances to be changed. We will become agents who “act” rather than objects that are “acted upon."
My dear brothers and sisters, I am delighted to be here today to share a few thoughts with you. I appreciate the music that was so inspiring and the prayer to invoke the Lord’s Spirit here today. Three weeks ago today, President Bateman centered his devotional talk around a scripture counseling us to “search diligently in the light of Christ” and to “lay hold upon every good thing” (Moroni 7:19).…
Have you ever picked up a fully loaded pack at the start of a really long hike? It is almost staggering as you try and throw it on your shoulders and secure it to your frame. However, once you get it adjusted on your back and hit your hiking stride, it may still be heavy but you are able to manage. Well, school has started. You have had four weeks…
He who will bring about the restoration of all things also brings to pass the intimate restorations that heal us, cleanse us, and fulfill divine promises.
The Atonement of Jesus Christ is both vast enough to apply to the entirety of the universe and intimate enough to support us in our individual trials.
Bruce L. Brown testifies that modern prophets have revealed and will continue to reveal important truths about the great plan of redemption.
The Savior performed the Atonement for each of us, one by one. We can develop n individual relationship with Him through prayer, study, and loving others.
We all have the need to know the processes by which we recoup what we could be and could have, had we chosen more wisely. So these are the three basics: Atonement, Agency, and Accountability.
When Nephi saw in vision the condescension of both the Father and the Son in offering the Son as the Lamb of God, he could only describe the love in superlative phrases as “beauty . . . exceeding of all beauty; . . . the whiteness of the driven snow. . . . Precious above all. . . . The most desirable above all things. . . . And the most joyous to the soul” (1 Nephi 11:8–9, 22–23). That…
Everything about the gospel is held together by the Savior Jesus Christ. His Atonement exemplifies all of the divine attributes we are seeking.
Many of us are trying to save ourselves, holding the Atonement of Jesus Christ at arm’s distance and saying, “When I’ve done it, when I’ve perfected myself, when I’ve made myself worthy, then I’ll be worthy of the Atonement.
I pray that you and I will make the choices tonight and tomorrow and as long as we live that will bring the influence of the Holy Ghost into our lives in the service of the Master. I testify that as we do, we will feel the cleansing that comes through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and with it the confidence that we are coming unto him.
In living the gospel, we must understand why a Savior is necessary for our physical and spiritual salvation. He is the greatest gift ever given.
To all those who ask the plaintive question “Is there any hope for me?” the answer is a resounding “Yes! Yes! Yes! There is always hope.” Reverberating through all eternity, all creation exults: “In Christ there is always hope.” I know whereof I speak.
We all sin, but we don't have to live with those burdens forever. Through repentance, we can be made clean through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
Tonight I have not come to entertain you; I have come to teach you—to teach you the most important thing I know. I cannot do this, however, without your help. The words and many of the principles I intend to teach you have already heard before. Tonight we approach the season of the celebration of the birth of the Son of God. We join with the rest of the Christian…
Christ was asked the question “Who then can be saved?” The answer? Everyone. Every person can be saved, but eternal life only comes on God's terms.
Drawing parallels between the olive press and the events in Gethsemane, Truman G. Madsen invites us all to reflect on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
God grant that we may all believe and know and understand the great eternal verities by which salvation comes and that, believing and knowing and understanding, we may so live as to gain eternal life.
The scriptures say that we are "bought with a price." We forever owe our love and devotion to Jesus Christ for His ransoming sacrifice.
The atonement of Jesus Christ saves us from the effects of the Fall and from our own transgressions. Understanding it gives us hope to repent and improve.
Jesus Christ’s atonement for our sins was an eternally necessary sacrifice for us that we could not have completed for ourselves.
