I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive...

"I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men." Doctrine and Covenants 64:10

I've long been pondering this passage of scripture. I have at times heard when men have spoken at the pulpit. br />
Some have said, "I can only hope that when I leave this life, that I will do so free from any offense towards God and towards men." Some have possibly been able to already suppose they are worthy of this distinction. I on the other hand am very far from being able to say this or to elude that my life hasn't gone in the direction that it should or that perhaps I may have led others astray. I may have been guilty of leading entire generations of peoples to their destruction for not saying hello to them once at church, perhaps? How does God help to sort this out? Which part is mine and which part is God's, one may ask, correct?

Is it really that simple? Are we really that close to God and eternal blessings?

It saddens me, at times, that I myself and also others around me are so easily offended. I have been on both ends of the stick as far as being the offender and the offended happens to go.

But in the New Testament we learn this. "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:" Matt 6:14 Can we TRULY take this verse literally? And the subsequent verse about the reverse consequence would then also have to be true? Is it REALLY our job to simply learn how to forgive others?

I have spent many hours and days worrying about all of these things and wondering if life is even worth it to live when we consider that it's possible that others will not choose eternal life based on mine or the bad behavior of those I am stewards over.

We all know that it is an impossible and arduous and daunting task to even consider perfection in so many aspects of our lives. We are reminded every Sunday what it is that we are or we are not doing. We may be working on indexing (for genealogy) and have fallen very short of our goals and we then wonder about how much more we could have done if we had been more diligent. Case in point, I was working at my calling as the new assistant ward clerk in my ward and for the final 10 minutes of the 2nd hour, I decided to visit the church Genealogy library and see what I could do in that short time. I had about 6 minutes and felt I could arbitrate at least 1, maybe 2 census records. (For those who don't know what this is, an arbitrator can look over 1 record that has already been indexed by 2 or more others and then apply corrections or veto certain things to then make the record accurate and submission ready.)

So I was there and then all of the sudden, I got a slap on the shoulder by someone else in the ward saying, "Hey, there's our leader right here!" or something of the sort, and I replied somewhat confused to then say, "Uh, I guess I am?" - I didn't think I had nearly the numbers sufficient to receive praise. After all, I played a Zombie video game with my 13 year old earlier in the week and if truth be told, this game didn't have as clean of a rating as "T" for teen. There were many other times throughout this first half of the year when I would prefer to do my own will vs spend my hours doing key strokes for something that would not pay me something in a monetary form.

Could forgiveness be attained by something as simple as that? Will God come up to us, despite our many short comings, and say, "No, no need to fear little one. You are mine. You did well! Better than I had even hoped for you!" and would this not still leave me puzzled and befuddled at the mercy and goodness of our savior Jesus Christ for applying his faith to each of us as we have exercised ours in him? I would prefer that the answer to my own question is a resounding YES.

Could we really outshine our own misdeeds by a few simple improvements to our life? Can we truly become leaders of many things by being obedient and faithful in just a few while in life?

In my new calling, I was reminded of my own boorish behavior when just 2 years later a family had left the ward boundaries and moved upstate Washington someplace. That dreaded day had come. What became of them? 'They certainly had not found their new ward or had gone to church again since,' I thought to myself. They were a part member family before I came along and ruined it, to be sure.

Back in the summer of 2010, I invited their eldest son to join me in the local Clark County Fair and help me with my booth some 3 weeks before the event. We were trying to adequately decide compensation. I put out fliers and so did he. I was just getting my own feet wet and failing at the same time with this youth. To make a long story short, it ended up bad and feelings were trampled on. I came over and removed the demonstration equipment that I had loaned him for trail and learning and decided not to go with the boy. I returned days later, before the 10 day event, and tried to reconcile. When I tried to pay the eldest son, his father nearly refused me and disallowed me to even pay his son for the work that I did actually see him do. The feelings of bitterness continued on and I felt powerless to make amends. His younger son was disallowed to participate in various scouting programs that I was involved with. If I understand correctly the reason why his son never went camping with us it was because Dad said he would camp in the backyard with him, instead."

So they move out of the ward 2 summers ago and never alerted the new meeting house which would be the father's responsibility to do but none of that matters anymore does it? I have consigned a family to Hell. Why then should me and my family get to live in the good place? How would that be fair? A just God would and should reward me for my boorish behavior unto the ends of the law. If I'm lucky, I may live long enough to see my boys get married in the temple. MAYBE they will be more wise than I have been. Perhaps they may escape this live having offended NONE but not me! I have offended people in business and ostracized others who did not meet my expectations. Can this stay in the past? For months, I felt that it could not. I began to spiral out of control spiritually allowing any and all anxieties of mind occupy my thinking.

I struggled for many months with these feelings of regrets. I have offended more than just one. I have lied to more than just one. I felt like an outcast already and neither of these experiences in life was helping matters any. My body has suffered illness and pains in the chest, I have felt depression and anxiety over my many mis-deeds. For HOW could it be fair that me and my family get to enjoy eternity and a wealth of blessings KNOWING that it is possible now that others will be kept away from those blessings based on my stupidity?

I think I can forgive myself for my own sins or for the things I have committed against myself but what of the other sins committed against mankind? All of these do I lay before the foot of the Lord and hope. That hope is that somehow someway there is mercy in the cards, for me and my family. I pray that as I forgive others of their trespasses against me that I may obtain forgiveness. Else why are we here? Surely God is no respecter of persons. Surely God is both fair and just. Even if I have to spend the rest of my life trying to repair the wrongs that I have done against humanity, I should hope that I too may say but with meaning, "May I now go unto my God being rid of the blood and sins of this generation" having done all that I can to stand and having defended the name of Christ even until Death!" Regardless of when that should happen, it is my hope that I may return to that heavenly place with honor!

He Has Already Paid The Price

By BY ELDER DALLIN H. OAKS

Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles Adapted from an address given at a June 2001 mission presidents’ seminar in Provo, Utah. "Christ’s atoning sacrifice was for “all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit.” (original article found at http://www.lds.org/ensign/2010/04/the-atonement-and-faith?lang=eng)

The first principle of the gospel is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Without this faith, the prophet Mormon said we are not fit to be numbered among the people of His Church (see Moroni 7:39). The first commandment Jehovah gave to the children of Israel was “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). We should always put the Savior first. This powerful idea—that we must have faith and put the Lord first in our lives—seems simple, but in practice many find it difficult.

The scriptures teach us that faith comes by hearing the word of God. The word of God, which comes to us by scripture, by prophetic teaching, and by personal revelation, teaches us that we are children of God the Eternal Father. It teaches us about the identity and mission of Jesus Christ, His Only Begotten Son, our Savior and Redeemer. Founded on our knowledge of those things, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is a conviction and trust that God knows us and loves us and will hear our prayers and answer them with what is best for us.

Faith in the Lord is trust in the Lord. We cannot have true faith in the Lord without also having complete trust in the Lord’s will and in the Lord’s timing. As a result, no matter how strong our faith is, it cannot produce a result contrary to the will of Him in whom we have faith. Remember that when your prayers do not seem to be answered in the way or at the time you desire. The exercise of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is always subject to the order of heaven, to the goodness and will and wisdom and timing of the Lord. When we have that kind of faith and trust in the Lord, we have true security and serenity in our lives.

We look first to our Savior Jesus Christ. He is our model. Our model is not the latest popular hero of sports or entertainment. Similarly, our most precious possessions are not the expensive toys and diversions that encourage us to concentrate on what is temporary and to forget what is eternal. Our model—our first priority—is Jesus Christ. We must testify of Him and teach one another how we can apply His teachings and His example in our lives.

The Savior Builds Us Up President Brigham Young (1801–1877) gave us some practical advice on how to recognize Him whom we follow. “The difference between God and the Devil,” he said, “is that God creates and organizes, while the whole study of the Devil is to destroy.” 1 In that contrast we have an important example of the reality of “opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11). Remember that our Savior Jesus Christ always builds us up and never tears us down. We should apply the power of that example in the ways we use our time, including our recreation and our diversions. Consider the themes of the books, magazines, movies, television shows, and music we in the world have made popular by our patronage. Do the things portrayed in our chosen entertainment build up or tear down the children of God? During my lifetime I have seen a strong trend to set aside entertainment that builds up and dignifies the children of God and to replace it with portrayals and performances that are depressing, demeaning, and destructive. The powerful idea in this contrast is that whatever builds people up serves the cause of the Master, and whatever tears people down serves the cause of the adversary. We support one cause or the other every day by our patronage and by our thoughts and desires. This should remind us of our responsibility to support what is good and motivate us toward doing this in a way that will be pleasing to Him whose suffering offers us hope and whose example gives us direction.

Suffering Is Part of Repentance The central idea in the gospel of Jesus Christ—its most powerful idea, along with the universal Resurrection—is the Atonement of our Savior. We are His servants, and it is critical that we understand the role of the Atonement in our own lives and in the lives of those we teach. Essential to that understanding is an understanding of the relationship between justice and mercy and the Atonement, and the role of suffering and repentance in this divine process. The awful demands of justice upon those who have violated the laws of God—the state of misery and torment described in the scriptures—can be intercepted and swept away by the Atonement of Jesus Christ. This relationship between justice on the one hand and mercy and the Atonement on the other is the core idea of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Book of Mormon teaches that the Savior does not redeem men in their sins: “The wicked remain as though there had been no redemption made, except it be the loosing of the bands of death” (Alma 11:41). The Savior came to redeem men from their sins upon the conditions of repentance (see Helaman 5:11).

One of those conditions of repentance is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, including faith in and reliance upon His atoning sacrifice. As Amulek taught, “He that exercises no faith unto repentance is exposed to the whole law of the demands of justice; therefore only unto him that has faith unto repentance is brought about the great and eternal plan of redemption” (Alma 34:16). This obviously means that the unrepentant transgressor must suffer for his own sins. Does it also mean that a person who repents does not need to suffer at all because the entire punishment is borne by the Savior? That cannot be the meaning because it would be inconsistent with the Savior’s other teachings.

What is meant by Alma 34:16 is that the person who repents does not need to suffer even as the Savior suffered for that sin. Sinners who are repenting will experience some suffering, but because of their repentance and the Atonement they will not experience the full, exquisite extent of eternal torment the Savior suffered for those sins. President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985), who gave such comprehensive teachings on repentance and forgiveness, said that personal suffering is a very important part of repentance. “One has not begun to repent until he has suffered intensely for his sins. … If a person hasn’t suffered,” he said, “he hasn’t repented.”

Lehi taught this principle when He said the Savior’s atoning sacrifice was for “all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit; and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered” (2 Nephi 2:7). The truly repentant sinner who comes to Christ with a broken heart and a contrite spirit has been through a process of personal pain and suffering for sin. He or she understands the meaning of Alma’s statement that none but the truly penitent are saved. Alma the Younger certainly understood this. Read his accounts in Mosiah 27 and in Alma 36. President Kimball said, “Very frequently people think they have repented and are worthy of forgiveness when all they have done is to express sorrow or regret at the unfortunate happening.” There is a big difference between the godly sorrow that worketh repentance (see 2 Corinthians 7:10), which involves personal suffering, and the easy and relatively painless sorrow for being caught, or the misplaced sorrow Mormon described as “the sorrowing of the damned, because the Lord would not always suffer them to take happiness in sin” (Mormon 2:13).

We Must Make a Mighty Change Why is it necessary for us to suffer on the way to repentance for serious transgressions? We tend to think of the results of repentance as simply cleansing us from sin, but that is an incomplete view of the matter. A person who sins is like a tree that bends easily in the wind. On a windy and rainy day, the tree bends so deeply against the ground that the leaves become soiled with mud, like sin. If we focus only on cleaning the leaves, the weakness in the tree that allowed it to bend and soil its leaves may remain. Similarly, a person who is merely sorry to be soiled by sin will sin again in the next high wind. The susceptibility to repetition continues until the tree has been strengthened. When a person has gone through the process that results in what the scriptures call “a broken heart and a contrite spirit,” the Savior does more than cleanse that person from sin. He gives him or her new strength. That strengthening is essential for us to realize the purpose of the cleansing, which is to return to our Heavenly Father. To be admitted to His presence, we must be more than clean. We must also be changed from a morally weak person who has sinned into a strong person with the spiritual stature to dwell in the presence of God. We must, as the scripture says, become “a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord” (Mosiah 3:19). This is what the scripture means in its explanation that a person who has repented of his sins will forsake them. Forsaking sins is more than resolving not to repeat them. Forsaking involves a fundamental change in the individual. King Benjamin’s congregation described that mighty change by saying that they had “no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually” (Mosiah 5:2). Persons who have had that kind of change in their hearts have attained the strength and stature to dwell with God. That is one definition of what we call being saved. Repentance has been the message in every dispensation. The risen Lord emphasized this to the Nephites in explaining what He called “the gospel which I have given unto you” (3 Nephi 27:13): “Now this is the commandment: Repent, all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day” (3 Nephi 27:20). In modern revelation, the Lord explained, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, they who believe not on your words, and are not baptized in water in my name, for the remission of their sins, that they may receive the Holy Ghost, are damned, and shall not come into my Father’s kingdom where my Father and I am” (D&C 84:74).

Forgiveness Is Certain I conclude with a message of hope that is true for all but especially needed by those who think that repentance is too hard. Repentance is a continuing process needed by all because “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Repentance is possible, and then forgiveness is certain. President Kimball said: “Sometimes … when a repentant one looks back and sees the ugliness, the loathsomeness of the transgression, he is almost overwhelmed and wonders, ‘Can the Lord ever forgive me? Can I ever forgive myself?’ But when one reaches the depths of despondency and feels the hopelessness of his position, and when he cries out to God for mercy in helplessness but in faith, there comes a still, small, but penetrating voice whispering to his soul, ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee.’” When this happens, we have the fulfillment of the precious promise that God will take away the guilt from our hearts through the merits of His Son (see Alma 24:10). How comforting the promise in Isaiah 1:18 that “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” How glorious God’s own promise that “he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more” (D&C 58:42). I testify that these words are true, that this message is the doctrine of Jesus Christ, the plan of God our Eternal Father, of which our Savior Jesus Christ is the author and finisher. I testify of Jesus Christ and of His prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, and of the Restoration of the gospel in these latter days through the instrumentality of Joseph Smith.

We cannot have true faith in the Lord without also having complete trust in the Lord’s will and in the Lord’s timing. The truly repentant sinner who comes to Christ with a broken heart and a contrite spirit has been through a process of personal pain and suffering for sin. The state of misery and torment described in the scriptures can be intercepted and swept away by the Atonement of Jesus Christ. When a person has “a broken heart and a contrite spirit,” the Savior does more than cleanse that person from sin. He gives him or her new strength.

Thy Faith, © by Judith A. Mehr Above: Detail from Godly Sorrow, by Douglas M. Fryer. Right: Detail from Christ in Gethsemane, by Heinrich Hoffman, courtesy C. Harrison Conroy Co. Inc.Christ in a Red Robe, by Minerva Tiechert, courtesy Church History Museum

You can ask Heavenly Father in prayer to increase your faith. You can help your faith grow by reading the scriptures (see Romans 10:17; Helaman 15:7-8). Your faith will increase as you strive to live the teachings of Jesus Christ (see Alma 32:28-29).

An Epiphany About The Atonement

I had an epiphany, over the weekend, that helped me to better understand the atonement vs being judged by the Lord for my own many mis-deeds in my life. I think many people's opinions about heaven are such; That it's a glorious place that one is trying not to get kicked out of... His fear comes by reading the story of Adam and Eve in the garden... and that when they sin, they obsess about getting kicked out. One obsesses about the judgment and he never truly lives or serves for he can not. He is on a self doom fulfilling cycle and can not allow the savior to bring him peace in his life. As in sports, these are they that don't continue trying to win the game (being infinite points ahead) but are trying not to lose with an infinite point lead. One of Satan's lies are: You can't be cleaned...you've gone too far... you will be judged. Never never never never EVER let him do that! If he ever reminds you of your past, remind him of his (the Devil) future!

NO "Doom And Gloom!" - A COURAGE TAKE!

Gordon B. Hinckley said this in one of his talks:

“Don’t be gloomy. Do not dwell on unkind things. Stop seeking out the storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight. Even if you are not happy, put a smile on your face. ‘Accentuate the positive.’ Look a little deeper for the good. Go forward in life with a twinkle in your eye and a smile on your face, with great and strong purpose in your heart. Love life.” –Gordon B. Hinckley

There's nothing like it...

There's nothing like a good, deep clean.

Have you ever looked at what looks like an insurmountable project? or a mess that looks nearly impossible to clean? Well, this is what I had once when it took us nearly 6-8 weeks to move homes. We moved from Wyoming to Washington and the process involved taking nearly a half a dozen trips to the dump. We loaded up the van (emptied out of all seats) and drove to the nearest landfill and dumped heaps and heaps of just garbage. (They didn't recycle there as much except for cardboard... but things like foam or form fitting things and other undesirables would have to go somewhere!) I couldn't believe what I had allowed to collect.

Sure some toys were broken... some things were just nonsense paper that we didn't destroy or shred or burn and it collected.

Some of it was wood and other broken pieces from off the house. Some of this was wet and undesirable. I had to shovel out plenty of heaps of paper that had sat on semi-wet concrete. (I say semi-wet because this stuff sat in a shed that sat below a deck overhead.) The deck overhead leaked. Even though our stuff was relatively safe there, in the spring time during the thaw, it was beginning to get wet. There were spiders, bugs and other biologicals that lived underneath the pile.

There were doors to fix, unfinished basements to finish completely but was 99% done. I finished the final touches on the spare office/bedroom.

All and all, it was a mess. An undesirable mess to clean up. This to me, represents what sort of cleaning goes on in the soul.

When the garbage heaps pile up and we no longer have any view of the sun, which gives us warmth, we lay in the underbelly of papers and wet concrete, in a very undesirable place to be. We know the efforts that are required to make the personal temple presentable once more. It may take maybe 6-7 times at the offerings for sin; at the sacrament bar. It may take additional prayer and a shovel or two extra than one wanted to shovel to get those secret places clean. It may take a few final touches to make that home 100% completed and not just 99%...

I guess anything is possible so long as we don't burn down the house and render it beyond repair... but even then, hopefully, one may begin a new. God is both merciful and just. The best bet is to have a better way than not to allow sin to clutter our minds and stain our souls. Better to avoid sin than to have our hearts weighed down by it. Better to heed the fence at the top of a cliff than to place an ambulance down at the bottom of the ravine. Over all, there is a job to be done and with God's help, it may just be accomplished.