I Am a Child of God...

The fact that we are children of God is so fundamental to our religion and has been so often repeated to us since the time when we were just small children that I believe in many instances we take this fact for granted and rarely think about what this amazing doctrine implies. To really understand even the simple things of  god takes a little effort on our part, but that effort soon leads those who try god’s word to an understanding that simply believing and rehearsing His doctrines fails to reveal.

Such is the case with most gospel principles. They are deceptively simple when first encountered so that even a small child can understand them, and yet upon reflection they contain the deep truths necessary to lead us all to faith and salvation. As we reflect upon these principles we soon learn that they contain the keys which ultimately reveal the Lord plainly to our view.

And this is life eternal that they might know thee the only true god and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. John 17:3

And thus by reflecting on the seemingly simple principles of the gospel, we find our way to eternal life and salvation as god is revealed ever more clearly over time. It really is by the small and simple things that god’s work is ultimately accomplished.

Think for a moment on the simple doctrine that we are children of our Heavenly Father. It is interesting to me that God, the greatest of all, has requested that we call him simply Father. It is a term so common to us that we likely don’t understand or appreciate the real honor this title commands in the heavens above. It wouldn’t surprise me if, when our eyes are really opened and we see things clearly, that we realize that there is no title, office, calling, or work greater than that of father or mother.

This knowledge makes me feel a little remorseful because I realize only now, after my father has passed away that I could have been a better son. It’s not that I was a bad son to my father, I wasn’t. I loved him dearly and still do. I really did try to do the things which I knew would please him and which I knew were important to him. But not always. Sometimes I let my own selfish desires stop me from always doing his will. One of my greatest regrets in this life is that I didn’t honor my father as well as I could have.

I try to do things now to honor His memory and to help me remember what a great man he was and is. This year on his birthday, for instance, I made lamb kabobs because lamb was my father’s favorite meat. On Christmas, I always buy myself a couple of boxes of chocolate covered orange sticks because they were one of his favorite Christmas treats. Personally, I don’t like them all that well. But, I do this to remember him and in my own silly and humble way it preserves his memory and this is one of the ways I honor him now in his absence.

My father wasn’t perfect, but I know that he loved me. In fact, I know now that he probably loved me more than anyone else. But at the time I had him with me and he was my father, I didn’t realize how committed to me he was. I didn’t understand just how deep his love for me ran. Such is the folly of youth and this is not an uncommon thing among children.

You see, he was the one who many times said no to the things I wanted. He was also the one who made sure that I was up every day by five thirty or six and outside working with him till ten or eleven in the morning and then again between four and eight or nine at night. Some times he would have uncomfortable discussions with me about things I didn’t want to talk about.

All I could see at the time was my father said no and made me work a lot and I didn’t always do what I knew he wanted me to do. I realize now that he said no because he cared about me and loved me. And, he had me work with him because he wanted to teach me how to do things and to understand the value of work. He wanted me to grow up to be a man so I could take responsibility for myself  and others.

When I was a child, sometimes he raised his voice to me and it hurt my feelings. I knew he loved me but the old saying is true that no one can hurt you like those you love most. My father suffered from a medical condition which caused him constant pain throughout his entire adult life. As I grew older, I began to appreciate and understand the pain my father dealt with, but when I was small I was oblivious to this daily fact of life.

Sometimes the foolishness and chaos of children was simply more than he could handle. But, over time, he developed a strategy to handle life when it was more than he could deal with when mixed with his daily dose of pain. It was at times like these that as he matured in his role as father he learned to excuse himself and off he would go to deal with his pain alone instead of raising his voice.

It would have been so much easier to just let things out but I realize now that this was truly an expression of love for me and my brothers and sisters. He saw how raising his voice affected us and he wanted it to stop. My father was truly a remarkable man.

Why am I telling you this story about my father? Well, partly because it’s Father’s Day and I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. The other reason is to point out that if my father who was imperfect but loved me so much that he would put me and the way I felt before himself, even when he was suffering pain that even now I can’t fully imagine, I think this teaches me something about my Father in Heaven.

If my dad’s love was great, how much greater is the love our Heavenly Father possesses for His children here on earth. I could count on my dad and I knew it. It takes a little faith on our part, but we can rely on our Father in Heaven too.

I remember that as I approached my eighteenth birthday that I was for the first time forced to think seriously about going on a mission. This was during the time when you had to be nineteen to go on a mission. So, when I graduated from High School, I was eighteen and had to wait a year before I was eligible to go.

But as I thought about my mission it scared me a lot. I was, and for the most part, still am, a very shy person. At the time, I couldn’t even look people in the eye when I spoke with them and I had very little to say to anyone. I couldn’t imagine how I could possibly succeed as a missionary.

Anyway, I decided to go away to school for a year and thought that if I went somewhere where none of my friends were going and I really had to make my own way through life, for a few months anyway, that this might help prepare me for my mission. So, that’s what I did. All of my friends went to BYU (Brigham Young University), and I went to Ricks College in Idaho instead.

My dad thought I was crazy and tried for a couple of months to talk me out of going so far away. But I was fixed on my plan and ultimately he relented and allowed me to move away from home and go to Ricks instead of  BYU where he thought I belonged.

I think going to Ricks did help prepare me for my mission, but even going away from the support of home and friends wasn’t enough to vanquish my fear of speaking to others and I still struggled with my decision to go on a mission. Honestly, I was afraid to go. I was afraid I would fail and that I had nothing to offer the Lord or anyone else as a missionary.

Deep down I knew it was a commandment, and that the Lord hadn’t said that everyone should go unless they were afraid. He simply said every young man should serve a mission. But I didn’t know how to get past my fear.

One night I was studying my scriptures and I ran across Moroni 7:33 which reads:

And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me.

As I read this scripture I was alive with the knowledge that what I could or couldn’t do didn’t matter because God can do all things. For the first time I began to really believe that God would help me if I would show him I believed in Him by committing to go on a mission. So, I sent in my papers and received my call.

While I was on my mission, there were many times when I had to jump and believe that God would catch me, and to my amazement, He always did. Sometimes the things he did for me were so miraculous that I marveled that God would do so much to ensure my success. It was his way of letting me know that He really was there and that He really did love me.

This knowledge is empowering and is the most precious thing I took home from my mission. Faith really does unlock the powers of heaven and this is one of the means by which god reveals himself to his children.

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. Revelation 3:20

Being a son of god means that He loves me unconditionally and is always there for me. Many people have no idea what god is willing to do for them simply because they have never developed their faith to the point where it motivates them to act. God’s power and will are most plainly manifest to those who when God says jump, they do.

So, I challenge you to commit yourself to God and jump. When you are asked to serve in a calling, accept. When you are prompted to serve, do it. When it is your time to serve a mission, serve a mission. When it’s time to go to church, go to church.

There are, in my mind three levels or degrees of faith. The simplest form of faith for me is simply to believe. Believe that God is. Believe that the church is true. Believe that Joseph Smith is a prophet. Believe that Thomas S. Monson is God’s prophet today. This is an important step toward greater things, but our journey of faith should not stop there.

The next level or degree of faith is to be so moved and motivated by our beliefs that we begin to act on them. When we reach this level of faith we begin to see God’s power and through that power we begin to see him more clearly. We learn first hand what is important to him and that we matter personally to him. We learn that we can jump and know that he will catch us when we are in his service. All things begin to work together for our good (Romans 8:28, D&C 90:24).

There is another higher level of faith. This is a level with which I still struggle personally. This level of faith requires us to turn our hearts over to God completely and trust him to guide our lives in all things. It sounds simple, but is isn’t. What this level of faith suggests is that we stop praying and working for what we want and instead, pray and work for what God wants, no matter what.

This is the level of faith that the Savior operated under when he said time and again to His father not my will but thine be done. And like the Lord, when we reach this level of faith, we really have to mean it.

These are the very words Christ spoke immediately before he began the atonement. But what blessings the atonement has brought into my life. I owe the savior everything and would be nothing without Him and the Atonement he wrought on my behalf and all because he said thy will be done not mine and really meant it.

It means we don’t pray for what we want, but ask the Lord to reveal to us what he wants. It means that we don’t pray that trials not come our way, but rather ask the Lord what he would have us learn from our trials and for strength to bear them well.

It means that we reach the point in our lives where we recognize that because God loves us perfectly, we can trust Him perfectly. And that even when things are hard and seemingly not going our way, we believe God still loves us and we continue to love Him with all our heart knowing that His ways are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9)and that ultimately God loves us and that love is always at the bottom of everything He does.

One day we will understand and bless his holy name for privileges and opportunities this life has given us, even though now, we may not fully appreciate or understand them.

President Kimball used to ask God to send him another mountain to climb as a way of demonstrating to the Lord his love and commitment to him. I haven’t reached that point of faith yet in my life but I know that because I’m a son of God He loves me perfectly and unconditionally. I’m still working toward a faith which will allow me to trust Him perfectly and unconditionally.

Sometimes when we are in the midst of our trials, god seems far away and is hard to find. Surely Joseph Smith felt this way when he cried out in prayer to the Lord during his time in Liberty Jail:

O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?

And the Lord replied:

My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;

And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes. (D&C 121:1, 7-8)

I’ve begun to understand that at times like this it is not that God has withdrawn Himself from us but that we, for a time because of our trials, lose our vision of Him. Then, after being refined by our trials for a season, when our vision of God is again restored, we find that God never really left our side, but remained with us throughout the trial sustaining and helping us all along the way.

God’s love is constant and unconditional but sometimes, because of our weaknesses and imperfections, we momentarily lose sight of Him. It is at these times when fervent prayer and scripture study has helped me most.

The one thing that has helped me to see the Lord more clearly and to feel and understand him better than anything else is serving in my role as a father. As I contemplated becoming a father when I was first married, I thought I would be pretty good at it. Boy was I naive and nothing was further from the truth.

Nothing has helped me see myself more clearly than taking on the responsibilities of being a father. Many times I haven’t liked what I’ve seen, but that’s okay. Seeing those problems, while uncomfortable, provides an opportunity for change.

Besides I’ve often felt that this life was meant to be practice for the next. Since family life is the type of life that God lives and is the thing He values most, then learning to live and love in families is good practice, don’t you think?

I firmly believe that family is one of the greatest tests this life has to offer and that nothing else is more important. Anything which seeks to divide families and tear them apart is not of God but some other source. And, there are so many things in the world trying to do precisely that.

Families are a fundamental path back to our Heavenly Father. Families teach us to live like he lives. Living in families teaches us lessons and helps us develop qualities which lay the foundation for both understanding God and becoming like Him.

The commandment that God has given us to marry and bring children into the world is simply His invitation to us to practice living as He does so that we can prepare ourselves and lay the foundations necessary to enter His presence again.

So many times I have felt great pride and joy in the accomplishments of my children. I’ve also felt the sorrow that comes from those times when wrong choices are made. The joy and love I felt as I held my children for the first time is indescribable. The worry I feel when one of my sons or daughters is out and I don’t know where they are is frustrating and urgent. The love and comfort I receive from my wife in knowing that she believes in me and will always be there for me sustains me.

All of these things teach me about God and instill within me a desire to be more like Him. They also help me to understand how He feels about me as I navigate this life and make choices which at times delight Him and at other times bring Him sorrow.

Family provides so many opportunities to love selflessly and serve others and temper our weaknesses or, in other words, to become like God. Nothing is more effective in accomplishing God’s purposes than family. And what are His purposes? To bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. (Moses 1:39)

Because we are children of God, we will, one day, become like him and live with Him again if we choose to obey Him and exercise faith in Him and His Son. This one fact is enough to keep me going. If I didn’t believe in God and know that I was his son, it would be so easy to give up, to give in.

The natural man is strong, but God is stronger. Because I know that I’m His son, I keep trying. I know he loves me and always will. I know He is all in for me, so I keep trying sure in the knowledge that there is nothing He wouldn’t do to rescue and redeem me and help me back into his presence. He does this because He is my father and I am His son.

May we live up to the knowledge that this simple principle implies, that we are all sons and daughters of God and that He loves us now and always will is my testimony, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.