One thing I love about my religion is that it is a religion of love. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son…” but it began before then. His love came from the beginning. He had Christ create this world, this beautiful and bountiful world, for our sake, that we may have this earthly experience. That earthly experience will prepare us for the Spirit World, which will prepare us for the Resurrection, which will then prepare us for Judgement, which will prepare us for the Celestial Kingdom, where we will have our own worlds, and we will be like unto God (D&C 135:20). Why would He do this? Why would He go through all this trouble and sacrifice? Why would He send his Son to earth? To suffer for our sins? To die for us? To then be resurrected so that we may do so also one day? Why? Because he LOVES us. He loves us more than any of us can know.
In the beginning, God created us, His spirit children. He created our spirits. He saw us for who we really are, before the world could corrupt us. He gave us two choices: follow Satan’s plan, which gave us no choice from then on out and we would automatically go back to our Heavenly Father; or follow Jesus’ plan, one where we may slip up but it would be our choice whether or not we wanted to return to Him (Moses 4:1-4). All of us on this earth chose Jesus’ plan (Isa. 14:12–20; Luke 10:18; Rev. 12:4–13; D&C 29:36–38; Moses 4:1–4). We chose LOVE. In order to know love, we need to know hurt and sadness. We wouldn’t have found that in Satan’s plan. God placed Adam and Eve on earth so that we may come to earth. I imagine putting Adam and Eve on earth must have been like sending your oldest child off to college. It must have been so hard to watch them eat the fruit off of the tree, but they HAD TO. Because they ate the fruit, we could come here. We wouldn’t have been able to gain bodies unless we had a mother and father to give them to us.
Now, back to LOVE. Sometimes you may wonder, “How could there be a loving God, if there’s so much hate and contention in this world? How could He allow awful things to happen to us? How could He let us hurt one another?”
With everything there is an opposition. Black and white, dog and cat, happiness and sadness, joy and anger, serious and play, loud and quiet, etc. Without one we wouldn’t know or appreciate the other. Without hunger, how would we know and love the sweet taste of warm food? Without hurt, how would we know how to love our friends and family? Without chocolate how would we know how awful vanilla is? (haha just kidding). He created us, but he gave us choice because He LOVES us. A good parent may do things for a child in the beginning, but after a while they begin to let their child make their own choices. Oftentimes, these choices are wrong and the child may get hurt, but they must learn in order to be prepared for the adult world. Oftentimes these choices are right and the parent rejoices and is thrilled. This is how our Heavenly Father feels when we make choices. He LOVES us so he gave us the ability to learn to love others.
He also gave us adversity because He loves us. I know, sometimes adversity sucks. Sometimes you wish that boy didn’t break up with you, that teacher didn’t give you so much homework, your addiction didn’t still bother you, or that broken leg didn’t hurt so much. He gives us rough patches, high and lows, to build us up and make us stronger. It may not seem like it, but you’ll know over time how, and sometimes why, you needed that experience. You must have needed to know that you aren’t ready for a steady relationship, that you shouldn’t procrastinate, that you need to be stronger than your addiction, or that you should have looked before crossing the street. How do you grow stronger? You have to learn yourself. He wants us to be stronger because he LOVES us.
“And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail— But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen.” (Moroni 7:45-48) In order to become like our Heavenly Father, we must LOVE. We have to love our friends, family, enemies, people we don’t know, people we wish we didn’t know, EVERYBODY. In the words of Ingrid Michaelson, “Everybody wants to love, everybody wants to be loved.” We need to LOVE everybody. I know it's hard, but it’s so worth it. I’m not perfect in the least, but I know someone who is and He loves us all, enough to go through all that He went through in order to give me the ability to become like Him. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
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