Jeff and Kallie

I don't believe in coincidences.

The other day I was working on our website, and in a mad rush, clicking away when I accidentally opened a document that I wrote almost a year ago. I was in the relief society presidency, and it was my turn to teach the fast Sunday lesson, which is different than all the other lessons throughout the month. On fast Sunday, there is no assigned topic. The topic is whatever the presidency decides everyone should hear.

I studied and searched to find the exact words that I should share. All I found was a scripture...

"Behold, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou art an elect lady, whom I have called."

The week before I was supposed to teach, I still didn't know what I should say or how I should teach. I went to church the morning of my lesson, still not knowing. As I sat there, it came. Like a flood of words and examples, it came to my mind. I was nearly overwhelmed with the things I learned as I realized just how great his love is.

It's a lesson I wish I could put into the heart of every woman. I wish that I could shout it, broadcast it to the world. I wish that you knew how much God loves you. How proud he is of all the wonderful things you've chosen to do with your life.

"thy sins are forgiven thee"

It's easier to believe that 'thy sins are forgiven thee' if we can understand who's saying it. This is not your 6-year-old sister telling your 7-year-old self that it's okay that you pulled her hair because your mom is standing over you and forcing you to make up. It's not you telling the businessman you trusted that it's okay he stole your money and lied to you and took everything that you worked for. It's not a lie, or a piece of a lie.

This is God...telling you that your sins are forgiven. God. Remember how he taught us about charity? Suffereth long, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in truth, believeth all things, hopeth all things, NOT EASILY PROVOKED. Remember that? He's not really just teaching us how to love, he's teaching us about him and how we can be like him. So when you hear 'thy sins are forgiven thee', remember who's saying it. He loves you. He suffereth long, he's patient, he's loving, he knows your heart and he knows that you want to be better and do better. Your heart counts for something too, you know. Remember that while you are impatient with yourself and your short-comings (real or perceived as they may be), he is not easily provoked.

All of us have heard that...why is it so easy to forget? We’re human, and imperfect, and we mess up and we repent and try to be better, and sometimes we are, but sometimes we mess up again. Somewhere along the way, we’re left with guilt and shame and feelings of unworthiness before God. Why is that? Maybe it’s because it’s easier to remember that God is just than it is to remember that he’s merciful. When you mess up, next time you turn to him with a desire to be better, please please remember this: GOD IS CHARITY. HE suffereth long and is NOT EASILY PROVOKED. And while it’s true that he rejoiceth not in iniquity, he also believeth all things and hopeth all things. He loves you with an eternal and perfect love. He hopes for you and He believes in you. He doesn’t get disappointed in you…EVER. When you mess up, he waits patiently for you to correct your error. He doesn’t turn away from you…EVER. It's a matter of turning around to see His loving arms open wide and waiting for your return. No matter what you do, His love doesn’t go away. It’s His nature. It’s who He is. I testify of that love and of his forgiving nature. When you repent, he forgives IMMEDIATELY and waits for your best self to come out. Believe Him when he says “thy sins are forgiven thee”.

"thou art an elect lady"

It seems like in this verse, he teaches us about his love, then works to pursuade us to love ourselves.

Spencer W. Kimball once said, "be loyal to the royal within you...for your father is a king". The Proclamation to the World says, "All human beings – male and female – are created in the image of God. EACH is a beloved spirit son or daughter of God, and as such each has a divine nature and destiny."

Again, something we've heard over and over...we're children of God. You clearly know who your parents are - the mom and dad you grew up with, but what about your Father? And what does it really mean to be a child of God?

The background on this is that we all lived with God...for eons of time. He taught us and loved us and prepared us to have an earthly experience. An experience where we would forget what it was like to live in his perfect world. We would be tested to see if we would choose truth when it was presented to us.

We were given bodies, and part of our test would be carnal desires - things that would satisfy our bodies, but not our spirits. Part of our experience would be to train our new bodies and discipline them so that when the time comes, they will be ready to live the celestial law too, like our spirits.

So, put those together, and we are made up of a spirit and a body. The spirit is the one that lived with God, was taught at His feet and learned to live the celestial law with perfect obedience. Our spirits are old...how old? We don't know. Eons, millenia...hundreds of thousands of years. Our spirits have all that experience behind them. All those years, all those lessons, all those days with Heavenly Father in a perfect place...learning how to be obedient and do God's will. To live with God, we must have been perfect, since no imperfect thing can dwell with God.

Fast forward to now. Your perfectly obedient, perfectly clean spirit came to live on earth in a body. A body with cravings and addictions, habits that you loathe. A body that is quite imperfect. A body that is young, and still has many lessons to learn. There are no more days at the feet of God, not literally at least.

You are not your cravings or your addictions or your bad habits. Your body is only 35 years old...or 25 or 18. Your body is learning. Your spirit has the responsibility to teach it and to train it. To discipline it to be obedient to God's commandments. To be strong and worthy to live in his presence. Your spirit knows what it's like to live there, and maybe that's why we get so down on ourselves with our imperfections. Maybe it's because our spirits are obedient and perfect. They remember where they came from and who their father is.

Heavenly Father knows us as spirits, He loves us and trusts us. He knows that we’re obedient and that we fought for Him and His plan before we came to this earth. Our spirits are well-seasoned and have been trained and taught. Our spiritual bodies know how to be obedient to God and have already learned to obey the Celestial Law. THAT’S who we truly are.

Please understand that your physical body is NOT who you really are. It’s part of your experience. Perfection and goodness and perfect love are inside of you. They make up who you are, and they’re stronger than you think. You don’t have to become perfect, you only have to let your perfection out! Let your spirit be stronger than your body – remind your spirit of that perfect plan and of what it was like to sit and learn at the feet of God. Remind it by reading the scriptures, serving in the temple and learning his teachings. Pray for the Holy Ghost, who will protect you and help your spirit to recognize God’s plan that it knows so well. Remember that the Holy Ghost will teach you the truth of all things and bring all things to your rememberance.

"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been since the fall of Adam and will be forever and ever unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."

The way to 'put off the natural man', or stop our lives from being dominated by what's physical and carnal and temporary is through the atonement of Christ. Through obedience to the commandments, through repentance not perfection. Repentance means change. You change a little at a time, and get better step by step.

"whom I have called"

Great things are in store for you. HUGE things. As I write this I think of all the women I know...the ones I know will read this. You are such incredible women, who have done and are doing enormous things. Loving mothers, encouraging wives, college graduates, Primary teachers, entrepreneurs, homemakers, sisters, aunts, friends. There are great things for you to do. Do them. He'll help you. You might be scared...actually you'll probably be scared. :) Do all you can, and Heavenly Father will make up for the rest.

I remember as a missionary, in one of my areas, on Tuesday mornings, we went to the stake family history center to extract names from old, old records. Around 7:00 one morning (I think it was a Thursday), the family history leader, Antonietta, came to our door out of breath. It was June 30th, and the entire stake would be leaving for a week-long temple trip that night. Antonietta and the other stake leaders had made a goal to take 400 names to the temple, but it was 8 hours before the bus left, and they still had 25 names to go. She asked if we could come to the church and help her find the names. She knew she could do it. We told her we'd be there, and before we got out the door, she had already gone on her way to the chapel. It took us about 3 hours, but around 11, we found and prepared the 400th name. Antonieta cried with joy and called everyone else who had helped to tell them we'd done it.

She had a lot to do that day. Finding the 400th name was just the beginning. She still had to make lunch (their biggest meal in Brazil, comparable to our dinner, except no microwaves or shortcuts), and she would have to get packed and get everything to the stake center and ready to go, so she could make sure everyone and everything got on the right bus.

Once she called everyone, she looked at the clock...it was around 11:30. She looked at us and said, "It's the 30th! I haven't done my visiting teaching! I gotta go." She asked us to lock things up and rushed out the door.

We stopped by her house a few hours later to make sure everything was okay. When we got there, she held up an uncooked chunk of meat, and said smiling, "Do you see this!? This is lunch." And she threw it into the pressure cooker. We knew that it took us 45 minutes to walk to the houses where the women she visit taught lived. But she told us she'd done it. She only had time to stop quickly, give them a kiss on the cheek and tell each of them she'd be in the temple praying for them the next day.

Antonieta told us that she had to do her visiting teaching. She said if she didn't do what the Lord had asked her to, how could she expect to feel his spirit at the temple?

There are a lot of things to take from that story, but my point is this....Antonieta's visit to those ladies was far from ideal....no lesson, no treat, no prayer, just a kiss on the cheek and the assurance that she loved them. She did her best, and that's all that was required of her. That's what's required of you. Do your best. The Lord will make up for what's left. Be obedient so that he can bless you with the things you want and need.

I know from the very deepest part of my soul that this is true. Be strong. Do everything you can to strengthen your spirit...your body will learn....be patient with it. Pray, read, obey. He will help you do the things you think you can't do. He loves you...I love you too. :)