Sunday, February 25, 2018

Repentance in the Plan of Salvation

If you’ve been paying attention at church for the last couple of weeks you can probably guess what my topic is, because it is the same topic that every lesson and talk has been about for several weeks. I want you to know that I volunteered to give this talk. I did not volunteer to be the last speaker on the topic, so bear with me if you’ve already heard some of the things that I have to say today.

I volunteered because it is my family’s last week here, and if there is one thing that I wanted to leave you with it is my testimony of my Savior and His atonement. If there is one thing I would want to be able to share with you it is the JOY of repentance. And so, for that reason, I volunteered to talk.
My specific topic is Repentance in the Plan of Salvation. So I’m going to back way up and we are going to talk about before we ever born, and we were Spirits that lived with our Heavenly Parents. It is important to know that we have Heavenly Parents, and we are literally their children, for any of the rest of this to make sense.

The whole reason that any of this life happened is because we have Heavenly Parents that love us. For those of you that are parents, or older siblings, or have loved anyone, you want every good thing the people that you love. And as parents you want your children to become the amazing people you see that they have the potential to be. And when you are being your best self (and not needing to repent) as a parent, the things that you do are all to help them reach that potential.

Our Heavenly Parents love us in that way; we are like Them in that way. So because They love us, They wanted us to have everything that they have, every bit of power and of Joy in the universe. And so they called a grand council in Heaven, with all their children, and presented a plan. The plan was for us to grow, and learn to be like God so that we could have what They have, which is joy. The whole point of this life is for us to become like our Heavenly Parents so that we could have they joy that They have as a result of Who they are. Because They love us.

Now for those of that are parents, we know that for real growth to happen, we have to take our hands off and let life be hard for our kids sometimes. And that’s what the plan was for us to become like God. We had to leave His presence, we had to leave His glory, and we had to leave His peace, and figure out how to do things on our own without any of that. And so there was a forgetting. Because if we really could remember God in all His glory we wouldn’t truly be able to choose. So there wouldn’t be any growth, and we couldn’t progress.

An important part of the plan is for us to have our agency in this life. Agency is one of those Mormon words we use where we know what we are talking about and nobody else does. And I’m afraid that sometimes we don’t really think about what we are talking about. So we are going to define agency as the ability to act for ourselves with accountability and responsibility, to be agents unto ourselves to act and not be acted upon.

Now because we have choices to make, and we are not yet like our Heavenly Father, part of the plan was that this life was going to be a disaster. Every bad thing that exists in this world is part of Heavenly Father’s plan for us to grow. We had our agency to make those choices. We make bad choices, other people make bad choices, and that was all part of the plan. And because of all those mistakes that we were going to make, God told us that we would need a Savior.

At this point, Satan stood up and said, “Your plan stinks. I have a better plan. And I should get to be God now because my plan is better. What I am going to do is just force everyone to be good. And because I will do this, I get to have your glory.”

Jesus Christ said he would do things according to God’s plan and volunteered to be our Savior, because he loved us. He volunteered to come live a perfect life, not making any mistakes, to set an example so we would know what to do. He volunteered to be the Jehovah of the Old Testament, that gave us commandments and taught us what living like God looked like and how to make those better choices. And most importantly he volunteered to perform the Atonement; to suffer our consequences, and fix the things that we could not fix from the bad choices we were going to make.

There was a war in Heaven, and a third of the hosts of heaven were too terrified, and didn’t have the faith in Christ to come down to earth, accepting the Father’s plan. It wasn’t worth it to them. But the fact that you are alive today means that you chose Heavenly Father’s plan, and that you had faith in Jesus Christ that he could and would do what He said He would do. That he really could save us, and that all that God has really was available to us through Him. He would earn it, and then he would share it with us. It took courage, and most of all it took faith.

So we come down, and we forget. And life is a mess. We make choices. And for our agency to truly exist, choices have consequences. Every time we make a choice we also choose the consequence. The simplest example is a child told not to touch a hot stove. If he doesn’t touch the hot stove, he doesn’t get burned and if he touches the hot stove he does get burned. He can’t choose to touch the hot stove without also choosing the consequence of getting burned. This is how choices always are. There is always a consequence to every choice we make, and we don’t get to choose things without also choosing those consequences.

The choices that we make don’t always burn our hand, but the wrong choices that we make damage us spiritually. There are things that we do to ourselves that we cannot fix. Through the Savior’s atonement, we are allowed to repent.

I want to reemphasize the point that God knew that we would come down here and make mistakes and bad choices. All of us were going to screw up constantly all of the time. We knew that, too. Repentance is how we use our agency to access the power of Christ’s atonement to fix those choices. This was the whole point of life. The whole point of life was to “taste the bitter that they may know to prize the good,” as God tells Adam in Moses chapter 6. The whole point of life was for us to come down here and make mistakes and learn from them. Repentance was the plan.

God loves us. And because God truly loves us and wants us to grow, we have to use our agency to choose to access the Atonement of Jesus Christ, through repentance. He doesn’t force salvation on us any more than he forces any other choice. Repentance is a choice that we make to access the Atonement of Christ.

So just what is repentance? I found a quote from Elder Burton of the 70 from a Conference Talk that I love. He said:

Just what is repentance? Actually, in some ways it is easier to understand what repentance is not than to understand what it is.
As a General Authority, I have prepared information for the First Presidency to use in considering applications to readmit repentant transgressors into the Church and to restore priesthood and temple blessings. Many times a bishop will write, “I feel he has suffered enough!” But suffering is not repentance… A stake president will write, “I feel he has been punished enough!” But punishment is not repentance… A husband will write, “My wife has confessed everything!” But confession is not repentance. Confession is an admission of guilt that occurs as repentance begins. A wife will write, “My husband is filled with remorse!” But remorse is not repentance. Remorse and sorrow continue because a person has not yet fully repented. Suffering, punishment, confession, remorse, and sorrow may sometimes accompany repentance, but they are not repentance. What, then, is repentance?

I want to pause here and say that I think sometimes our confusion with repentance being suffering and punishment is because of a bigger confusion about what we are doing here on earth. Sometimes we talk about life as though what we are doing is trying to earn our way into the Celestial Kingdom. I think the confusion about repentance comes because we feel like we have to be punished, that’s part of earning it, that’s what is fair, or just. We are not here to earn our way into Heaven, we are here to learn to become Heavenly. Sometimes we share the confusion of the Saints in the early church that thought Zion was a location that they were trying to find instead of understanding that Zion was who they were trying to become as a people.

The Celestial Kingdom is Celestial, full of peace and joy, because the people that dwell there are peaceful, joyful people, who make the choices that allow that to happen. What we are doing in this life is trying to become Celestial, trying to become like our Heavenly Father, so that we can have all the joy that He has. Sometimes suffering helps us realize we have made a mistake, but God’s plan is not to punish us and then say, “okay, you’ve suffered enough, now I will give you a blessing.” The blessings that come to us are consequences of the right choices that we make.

What repentance is is a change of mind and heart that gives us a fresh view about God, about ourselves, and about the world. Repentance includes turning away from sin, and turning to God for forgiveness. It is motivated by love for God and a sincere desire to follow His plan for our eternal joy.
Repentance is a change of mind and heart that gives us a fresh view about God. Most of the time when we sin in this life, it’s not an act of open rebellion against God. And even when we do sin knowingly, our ability really know things is severely clouded in this world. We are influenced by culture, and habits, and the way we have been taught, and misunderstanding we have about the gospel, and questions we just don’t have answers to. Very few of us that have ever lived (this is when you get into the sons of perdition) would have the ability to even choose, with full understanding and knowledge, to rebel against God. For most of us, we are just confused. We are doing stuff wrong, or we haven’t understood something, and repentance is when we gain that clearer vision of “this is why this doesn’t work. This is painful. This is what I need to change. This is why God wants something else for me.” We turn away from our mistakes, and our wrong-headed thinking, and our ignorance, and we come closer to being like God. Repentance is the process of becoming more like God.

Repentance is not just for big sins (although it certainly is for big sins. There is nothing beyond the reach of Christ’s atonement). But, it is also for the daily process of self-evaluation and improvement. It is literally the process for becoming like God through our experiences in this life.
It is an important point that his is not done alone. A recognition of God’s goodness combined with our best efforts to align our behavior to God’s will, brings Grace into our lives. We use our agency to repent and to accept grace. And then through Christ’s infinite power, He can change us.
Grace is a divine means of help or strength, given through the bounteous mercy and love of Jesus Christ, to do good works that we would otherwise not be able to maintain if left to our own means.
As we repent we replace our old unrighteous behaviors, weaknesses, imperfections and fears with new behaviors and beliefs, that draw us closer to the Savior, and help us become more like Him. And becoming like the Savior is becoming like Father, as He told us throughout His whole life. And that is the whole point of the plan.

We realize that we messed up, or that we were wrong. We are sad about that, we want to do better. We fix what we can and then we rely on the Savior to fix what we cannot. We learn, and we do better.
Repentance is not a backup plan just in case our plan to live perfectly fails. Repentance is the plan of happiness. Repentance is not God’s contingency plan for Adam and Eve’s transgression in the Garden of Eden. Repentance, made possible through the atonement of Jesus Christ, our Savior from before the world began, was always the plan.

This week, on Facebook, Sister Litton posted a quote by Neil Gaiman I liked. It said:
“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.”
We hear quotes like this, that feel so inspirational, all the time. And we apply it, lots of times to business, and art, and school, and trying new things. But we forget that this is what we are doing in this life, and we get down on ourselves when we make mistakes. We are afraid to try things. And we’re afraid to admit to ourselves, or admit to each other, that we’ve messed up. I believe that one of Satan’s greatest tools to stop our progress in this life is shame. Until we are ready to embrace ourselves in our imperfections, and really authentically live our lives trying to accomplish something—once we know that we are here trying to be like God, and we are authentically moving towards that—then we can make choices to repent and choices to do better. But shame makes us want to hide our imperfections and compare ourselves to everyone else. We start to think that everyone else at church is perfect and we are the only one sinning. And everyone gets up and says, I’m so far from perfect and we all internally roll our eyes.

The truth is, we are all super far from perfect. I love all of you so much. And I know you’re not perfect. The more I get to know you the more wonderful I know you are, and the more I know you’re not perfect. And that’s totally fine. I wish we could all live more authentically, and not be afraid to let each other see that about ourselves. Because there is power in making those choices. Rebecca calls it living mindfully (actually she calls it deliberate but I can never think of that word!). You live your life on purpose, you do the things that you are doing on purpose. And understanding that we are going to mess up, and not being afraid of that, is very freeing to me.

Understanding the place of repentance in the plan of salvation, what it changes for me, is knowing who I am, what I am doing, and why I am doing it. It lets me live mindfully. It give me courage to try, and peace in the pain of failure. Failing stinks, and it is painful and it is hard. And that is part of the growing process of life. It gives me hope instead of fear. It gives me hope for me, peace when I make mistakes, and freedom from worrying about things that don’t really matter, like money and popularity. When I am really worrying about living the plan, and trying to be like my Savior, and repenting as I mess up, it gives me freedom from worrying about those things.
It gives me purpose in my trials. I understand that life wasn’t meant for me to feel happy all of the time, and that it wouldn’t do me any good if it was.

And it gives me peace, and space for other people to be imperfect. Once we understand that everybody is imperfect, and we are all trying, it is easier to be forgiving. The atonement is real in our life, but it is also real in the life of the people we love and worry about. It gives us freedom to love them, instead of reacting to them out of fear. You don’t have to be afraid!
I come from Pioneer Stock, and was raised in the church. But, growing up, I knew the technical answer to religious questions, but it wasn’t real to me, in my heart. I didn’t know, on a spiritual level, that I was daughter of God. And I didn’t understand, on a spiritual level, what the purpose of life was.  And so there have been times in my life, before I really knew those things, where it was easy for me to be distracted by the things the world tells you to care about. And I was the kind of teenager that my parents had to worry about a great deal. I have to use Christ’s atonement to repent every day, and there have been times in my life where I have had to use the Atonement of Jesus Christ to repent of big sins, with the help of church leaders.

I want you to know for yourselves, that the Atonement of Jesus Christ is real. That when Christ says that he can cleanse your sins, it’s true. That through Him you truly can become a new person. That is absolutely 100 percent true.

Please also know that for the people that you love. You don’t have to react to their mistakes or confusion in anger, and you don’t have to react in fear. You get to choose to react in love. Because Jesus’ Christ’s atonement, and their ability to repent, is also real.

As we have faith in Christ, and move forward learning to love each other better—that is the becoming like God, God is love—then this world becomes more of a Celestial place for us. Not that life is ever going to be easy, because it would be pointless if it was, but we can have peace now because of our faith in the Savior. We can choose to do hard things, like we did before the world even began, trusting Him, still.

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