Today I just wanted to share an excerpt from an amazing talk I read this past week. It was given by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland back in 2003 and it’s called, “The Grandeur of God.”

Here was my favorite part:

“It is the grand truth that in all that Jesus came to say and do, including and especially in His atoning suffering and sacrifice, He was showing us who and what God our Eternal Father is like, how completely devoted He is to His children in every age and nation. In word and in deed Jesus was trying to reveal and make personal to us the true nature of His Father, our Father in Heaven.

“He did this at least in part because then and now all of us need to know God more fully in order to love Him more deeply and obey Him more completely. As both Old and New Testaments declare, ‘The first of all the commandments is … thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first [and great] commandment.'”

A long held belief of mine has been that Satan tries to get us to believe things about God that aren’t true. There was a time in my life that I felt like Satan wanted to condemn me more than God wanted to save me– that He was so far removed from me and my trials that He was just looking down on me, disappointed and cruel. Jesus is the relatable, gentle one while God is unknowable and distant and harsh. But Elder Holland’s words show that none of that is true. All did Jesus did and said, he learned from the Father. If the Savior is gentle and meek and merciful, God must be also. I focus so much on their condemnation of sin that I often forget their forgiveness of it when I do better and choose the right. When you come back to the righteous path, they don’t roll their eyes and say, “Oh here we go again with this one,” with their arms crossed in disbelief. They believe in us and their arms are open always.

Happy Sunday, everybody.

xo

eb