I recently read a story of a precious little boy who fell off a pier while his parents weren’t looking at him. Within a few moments, maybe a minute, the father turned around and realized his son was gone. He was terrified, because the undercurrents were quite strong in that area. Diving into the water, he was amazed to find his little boy holding his breath and clinging to the leg of the pier. When he got him back to safety, the little boy said to his father, “I was waiting for you. I knew you would come.”
Then the author makes the statement that the reason that little boy had such explicit trust in his father was because his father had developed a relationship of love and trust with his child; they had a history together.
The truth revealed through the restored gospel of Christ is that we have a history with Jesus, too. We fell into mortality trusting His promise, “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you” (John 14:18).
This promise is not just for some future, glorious, spectacular second coming—it is His promise to come to us in our everyday need for Him. He will come to us every day, any day, that we call out and ask for Him—if we call on Him with a heart that believes more in His goodness than in the our badness.
It is the Liar, the enemy of God and of us (collectively and individually), who does everything he can to convince us that we are greater in our sin than God is in His goodness. It is a terrible lie. We must choose to cast it out of our belief system and cry for the Lord to deliver us from it.
The ability to know the living Christ as a close and personal friend and savior is the rock of revelation that the entire LDS Church is built upon. Are the heavens closed? Have the gifts of the spirit ceased? No! Never!
The Savior himself expresses His own tender patience and love for us in John 12:46-47:
I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
~Colleen H.
©2012 Hearthaven Publishing. All rights reserved.
Thanks for this Colleen. It’s amazing to me that I still doubt – and then I say, thank goodness for that man in the scriptures who says: “Lord I believe, help Thou mine unbelief”. I’m right there with him.
Mary