Yesterday, at the Thursday noon phone meeting of Heart t’ Heart, we had five sisters there from five different states. What an amazing blessing that was! To picture that we five were connecting across so many miles, all of one heart and one mind, admitting our need for the Savior and His personal administration in our lives. I truly saw over the horizon into Zion—and the people were of one heart and one mind. (4 Nephi 1:15-18)
There was no contention among the people of God because of what? Because of love of each other? No, because of the love of God—for God and from God—that did dwell in their hearts.
To me, this is what it means to be “pure in heart”—to love God purely. It is to love God with all your soul (Omni 1:26). It is to love not just God the Father, but also as one with Him, God, His Son, the Holy One of Israel, the ETERNAL GOD (capitals are original) as named in on the Title Page of the Book of Mormon.
To be pure in heart is to rejoice more in Christ’s power to redeem than in my power to screw up. It is to feel a portion of His power of resurrection happening in my life today—one day at a time. It is to be raised from the “dead” actions of choosing death through addiction, by Him and Him alone. This happens not through any effort on my part except to “come unto Christ and be perfected in [and by] him” (Moroni 10:32).
Coming unto Christ, loving Him purely, are the “precepts” of the Book of Mormon. It is what President Benson was referring to when he said, “We need to read daily from the pages of the book that will get a man “nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.” (History of the Church, 4:461.)” (Ensign, “Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon,” 1988),
The Church has often been compared to a Bride and the Savior to the Bridegroom. The symbolism of the marriage ceremony in ancient Israel included the bride preparing herself to meet the bridegroom on the eve of his coming. Now is the time and season of awakening the Bride to her Bridegroom, on the eve of His coming. Or rather, the morn, not eve. It is the morn of the Bridegroom’s coming.
The Twelve Step movement within the LDS Church has been part of that awakening and preparation for our Bridegroom. The Lord has not forgotten us. He has not forgotten me. He has not forgotten you. My heart leaps for joy and rejoices to hear messages like the one delivered by Sister Linda S. Reeves at the General Relief Society Meeting in October 2012: “Our Heavenly Father and our Savior, Jesus Christ, know us and love us. … We can feel of Their love and compassion in our suffering.”
To fall in love with the Bridegroom—to love Him with all our hearts and to feel His love for us—is to enter into and to become Zion.
~Colleen H.
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