Welcome to Closer to Christ, the General Conference, where two friends who love Jesus share our
own approach to studying the most recent General Conference talks.
This is Abbey and Amy.
Let's jump into it.
Today we get to discuss Embrace the Lord's Gift of Repentance by Elder Alvarado of the
Seventy, and he begins by sharing a personal experience when he was called to be a member
of the Seventy.
He says, the common feeling of inadequacy, weakness, or even unworthiness is something
with which many of us sometimes struggle.
And he goes on to tell us that if we ever feel weak or inadequate when we look at ourselves
that we're in good company, the prophet Nephi wrote, notwithstanding the great goodness
of the Lord in showing me His great marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth, O wretched man,
that I am.
Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh, my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.
So I guess you could say we find ourselves in good company.
The prophet Joseph Smith spoke of often feeling condemned in his youth for his weaknesses
and his imperfections.
And remember how we talked about this just in the last talk, he went into the grove because
of his feelings of inadequacy and worry.
And it's what led him to studying, pondering, praying, and then going in prayer in that
sacred grove asking for remission of his own sins.
This is definitely a pattern.
Yea, what he considered his own weakness.
So it doesn't stop there.
Like the greatest stories are like what happens after you feel that moment of weakness.
So let's ask it in a question.
Once we recognize a weakness within ourselves, what do we do with it?
Abby, I feel like Satan does a really good job of jumping in to oppress us and bring
shame or anger or outrage that we would even have these weaknesses to begin with.
I would say that the natural man would or women would shake their fist at God and turn
away from him altogether after the natural man would do.
And then humility is key.
As we examine this experience from the life of Joseph Smith, it illustrates how these
feelings of weaknesses and inadequacy can help us recognize our fallen nature.
And then this is the part that I love.
He says, Elvarado says this, if we are humble, this will help us come to recognize our dependence
upon Jesus Christ and stir within our hearts a sincere desire to turn to the Savior and
repent of our sins.
So like you said, where does that take us?
What do we do next?
Two options.
You really swim in the grief of never feeling like you're going to be good enough or you
realize that you get to turn to the Savior in those moments and he gets to make perfect
what we feel is incomplete or unholy.
Totally.
And to be fair, that grief of never being good enough is actually true.
We aren't.
We never will be enough to make it back to the presence of someone who is completely
perfect.
And I feel like Satan plays on that, especially nowadays.
Like he'll work on the mental component of it because I can be told that you're never
going to be good enough.
And I'm in a state of mind right now that I'm like, yeah, I know that's true, but Jesus
has me covered.
Totally.
And I would also like to say, I don't know that good enough is the word, but whole enough.
Yeah, perfect.
Because whole and perfection come together.
Perfection, that form.
Yes.
And that's what says whole in every, every time we turn to him.
I'm glad you clarified it because my mind was thinking in that way.
I know I'm not perfect, but I know what he means when he says perfection.
Totally.
So that's good clarification.
Yes.
Also this, I love how he shares this.
He says, my friends, repentance is joy.
We've heard this before.
Sweet repentance is part of the daily process through which line upon line, precept upon
precept, the Lord teaches us to live a life centered in his teachings.
The part I love about this quote is that he focuses on how the Lord is teaching us to
live.
It's not do X, Y, Z and obtain this, you know, far off prize that you've only ever heard
of or read about or whatever.
It's at the very, very end of your life.
Maybe you're going to receive this reward that I've been telling you about.
Yeah.
That's nebulous.
You know, you don't really know.
It's not well defined.
It's heavenly father telling us as you continue to act in faith and turn to me in repentance,
I share with you line upon line, what joy repentance brings.
It clears out of your heart space for more of my word.
And little by little you can feel how it feels to live a life centered on Jesus Christ.
And as we get that line and we do the thing that he suggested in that line, we get to
reap blessings in that moment.
For sure, right?
You know, at that level of obedience or whatever was, you know, how laws were irrevocably decreed
in heaven when we're obedient blessings are predicated upon that law.
He promises those.
And you can kind of just wash those away and be like, he didn't really give me anything.
That's one attitude.
It's a prideful attitude.
Whereas if you're grateful for everything that you receive and you know that it comes
from the Lord, you can spell that out.
You can say, I recognize this thing.
And then he's like, he knows that's kind of part of the wrap up of that line.
Then it's ready for the next line.
Great.
I love that, Abby.
Very good point.
I've also heard before, have you ever heard, we don't earn heaven, we learn heaven?
Love that.
Good to be reminded of it.
I don't hear it enough.
This is, I feel like Abby, this is the exact same spirit that I hear in these words when
he says sweet repentance is part of a daily process where we learn and the Lord teaches
us to live a life centered in his teachings.
How interesting that one way we learn heaven is to repent joyfully every day.
Such a good point.
And I know that I've heard this, but it's in a way that somebody's trying to tell me
there's nothing that I can do that's going to earn heaven because Jesus Christ just did
it for me.
And they say it in the way that gives them free rein to just do whatever they want in
this life.
And they give their agency away.
Right.
I mean, that's how I'm seeing it.
It's just like, I mean, I can do anything I want and Jesus Christ made it right.
It is true.
He did suffer.
He did perform the great atonement for us and there's nothing that we can do that makes
us repay for it.
There's nothing we've ever done to earn it necessarily.
It's just this gift that's freely been given.
But because it does tie in with this, you don't earn heaven, we learn heaven.
When I learn about him and his ways and his process, it makes me want to do those things.
Not because it's paying a debt.
It's a debt that I can't pay.
I like it.
I can see how it can be twisted by saying to make you feel like anything goes.
Right.
So that's a very good point.
It's a good reminder.
I also, so this brings us to the scripture is so great because Elder Elmerado emphasizes
that Christ is the way.
He shares this from 2 Nephi 31 21.
And now behold, my beloved brethren, this is the way Christ and there is none other
way nor name given under heaven whereby man and woman can be saved in the kingdom of God.
And now behold, this is the doctrine of Christ and the only and true doctrine of the father
and of the son and of the Holy Ghost.
And then the last one is he shared a quote by Elder Gong.
Our Savior's atonement is infinite and eternal.
Each of us strays, each of us fall short.
We may for a time lose our way.
God lovingly reassures us that no matter where we are or what we have done, there is no point
of no return.
At first I thought that was wrong, but it is true.
There is no point of no return.
I thought that I was like, where are we?
He waits ready to embrace us.
I love that quote.
There's so much to learn from it.
And it just re-emphasizes the point, we're not going to get it perfectly.
We are going to require the Savior's atonement, but it's infinite and it is eternal.
And he was totally expecting and anticipating us to have a need for him.
What I hear, what I feel when I see this quote is that this person in this attitude that's
considering these things wants to turn back to him.
They're not prepared to turn away from him.
They're ready for his embrace.
And that is ideally our goal our whole lives, anticipate the mess ups and know to who we're
going to turn to get back up on our feet.
Yes.
Really quick, as far as the mess ups, this just came to mind.
So last night I have wrapped every present from the family like since day one.
And last night my daughter joined me and as we were wrapping and stuff, we were each kind
of doing our own thing.
And she goes, you know what, mom, this is actually way better than I thought it was.
She goes, as soon as I just let go of it, it has to be perfect.
The seams have to be right and everything.
She goes, I never would have started.
But like the way she and I work, we kind of troubleshoot our way through it.
Like if there's a place that's missing a little bit, we do a little bit of an extra big ribbon.
If there's something.
So anyways, she was like, I'm so glad that I just started doing it.
You know what I mean?
And I just think it's, it's kind of a nice attitude to have a just start and you're going
to figure your way out through it.
So I love that it said, we're all going to mess up, like go in with that in mind because
we have the Savior.
We've said it in a lot of different ways, but with the mindset, this is happening around
Christmas time and you know, a lot of people are wrapping presents.
It's like the idea of the wrapping happened and we did the best that we could and we handed
over to him and then his great atonement is the big bow.
There you go.
It's what covers the things and makes it perfect.
And I did walk in and see Amy's gifts displayed on the tree and I did, I did notice how beautiful
it was.
And so now to know that that happened with Bailey and she shared another tradition of
hers with her daughter.
So great.
Let's go to this point in the talk where it talks about how Elder Alvarado urges us to
put Christ's atonement to use.
What a sad thing to have that greatest gift of all and not utilize it.
Obstacles will come.
Let us not wait for things to get hard before turning to God.
Let us not wait until the end of our mortal lives to truly repent instead.
Let us now, no matter which part of the covenant path we are on, focus on the redemptive power
of Jesus Christ and on Heavenly Father's desire for us to return to him.
So be thinking about that.
Here's a question.
What can we be doing now, now to turn to God and truly repent rather than to wait till
the end of our mortal lives with that quote in mind?
Well, I'm going to give you a second to think about it because it's a big deep one.
All right.
But didn't you love how it said, well, it didn't say it.
The spirit told me, just a reminder that it's such a daily and in the moment thing.
Why do we want to sit and carry the things around with us that we get that pain like
the spirit or whatever will tell you like, and that wasn't how things should have played
out in the moment.
We can release that.
We can say, I recognize, I wish I wouldn't have reacted in that way.
I wish I wouldn't have thought that.
I wish I wouldn't have done this certain thing.
And we verbalize that.
And that's the beginning or maybe the end.
Maybe that's all it took to repent of that thing that you remind yourself of it.
And then the next opportunity that something similar comes up in that vein and you actually
respond differently than your natural inclination to respond, then you're demonstrating that
you have that desire to be more like him.
That's so good.
What did you think of?
So when I read that, what came to my mind was, for we know that it is by grace that
we are saved after all we can do.
That's what I'm saying.
I know it's just said so much better.
It just, right.
That's what came to my mind as well.
And that was actually in the last talk that we talked about with the historian.
And like we were saying in that there was so much meat in it and you could go back.
Well, here we are circling back around.
So as a younger Amy, I was so grateful for this law, the law of Christ grace, that it
kicked in at the judgment bar of Christ.
I didn't doubt it.
I was anticipating the day it would be law.
And in my mind, it stayed on a shelf until then when it would be called forth to be enacted.
And that part's true.
However, I failed to understand that there's more.
It also means we are saved by the grace of Christ after all we can do today, or after
all we can do in this specific experience that has taken a lot of our mental time and
focus or after all that we can do in this area that we keep trying and we continually
fall short.
This law of grace is to be applied in our short game as well as our long game.
In the short game, Christ grace redeems us from our daily frustrations and challenges
as we turn to him during and after all we have done.
And then we put it into his hands.
And again, this is the part we've talked about this before, Abby, with the gift of knowing
when it is finished.
I feel like that comes into play here because there are two parts.
The first part would be we do everything in our own power in the current situation.
The second part is we rely on Christ grace to save us.
And I feel like we would each do well to ask Heavenly Father where we are in this process.
Have I done everything?
That I can.
Or am I at the place where I give it to Christ?
How long you want to work in that struggle yourself and hold on to it.
Right?
I like that.
So Satan, and this reminded me of something that President Nelson did say.
This was regarding sin, but he said, Satan delights in your misery.
So in this instance, Satan delights in watching us get tangled up in our own messes, even
striving to do all that we can only to get frustrated and fed up as we don't give it
to Christ.
And then, oh, simply because we failed to recognize that we have indeed done all we
can.
And then there's the other hand.
Satan also delights in our stagnation as we think we have done all we can do, or we do
not completely understand what it looks like today to do all that we can.
And at that point, we're frustrated with God because he isn't gifting us with grace.
We don't realize that we aren't at that part yet.
So whether we hold on, like you were saying, we either hold on for too long or we let go
too soon, both lead to frustration with ourselves and with God in quote, not coming through
when really we have not fulfilled the part of enacting our agency.
So it's either now I hand it to you or show me what else I need to do before I hand it
to you.
I love that.
It's making me think of the title of the talk, embrace the Lord's gift of repentance.
Like they're not coincidental, the reason that they come up with them.
But it's like, sometimes we lightly skim the idea of repentance.
We know that it's there.
Sometimes we think it's for others and it's not for us.
But the word embrace to me, it's like a wholehearted clinging to the idea of it.
And that's, you know, some people are huggers, some people aren't people that are huggers.
They're comfortable hugging everybody and people that are more standoffish, you know,
that vibe, like the energy they put out.
I was just thinking, regardless of how you feel about actual physical touch and hugging,
if you can picture, if you can apply that to the way that we feel about repentance and
embracing the Lord and like letting Him like engulf that, I think we would ask ourselves,
why would we want to hang on to it any longer than we needed to?
But also because it's another thing where you're ready to throw it at Him before even
learned anything from it.
There's something in this balance.
Have you ever had experience where you thought things were done, you turned it over to Him,
you've said things are finished and then He's been like, no, there's more work to be done.
Do you feel something about that?
I am sure there has.
What comes to my mind is Kristen M Yee's talk.
She was finished.
When we think it's finished and you say, and then think it erased.
And her say it's finished was the varnish.
Yeah, I agree.
And He's like, actually, there's more to learn.
You're doing great.
You know what I mean?
That's what came to my mind immediately just because it's so, you know, it's in the forefront
of my mind.
But I am absolutely certain that I've turned things over and been like, all right, I'm
done.
And He's like, great, Amy, for your kindergarten effort.
That totally answered the question because then it's like, if you feel like, oh, are
we doing this again?
Why is He having me do it again?
That would cause me to pause and think because I didn't get the whole message.
And it wasn't finished.
You're not doing it again.
You're taking the next step.
What we thought was step Z was like B or C to Him.
And He's like, you're doing great.
And now don't be discouraged by where you're at, but you can keep going and you can learn
something from that.
I love it.
So any last thoughts on this talk?
You know, I had some last thoughts.
One more thing that he talked about was just how we can meet people over and over in the
Book of Mormon who have had weaknesses and who have gone to God and turned to God in
those weaknesses, and I just love that as we're finishing it this Christmas season.
It's wonderful to be able to meet those people in the pages and just see, you kind of see
yourself in different people at different stages of life, right?
So that was really it in closing.
So maybe something you've thought of as an action item in this talk.
Okay.
My question is this.
Have you asked yourself what gift you're giving Jesus this Christmas?
And if you have, then that's fantastic.
If not, maybe you could ponder on how you can more fully use the gift of his atonement
in your daily life.
A gift that is appreciated and used in gratitude and thanksgiving brings joy to both the giver
as well as the receiver.
That's perfectly said.
Have a good one.