Believe Christ

Do you Believe Christ? 

Do you ever struggle with never feeling good enough? Are you one of those people that's said "I can never make it to the highest degree of the celestial kingdom, I'm not perfect enough!" Well unless I'm the only one that's had these thoughts, then listen up because you're 105% wrong! If I am the only one, then you might as well keep reading and make fun of me talking to myself...

A missionary recently gave me a book called "Believing Christ" to read. The author, Stephen E. Robinson is a genius. He talks about how the great dilemma of life is that God cannot look on sin with any degree of allowance, yet we sin every day! We catch ourselves looking at others and telling ourselves "we're the only sinner, and the distance back to Christ is unattainable. So we might as well give up and just go to the terrestrial kingdom. That second kingdom doesn't sound so bad after all.."
Once again, you're 105% wrong!

You remember the story of Peter right? He told Christ to leave him because he wasn't worthy enough to be in his presence. "Are we talking about the same Peter? You mean the APOSTLE Peter?" Yes! Other scriptural accounts in the Book of Mormon speak of very righteous people (the brother of Jared, etc.) not feeling perfect enough to be with Christ. Well what does Brother Robinson say about this? He says, "The Lord says that "It doesn't matter what you did. Whatever it was, no matter how horrible or vile, is not the issue. The issue here is that whatever your sin was or is, I can erase it, I can clean you up and make you innocent, pure, and of worth, and I can do it today; I can do it now."

If you believe IN Christ, do you BELIEVE Christ? He says we are never to far gone to be saved in the celestial kingdom through the atonement. Brother Robinson says "until we accept the real possibility of our own exaltation in the kingdom of God, we do not yet have faith in Christ; we do not yet believe."

I know I've been guilty of this. I can picture Heavenly Father just banging His head against a brick wall as He picks through my skewed thought processes of "not being worthy enough for the atonement". He's saying "Sister Vercillo, if you're perfect, you don't need the atonement at all! You don't need your Savior. That's the point of this earthly life! Use the atonement!"

Robinson says "there's a trick to perfection- a short cut. And you can burn yourself out trying to become perfect on your own. The great secret is this: Jesus Christ WILL share HIS perfection, HIS sinlessness, HIS righteousness, HIS merits with us." Here's where the word "atonement" comes in, and where the math nerd comes out. If Christ's perfection is infinite, and our sins are (let's say) a perfection level of 1, then together you get 1 plus infinity. And guess what?! That equals infinity! With Christ, we will be made perfect if we do our best. He makes up the rest of the way, always.


Robinson ends with this astounding paragraph. "At the point when we realize our inability to perfect ourselves, the Savior steps in and says, "so you've done all you can do, but it's not enough. Well, don't despair. I'll tell you what, let's try a different arrangement. How much DO you have? How much can be fairly expected of you? You give me exactly that much and all you can do, and I will provide the rest for now. you give me all you've got and a hug and a kiss (that is, make it a personal relationship) and the kingdom is yours! Perfection will still be our ultimate goal, but until you can get it on your own, I'll let you use mine. What do you say? You do everything that you can do, and I'll do what you can't yet do. Between the two of us, we'll have it all covered. you will be 100% justified."

Now that you've fallen asleep 3 times (wipe the drool off) and have finally finished this novel, I'll end just for you! If you believe IN Christ, you need to BELIEVE Christ. Believe that He will save you, no matter where you are, and that you (by trying your best) will one day live with Him in the Celestial Kingdom. I know you can do it! The Kingdom will be filled not with perfect people, but with "tryers" and "repenters".

http://www.lds.org/liahona/1992/04/believing-christ?lang=eng