Finals week has come and gone. Like every other student I prepared as hard as I could and prayed even harder when it came down to the time to take the tests that I had been preparing for for the whole semester. So often in school tests are what define our success. Tests exist to do just that test our knowledge and at times test our faith. I adamantly believe that there is symbolism in everything. Today I would like to write just a little bit about the preparing for the finals that really matter, the final where we face God and answer for everything we have ever done. Alma said in the 34th chapter of Alma “For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to preform their labors” (Alma 34:32). How are we to prepare? What will the final test be like? What is expected of us? I hope to be able to answer some of these questions.
What is expected of us? The scriptures are clear on this subject. In 1 Nephi 10:21 it says, “No unclean thing can dwell with God; wherefore, ye must be cast off forever.” So how are we to become clean? The Savior himself gave us the answer, He said, “My Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross; and after that I had been lifted up upon the cross, That I might draw all men unto me, that as I have been lifted up by men even so should men b lifted up by the Father, to stand before me, to be judged of their works, whether they be good or whether they be evil—and For this cause have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that they may be judged according to their works. And whoso repententh and is baptized in my name shall be filled; and if he endureth to the end, behold, him will I hold guiltless before my Father at the day when I shall stand to judge the world. And he that endureth not unto the end, the same is he that is also hewn down and cast into the fire, from whence they can no more return, because of the justice of the Father… And no unclean thing can enter into his kingdom; therefore, nothing entereth into his rest save it be those who have washed their garments in my blood, because of their faith, and the repentance of all their sins, and their faithfulness unto the end.” We are to have faith, repent, be baptized, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, and Endure to the End. It is only through the Atonement of Jesus Christ that we can become clean and be ready.
Now before I continue, I would like to make it clear. We cannot earn our way to heaven. There is no possible way for us alone to make it to Heaven we need God’s grace to do that. In a Devotional given by Brad Wilcox, a professor at BYU, he described our need for grace perfectly he said,
“I have born-again Christian friends who say to me, “You Mormons are trying to earn your way to heaven.”
I say, “No, we are not earning heaven. We are learning heaven. We are preparing for it (see D&C 78:7). We are practicing for it.”
They ask me, “Have you been saved by grace?”
I answer, “Yes. Absolutely, totally, completely, thankfully—yes!”
Then I ask them a question that perhaps they have not fully considered: “Have you been changed by grace?” They are so excited about being saved that maybe they are not thinking enough about what comes next. They are so happy the debt is paid that they may not have considered why the debt existed in the first place. Latter-day Saints know not only what Jesus has saved us from but also what He has saved us for. As my friend Brett Sanders puts it, “A life impacted by grace eventually begins to look like Christ’s life.” As my friend Omar Canals puts it, “While many Christians view Christ’s suffering as only a huge favor He did for us, Latter-day Saints also recognize it as a huge investment He made in us.” As Moroni puts it, grace isn’t just about being saved. It is also about becoming like the Savior (see Moroni 7:48).
The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can live after we die but that we can live more abundantly (see John 10:10). The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can be cleansed and consoled but that we can be transformed (see Romans 8). Scriptures make it clear that no unclean thing can dwell with God (see Alma 40:26), but, brothers and sisters, no unchanged thing will even want to.
I know a young man who just got out of prison—again. Each time two roads diverge in a yellow wood, he takes the wrong one—every time. When he was a teenager dealing with every bad habit a teenage boy can have, I said to his father, “We need to get him to EFY.” I have worked with that program since 1985. I know the good it can do.
His dad said, “I can’t afford that.”
I said, “I can’t afford it either, but you put some in, and I’ll put some in, and then we’ll go to my mom, because she is a real softy.”
We finally got the kid to EFY, but how long do you think he lasted? Not even a day. By the end of the first day he called his mother and said, “Get me out of here!” Heaven will not be heaven for those who have not chosen to be heavenly.
In the past I had a picture in my mind of what the final judgment would be like, and it went something like this: Jesus standing there with a clipboard and Brad standing on the other side of the room nervously looking at Jesus.
Jesus checks His clipboard and says, “Oh, shoot, Brad. You missed it by two points.”
Brad begs Jesus, “Please, check the essay question one more time! There have to be two points you can squeeze out of that essay.” That’s how I always saw it.
But the older I get, and the more I understand this wonderful plan of redemption, the more I realize that in the final judgment it will not be the unrepentant sinner begging Jesus, “Let me stay.” No, he will probably be saying, “Get me out of here!” Knowing Christ’s character, I believe that if anyone is going to be begging on that occasion, it would probably be Jesus begging the unrepentant sinner, “Please, choose to stay. Please, use my Atonement—not just to be cleansed but to be changed so that you want to stay.”
The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can go home but that—miraculously—we can feel at home there. If Christ did not require faith and repentance, then there would be no desire to change. Think of your friends and family members who have chosen to live without faith and without repentance. They don’t want to change. They are not trying to abandon sin and become comfortable with God. Rather, they are trying to abandon God and become comfortable with sin. If Jesus did not require covenants and bestow the gift of the Holy Ghost, then there would be no way to change. We would be left forever with only willpower, with no access to His power. If Jesus did not require endurance to the end, then there would be no internalization of those changes over time. They would forever be surface and cosmetic rather than sinking inside us and becoming part of us—part of who we are.”
We must be changed in order to be ready to enter into God’s presence. How does this change take place? The answer is simple, Trials. Throughout the school year the teachers/professors assign homework, projects, and midterms to help prepare us for the final. At times we can feel overwhelmed with the workload that is given us. I know I felt that way this last semester in school. They are designed to help us to grow so that we can be prepared to do well on the final. In life, these trials can come in many different shapes and forms. No one person is similar and no one trial is similar. I believe if we had the ability to put all of our trails in a bag and trade them with someone else we would open their bag see their trials and beg to trade them back for our trials. God knows us individually and he knows that we can handle trials. I would like to suggest 3 simple but essential things that we need to do as we face trials.
1) Take trials a step at a time. Trials have the ability to make time appear to slow down and even stop. There are reasons for that, reasons that we do not understand. So when these trials happen don’t expect too much out of yourself. Take things a step at a time. When my father passed away, our family didn’t know how we were going to handle things. It became very difficult to think of what was going to happen tomorrow and even at times what would happen 10 minutes from now. At those times all God requires of you is to take one step and if you can’t take another one go to your knees and pray for the strength to take another one. Trials won’t be resolved all at once and rarely are they resolved in our time table. Be patient things will work out. There have been days where I would wake up and wonder where I was going to get the strength to endure that day, but somehow somewhere I would find the strength to endure just one more minute and by the end of the day I would thank my Heavenly Father that he helped me endure that one day. It has been four and a half years since my father passed away and there still days where I wonder where I will find the strength to endure, but when those times come I fall to my knees and plead with God for assistance and it comes.
2) Read the Scriptures. On my mission I would repeatedly tell investigators, less-active members, and active members that if they had a question they would find an answer in the Book of Mormon. My Book of Mormon professor expressed that Idea in this way. Whenever he had someone ask him for a solution to a problem they were having he would reply, “read the first 100 pages in the Book of Mormon I know you will find the answer there” If the individual came back and still hadn’t found the answer he would reply “I can’t remember exactly where the answer is but I know if you read the 2nd 100 pages you will find the answer.” Always without fail the individual would find the answer through reading the Book of Mormon.
3) Have Patience. Change and going through hard time takes times. Trials don’t come to stay they come to pass. There is a law in nature, it is the law of seasons. No matter how cold the winter gets spring will always come. No matter how dark the night may appear the dawn will always have the last laugh. Darkness will not and cannot prevail. There may be times where we feel that the darkness will never dissipate and we are left alone but remember even the instructor is silent during the test. Be patient things will work out. As we go through trials don’t expect to be perfect now, it won’t happen. God doesn’t expect us to be perfect in this life why should we expect anything more than he does. He knows we can’t be, but He does however, expect us to become better than we were yesterday. George Eliot said, “It is never too late to be what you might have been. If you feel like you haven’t done well on the tests God has given you there is no better time to start preparing for the final, then the present.
No matter what stage we are in life we will all face trials. I hope that this entry has helped and given some direction in how to face trials. I learned these simple steps to facing our trials and preparing for our tests as a brand new missionary trying to cope with the new stresses of mission life and then again when I came home trying to adjust back to my life here. Today I, as do we all, continue to learn to face the tests of the future. When it all comes down to it trust in God and in good things to come.
Then I ask them a question that perhaps they have not fully considered: “Have you been changed by grace?” They are so excited about being saved that maybe they are not thinking enough about what comes next. They are so happy the debt is paid that they may not have considered why the debt existed in the first place. Latter-day Saints know not only what Jesus has saved us from but also what He has saved us for. As my friend Brett Sanders puts it, “A life impacted by grace eventually begins to look like Christ’s life.” As my friend Omar Canals puts it, “While many Christians view Christ’s suffering as only a huge favor He did for us, Latter-day Saints also recognize it as a huge investment He made in us.” As Moroni puts it, grace isn’t just about being saved. It is also about becoming like the Savior (see Moroni 7:48).
The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can live after we die but that we can live more abundantly (see John 10:10). The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can be cleansed and consoled but that we can be transformed (see Romans 8). Scriptures make it clear that no unclean thing can dwell with God (see Alma 40:26), but, brothers and sisters, no unchanged thing will even want to.
I know a young man who just got out of prison—again. Each time two roads diverge in a yellow wood, he takes the wrong one—every time. When he was a teenager dealing with every bad habit a teenage boy can have, I said to his father, “We need to get him to EFY.” I have worked with that program since 1985. I know the good it can do.
His dad said, “I can’t afford that.”
I said, “I can’t afford it either, but you put some in, and I’ll put some in, and then we’ll go to my mom, because she is a real softy.”
We finally got the kid to EFY, but how long do you think he lasted? Not even a day. By the end of the first day he called his mother and said, “Get me out of here!” Heaven will not be heaven for those who have not chosen to be heavenly.
In the past I had a picture in my mind of what the final judgment would be like, and it went something like this: Jesus standing there with a clipboard and Brad standing on the other side of the room nervously looking at Jesus.
Jesus checks His clipboard and says, “Oh, shoot, Brad. You missed it by two points.”
Brad begs Jesus, “Please, check the essay question one more time! There have to be two points you can squeeze out of that essay.” That’s how I always saw it.
But the older I get, and the more I understand this wonderful plan of redemption, the more I realize that in the final judgment it will not be the unrepentant sinner begging Jesus, “Let me stay.” No, he will probably be saying, “Get me out of here!” Knowing Christ’s character, I believe that if anyone is going to be begging on that occasion, it would probably be Jesus begging the unrepentant sinner, “Please, choose to stay. Please, use my Atonement—not just to be cleansed but to be changed so that you want to stay.”
The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can go home but that—miraculously—we can feel at home there. If Christ did not require faith and repentance, then there would be no desire to change. Think of your friends and family members who have chosen to live without faith and without repentance. They don’t want to change. They are not trying to abandon sin and become comfortable with God. Rather, they are trying to abandon God and become comfortable with sin. If Jesus did not require covenants and bestow the gift of the Holy Ghost, then there would be no way to change. We would be left forever with only willpower, with no access to His power. If Jesus did not require endurance to the end, then there would be no internalization of those changes over time. They would forever be surface and cosmetic rather than sinking inside us and becoming part of us—part of who we are.”
We must be changed in order to be ready to enter into God’s presence. How does this change take place? The answer is simple, Trials. Throughout the school year the teachers/professors assign homework, projects, and midterms to help prepare us for the final. At times we can feel overwhelmed with the workload that is given us. I know I felt that way this last semester in school. They are designed to help us to grow so that we can be prepared to do well on the final. In life, these trials can come in many different shapes and forms. No one person is similar and no one trial is similar. I believe if we had the ability to put all of our trails in a bag and trade them with someone else we would open their bag see their trials and beg to trade them back for our trials. God knows us individually and he knows that we can handle trials. I would like to suggest 3 simple but essential things that we need to do as we face trials.
1) Take trials a step at a time. Trials have the ability to make time appear to slow down and even stop. There are reasons for that, reasons that we do not understand. So when these trials happen don’t expect too much out of yourself. Take things a step at a time. When my father passed away, our family didn’t know how we were going to handle things. It became very difficult to think of what was going to happen tomorrow and even at times what would happen 10 minutes from now. At those times all God requires of you is to take one step and if you can’t take another one go to your knees and pray for the strength to take another one. Trials won’t be resolved all at once and rarely are they resolved in our time table. Be patient things will work out. There have been days where I would wake up and wonder where I was going to get the strength to endure that day, but somehow somewhere I would find the strength to endure just one more minute and by the end of the day I would thank my Heavenly Father that he helped me endure that one day. It has been four and a half years since my father passed away and there still days where I wonder where I will find the strength to endure, but when those times come I fall to my knees and plead with God for assistance and it comes.
2) Read the Scriptures. On my mission I would repeatedly tell investigators, less-active members, and active members that if they had a question they would find an answer in the Book of Mormon. My Book of Mormon professor expressed that Idea in this way. Whenever he had someone ask him for a solution to a problem they were having he would reply, “read the first 100 pages in the Book of Mormon I know you will find the answer there” If the individual came back and still hadn’t found the answer he would reply “I can’t remember exactly where the answer is but I know if you read the 2nd 100 pages you will find the answer.” Always without fail the individual would find the answer through reading the Book of Mormon.
3) Have Patience. Change and going through hard time takes times. Trials don’t come to stay they come to pass. There is a law in nature, it is the law of seasons. No matter how cold the winter gets spring will always come. No matter how dark the night may appear the dawn will always have the last laugh. Darkness will not and cannot prevail. There may be times where we feel that the darkness will never dissipate and we are left alone but remember even the instructor is silent during the test. Be patient things will work out. As we go through trials don’t expect to be perfect now, it won’t happen. God doesn’t expect us to be perfect in this life why should we expect anything more than he does. He knows we can’t be, but He does however, expect us to become better than we were yesterday. George Eliot said, “It is never too late to be what you might have been. If you feel like you haven’t done well on the tests God has given you there is no better time to start preparing for the final, then the present.
No matter what stage we are in life we will all face trials. I hope that this entry has helped and given some direction in how to face trials. I learned these simple steps to facing our trials and preparing for our tests as a brand new missionary trying to cope with the new stresses of mission life and then again when I came home trying to adjust back to my life here. Today I, as do we all, continue to learn to face the tests of the future. When it all comes down to it trust in God and in good things to come.
