(I gave this talk in church in May 2018 ... As 2019 comes to a close and I reflect on this year of focusing on LOVE for my one little word, this talk came back to my mind. I still have a lot to learn and to practice, but I'm working on putting love at the center of my motivations, interactions, judgements, and actions.)
A man once asked Jesus, “Which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus replied: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:36–39).
The great commandments are based on love. Love for our Heavenly Father and love for each other. We define the pure and holy love of Christ as charity. We speak of this often. It’s part of the Relief Society motto. When we think of charity, we first think of service. It is also offering patience & forgiveness, withholding judgment, giving someone the benefit of the doubt.
It is more than just service, true charity is part of our very nature, our character – so that we literally feel as the Savior would and there do as He would do.
We are to seek to develop that kind of love. We are to try to be more like Christ, to seek to incorporate His attributes in our lives.
In our last general conference, Elder Massimo De Feo said, “Pure love is the true sign of every true disciple of Jesus Christ.”
How do we develop Christlike love?
Seek to know & love God
The scriptures say that “God is love,” – he is the source of love. Love is what motivated Him to create our spirits. So the closer we get to Him, the deeper we can experience love.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf said, “God the Eternal Father did not give that first great commandment because He needs us to love Him. His power and glory are not diminished should we disregard, deny, or even defile His name. His influence and dominion extend through time and space independent of our acceptance, approval, or admiration.
No, God does not need us to love Him. But oh, how we need to love God!
For what we love determines what we seek.
What we seek determines what we think and do.
What we think and do determines who we are—and who we will become.
We are created in the image of our heavenly parents; we are God’s spirit children. Therefore, we have a vast capacity for love—it is part of our spiritual heritage."
Neill F. Marriott – “Perhaps our life in a loving premortal world set up our yearning for true, lasting love here on earth. We are divinely designed to give love and be loved, and the deepest love comes when we are one with God.
I love that – we are divinely designed to give love & be loved. It is part of who are, because we were created by a God of love. When we seek God, connect with Him, strive to understand the love that He and Jesus Christ have for us . . . we can better, and more fully, love those around us.
It’s the small and simple things, as President Oaks discussed in general conference, (And Bishop Alder shared at ward conference last week) that help us to seek God. Prayer, reading the scriptures, daily effort.
Spencer W. Kimball shared, “I find that when I get casual with my relationship with divinity and when it seems no divine ear is listening and no divine voice is speaking, that I am far, far away. If I immerse myself in the scriptures, the distance narrows and the spirituality returns. I find myself loving more intimately those I should love with all my heart, mind, and strength.”
Nurturing that relationship is so important – as we feel His love in our lives, we understand who we are and extend that understanding to everyone, looking upon everyone as a son or daughter of God and we are able to love.
1 John 4: 7-11
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
When we love God, we will love others.
Keep our covenants
Uchtdorf – Seeking God with all our hearts implies much more than simply offering a prayer or pronouncing a few words inviting God into our lives. We can make a great production of saying that we know God. We can proclaim publicly that we love Him. Nevertheless, if we don’t obey Him, all is in vain.
Number 2 is Keeping our covenants. Keeping our covenants demonstrates our love for the Savior and for our Father in Heaven.
Linda K. Burton: I invite each of us to evaluate how much we love the Savior, using as a measure how joyfully we keep our covenants. The Savior said, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. (John 14:21)
The promises/commitments that we make in our covenants are more intimate, more personal because those are made one-on-one with God through ordinances. And in most instances, our covenants – while a promise between us and God – also include the way that we will treat, help, and love those around us.
We covenant to mourn with those that mourn, offer comfort. Our covenants prompt us to sacrifice and give of all we have. They force us to look beyond ourselves and to stretch ourselves.
I know that whenever I attend the temple, I leave with a clearer picture of how I need to serve & love those in my sphere. When I partake of the sacrament each week and renew my baptismal covenants, I pause to think about how I can do better in my relationships. Remembering & keeping our covenants will help us develop Christlike love.
Practice
Recently I’ve had the chance to sub in our ward’s Primary. As part of their opening exercises they bring out “the Love Jar”. Inside that jar are slips of paper with the names of every child in Primary. Each week they draw the name of one child, he or she is called to the front, and while a member of the Primary Presidency wraps her arm around him/her, she invites the other Primary children to share what they love about their peer (their classmate). Let me tell you, the hands go up in a hurry! From remarks like, “I like his shoes” to “he’s really funny” to “she is always reverent in class” . . . . these kids are practicing and learning how to show genuine care and love for each other. And to see the face of the child receiving the “love” just light up . . . These simple, honest expressions of love makes each child feel valued. They are practicing how to notice and vocalize the good things they see in others.
Linda K. Burton: “For some, serving or ministering one by one, following the Savior’s example, doesn’t come easily. But with practice, each of us can become more like the Savior as we serve God’s children. To help us better love one another, I would like to suggest four words to remember: “First observe, then serve.”
We develop Christ like love as we look for opportunities to serve others. This love, when it begins to grow in our hearts, leads to action.
When we are primary children, love looks like complimenting someone’s shirt, letting someone have your turn in sharing time, or sharing your snack.
As we get older, the Father asks more of us – the practice sessions get a little more intense – He might ask us to love someone who is difficult, he asks us to serve when it’s inconvenient, and to forgive when forgiving feels really hard.
And in that we discover that we have some major stumbling blocks . . . pride and fear.
Cast out pride and fear
Uchtdorf - The great enemy of charity is pride. Pride is one of the biggest reasons marriages and families struggle. Pride is short-tempered, unkind, and envious. Pride exaggerates its own strength and ignores the virtues of others. Pride is selfish and easily provoked. Pride assumes evil intent where there is none and hides its own weaknesses behind clever excuses. Pride is cynical, pessimistic, angry, and impatient. Indeed, if charity is the pure love of Christ, then pride is the defining characteristic of Satan
Our pride creates a gap between us and the source of love, our Heavenly Father. Pride encourages us to do things our way, instead of reaching for the Father’s help and accepting His will. It makes us believe that we can force ourselves to be humble, on our own, and we can make ourselves love others – which just ends up being insincere and hollow.
Only the Savior’s Atonement can cleanse us of our sins and close that gap or breach. It requires us to sacrifice our personal agendas so that we can make room for the plans of God.
1 John 4:18 – There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear; because fear hath torment, He that feareth is not made in perfect love.
There are a spectrum of things that motivate us in action, but the two basic motivating forces are: fear & love. In most cases, they cannot co-exist. When one is present, the other is absent. Behavior motivated by fear or by love can look very similar on the outside, but it will change the entire experience of the person on the inside.
When my dad made the choice to remarry a few short months after my mom’s passing, I made the decision that I would be there at the wedding. That was going to be my action of support (although I had a whole lot of hesitancy). In the time leading up to the wedding date, my thoughts/feelings and therefore my experience was ruled by fear. Of unknowns, of worst case scenarios, of change. At one point I realized that I could completely change that experience, if I shifted my thoughts and feelings to love. Love for my dad. Love for this woman I did not know yet. Being able to do that (although, I will admit imperfectly) made a difference.
A Buddhist, Jack Kornfield said, “The heart is like a garden; it can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?”
We have control over what we plant, and water, and nurture in our hearts. In trying to develop Christlike love, shifting our thoughts from fear to love can make a big difference.
“When we give our heart to the Father and the Son, we change our world – even if circumstances around us do not change.” – Neill F. Marriott
Rely on the Atonement of Jesus Christ
Neill Marriott – The Savior’s Atonement is a conduit for the constant flow of charity from our Father in Heaven.
Earlier I mentioned the breach or distance that can come between us and Heavenly Father when pride and sin is a part of our lives. Sister Marriott discusses in her talk how the Savior repaired this gap – “He, through His great atoning sacrifice, opens the way for us to partake of God’s loving power, and then we are enabled to repair the “waste places” in our personal lives. Healing emotional distance between each other will require our acceptance of God’s love, coupled with a sacrifice of our natural selfish and fearful tendencies.”
In her address, Repairing the Breach, Sister Marriott shares an experience where she and a relative disagreed about politics. This relative tore her comments apart, proved her wrong within earshot of family memebers, and left her feeling foolish. When she knelt to pray that night she explained to Heavenly Father how difficult this relative was and went on and on sharing all the reasons why. Then the Holy Ghost got her attention for a moment and she heard herself say, “You probably want me to love her.” Love her? She prayed on, saying, “How can I love her? I don’t think I even like her? My heart is hard. My feelings are hurt. I can’t do it.”
Then, surely with help from the Spirit, I had a new thought as I said, “But You love her, Heavenly Father. Would You give me a portion of Your love for her—so I can love her too?” My hard feelings softened, my heart started to change, and I began to see this person differently. I began to sense her real value that Heavenly Father saw.
Over time the gap between us sweetly closed. But even if she had not accepted my changed heart, I had learned that Heavenly Father will help us love even those we may think are unlovable, if we plead for His aid.
Sigh – I’ve been there before. And maybe you have too. This person hurt my feelings – fix them! I too, have stopped, and been reminded that no, I shouldn’t pray for that person to change, but instead my heart needs to change and I need to love them more.
Marriott - Do we understand that Christ has the power to bring us into loving fellowship with the Father and with one another? He, by the power of the Holy Ghost, can give us needed insight into relationships.
This is such a wonderful gift. We are asked to develop Christlike love, to change our very natures and love others as He would. Our mortal limitations make this hard! Especially when that love requires patience, forgiveness, or understanding that sometimes feels beyond ourselves. But through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we can grow in love for others.
We can grow in pure love . . . . the kind of love that puts the comfort & cares of others above our own. Christlike love.
I want to share an experience my dad wrote about my mom during her battle with cancer. He writes: “Empathy during agony is a portion of divinity.” This is one of my all time favorite quotes from one of our church leaders. I share this because this quote reminds me of Teresa. Two days before she was diagnosed with cancer, Teresa and her sweet friend Sandi Pittson, assembled some care packages designed to cheer up the sick and discouraged. Then they set out and delivered them to several ladies. All the while, she was in dire pain in her back that we would later discover was a tumor.
A couple of nights ago, after receiving more bad news about her having to receive additional radiation in her head, we knelt together in prayer. Teresa said the prayer and I kid you not, the majority of her prayer was asking Heavenly Father to bless a sister in our ward that was having surgery or others that might be having difficulties. I knelt next to her in amazement. I silently mouthed the quote "Empathy During Agony is a Portion of Divinty"
Elder Massimon de Feo shared a similar story about the prayers of his mother in his General Conference address. He went on to say:
“Now, dear brothers and sisters, isn’t this what the Savior did? Of course, in an eternal and much broader perspective. But in the midst of His greatest pain, in the garden that night, He was the one who needed help, suffering in a way that we cannot even imagine or comprehend. But in the end, He forgot about Himself and prayed for us until He paid the full price. How was He able to do it? Because of His pure love for the Father, who sent Him, and for us. He loved the Father and us more than Himself.”
The pure love of Christ – charity - is a gift from God. And if it feels bigger than us, we can ask Him to help us possess it:
Moroni 7:48 -- Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ;
I pray brothers & sisters that we too can ask for this love. It will change us. It will heal relationships. It will make us stronger & more refined.
References
Dieter F. Uchtdorf, You Are My Hands, April 2010
Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “In Praise of Those Who Save”, April 2016
Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “The Love of God”, October 2009
Linda Burton, The Power, Joy, and Love of Covenant Keeping, October 2013
Massimo De Feo, “Pure Love: The True Sign of Every True Disciple of Jesus Christ”, April 2018
Neill F. Marriott, “Repairing the Breach”, October 2017
