First, He gave you and me an unlimited capacity to love. That includes the capacity to love the unlovable and those who not only do not love you but presently persecute and despitefully use you.
With the Savior’s help, we can learn to love as He loved. It may require a change of heart–most certainly a softening of our hearts–
we can truly minister in the Lord’s way as we accept His gift of love.
Ask for the Lord’s help to love those He needs you to love, including those for whom it is not always easy to feel affection. You may even want to ask God for His angels to walk with you where you presently do not want to tread.
A second gift the Savior offers you is the ability to forgive. Through His infinite Atonement, you can forgive those who have hurt you and who may never accept responsibility for their cruelty to you.
The Savior will grant you the ability to forgive anyone who has mistreated you in any way. Then their hurtful acts can no longer canker your soul.
A third gift from the Savior is that of repentance.
Can we begin to see the breadth and depth of what the Lord is giving to us when He offers us the gift to repent? He invites us to change our minds, our knowledge, our spirit, even our breathing.
When we repent, we breathe with gratitude to God, who lends us breath from day to day. And we desire to use that breath in serving Him and His children.
Repentance is a resplendent gift. It is a process never to be feared. It is a gift for us to receive with joy and to use–even embrace–day after day as we seek to become more like our Savior.
True repentance is not an event. It is a never-ending privilege. It is fundamental to progression and having peace of mind, comfort, and joy.
A fourth gift from our Savior is actually a promise–a promise of life everlasting
Eternal life is so much more than a designation of time. Eternal life is the kind and quality of life that Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son live. When the Father offers us everlasting life, He is saying in essence, “If you choose to follow my Son–if your desire is really to become more like Him–then in time you may live as we live and preside over worlds and kingdoms as we do.”
What is the key to loving as He loves, forgiving as He forgives, repenting to become more like Him, and ultimately living with Him and our Heavenly Father?
The key is to make and keep sacred covenants. We choose to live and progress on the Lord’s covenant path and to stay on it. It is not a complicated way. It is the way to true joy in this life and eternal life beyond.
My dear brothers and sisters, my deepest desires are for all of Heavenly Father’s children to have the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and to heed His teachings and for Israel to be gathered as promised in these latter days. And I desire that we will believe and receive the love the Savior has for each of us. His infinite and perfect love moved Him to atone for you and me. That gift–His Atonement–allows all of His other gifts to become ours.
In a coming day–in that Millennium for which we are now preparing–“every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess” that Jesus is the Christ. And it won’t just be this magnificent Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square singing “Hallelujah.” Every person who has chosen to follow Jesus Christ will sing and shout: “Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever,” “King of kings, and Lord of lords.”
Here is Russell M. Nelson’s full talk:
https://www.lds.org/broadcasts/article/christmas-devotional/2018/12/four-gifts-that-jesus-christ-offers-to-you?lang=eng
-Sherri Jorgensen
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