From my journal back on September 4, 2016. This class was just amazing. As I was teaching my class I was blessed with the companionship of the Holy Ghost and as I taught them, the Holy Ghost literally filled my mouth with what to say. I was enjoying it so much because of how much I was learning, I was sad when class was over. One example was:
John 14:15
15 ¶If ye love me, keep my commandments. http://www.lds.org/scriptures/nt/john/14?lang=eng
I was told to ask them, “Why?”, “How is it that if we love God, we will keep His commandments?” They didn’t really know what to say to that.
I was told to ask them, “Why do you love your parents?” Then the answers started to flow: protection, food, home, because they love us, they want us to be happy, etc…
Next, I asked, “And why do we love God?” All the same answers, they started to connect the analogy together. But then the real answer came, someone said, the Plan of Salvation. I then explained that God wants nothing more than for us to become like Him and live the life that He lives. I then shared the scripture in Moses 1:39 “For behold, this is my work and my glory–to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” I explained that God also knew that in order to become like Him and live His life, that we had to progress properly or we could not become like Him. I went thru how we had to keep our first estate, receive a body, and keep our second estate with honor. God knew that in order to keep our second estate with honor, we needed to become sanctified and purified and so He gave us commandments that we had to follow to be able to qualify ourselves to be sanctified and purified by the atonement of Jesus Christ.
With this understanding, they could understand that if we love Him, we would want to become like Him, just as we want to become a good father or mother like our parents. They also realized that by virtue of us being here in this life, we kept our first estate and rejoiced for the chance to become like God one day, and so now we get to put that pre-existence rejoicing to the test and keep the commandments. We keep the commandments because we love and trust that God knows how it is that we can return to Him and therefore that the commandments He had given are for that purpose. Therefore we follow them because by so doing we become transformed into His child and eventually we will become like Him.
Craig
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