Every person on this planet is a child of God.[1] Each is a precious, son or daughter of a Heavenly Father. What does this mean? Why do we care? Well the succint answer is that this simple fact makes all the different in our day to day actions.
Who is God, our Heavenly Father? That is one of the most important questions to answer in this life (and can only truly be answered by praying to Him). But I will give a short synopsis of who I know He is, and why that makes a significant difference in my life.
Heavenly Father is a loving, perfect, just, merciful Father. Much as a goodly Father listens to his small children, talks to them, helps them understand their world, and guides them, our Heavenly Father does to us in our world.As a small child is in his Father’s care, so are we. Our Heavenly Father “wants to communicate with us, and we can communicate with Him through sincere prayer.”
Because each of us is the child of a perfect, omniscient, loving Heavenly Father, each of us has divine potential to become like Him. We may, through faith in the Savior Jesus Christ, repent, and be baptised, and be changed into a better person everyday, en route to eventually attaining perfection. This is our Fathers goal, so see each us reach perfection. And I know it is possible!
One of the best ways for us to learn how to be perfect is in our families. Heavenly Father made it so that children are naturally born only into families with a mother and father, so that we could prepare to become a perfect Parent as He is and return to live with Him one day. Even though sometimes our earthly father or mother is missing from our lives, He is still our Heavenly Father and is constantly there providing for us, listening to our cries, and helping us.
But as is all good stories, their is an evil character as well as the good. Satan, the great master of lies, is concurrently trying to bring us down to destruction, and cause us to fail in reaching perfection. He knows that if he can trick us, he can destroy our happiness, and thus is constantly seeking to tear down, destroy, confuse, and hinder all that is good. His primary focus is to destroy families, and cause disbelief in Jesus Christ, because that is the center of our happiness and salvation. [2]
Thus comes to one of the greatest and most important gifts given to every single person… the power to choose. Because God knows we cannot become like Him without choosing to do so, He has made us free to choose good or evil. To choose if we will seek for God, or follow Satan. There are no other alternatives, although it may appear so. Eventually all have to make the choice whether they will believe in God, or not, and thus follow Satan. But the freedom to choose is ours, and remains ours as long as we do good. [3]
There will be temptations and persuasions from both sides, as we can see throughout life. The powers of good and evil are in constant struggle. But we can choose to follow the Good, to believe in our Heavenly Father, to follow His commandments and eventually one day return to our Father in Heaven. He has given us a guiding roadmap, through the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the living Prophets today. He has not abandoned us and loves us more deeply than we can imagine.
Even if we follow the good there will be problems and trials. Our loving Father gave us the freedom to choose, and with that freedom we will make mistakes. Just as a good father lets his child have the freedom to ride a bike, he also must allow us the possibility of falling over and scraping our knee, otherwise we would not be able to learn. Sometimes we have problems just because we live in a mortal world where sickness, disease, disasters and other things happen. But the truth is if we follow Heavenly Father’s plan, and believe in Jesus Christ we can return and live with God one day, in spite of all the problems and trials of this mortal test. And I’m sure it will be a sweet family reunion for all, if we have chosen to believe in and follow our perfect, loving Father in Heaven.
-Dallin
1. We are Children of God https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1998/10/we-are-children-of-god?lang=eng.
2. The Family Proclamation http://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation
3. Book of Mormon; 2 Nephi 2:27 “Wherefore, men are a according to the b; and cthings are d them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to e f and eternal g, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be h like unto himself.”
. We loved it! Dallin and I usually don’t watch movies nor do we watch PG-13 movies but we really like Courageous.
Hubbard's Cupboard 