To Receive His Love

This is very personal, and I hesitated to share it because of how personal it is, but as I pondered whether to or not I should share this, I felt that it was important because it may be that I am not the only person who loves the Lord, desires to follow Christ, who strives to apply the principles of the gospel in my life and still struggles to feel that it is enough. I believe everyone struggles in some way. I’m certainly no exception. Struggling is part of life, an important part of life. The struggle with self (personal weakness) is my greatest struggle. I don’t see myself as “amazing.” I see myself as persevering in good works. For this reason I want to share the thoughts of my heart from this week.

This week while I pondered how the Atonement of Jesus Christ enables us to feel the tender love of our Father in Heaven even when we don’t feel deserving, and even when we feel that what we really deserve is his wrath. During one of my personal prayers this week I experienced such a sweet feeling of love and peace that stopped me from even speaking. It felt as though Heavenly Father wanted me to just sit there and listen to Him, as though he was saying, "Don't speak, let me speak, let me tell you (show you) how I feel about you." It was so compassionate, so humbling, so beautiful, so peaceful, so precious!

In my life I frequently feeling that I deserve the wrath of God for my sin, folly and slothfulness. I plead for his forgiveness, I ask for His strength to be upon me, and I continually strive to change through faith on Christ, but still this feeling of unworthiness has been far too often a block between me and my Father and has made it hard for me to feel his LOVE. I am beginning to realize that I have essentially been pushing his love away, and this week I let Him in. When the Spirit came upon me and I felt that I shouldn't speak but just feel it, listen, I didn't push it away and the feelings that followed overwhelmed me to tears. I can't look on this experience as say that I felt "worthy" of this expression of love, because of my weakness I fall short of the glory of God, but I accept that I don't need to be "worthy" in order to receive his love and that the Atonement of Jesus Christ enables my Heavenly Father to reach me if I but accept the gift.

Our Father’s love is infinite and eternal, it is ever extended outward, but sadly we are our own worst enemy and it is our own stumbling blocks that keep us from feeling his love; as well as our stumbling blocks that keep us from having sufficient faith to be healed, changed, and sanctified. I hope for the day when I can feel a greater measure of his love on a daily basis (I say *feel because I can see the tangible evidence of his love everyday, and maybe *love is the wrong word anyway because I know he loves me, but feeling that he is well pleased with me, that is harder) and I believe it will come in greater measure as I am able to be more Christlike through exercising faith in his grace, the strengthening and enabling power of his atonement, until I no longer desire anything except that which is right in his sight.

I love my Savior so so much for all the ways his sacrifice for me blesses me and helps me feel close to God and become more like him.