Life is full of disappointments and episodes when we console ourselves that we've done the best we can. Sometimes, it surprises me that God, knowing pretty much everything about what we're actually going to do, blesses us and protects us and guides us anyway. I stand particularly amazed when He blesses people who turn and rend Him. Then again, it's actually pretty simple. There is really only one choice that we make in this life that really matters. We can choose to believe Him or to look at life with our own eyes. Choosing to believe God comes with certain consequences and obligations. In this choice are found a series of additional oath- and honor-bound obligations concomitant with choosing faith. Perhaps this is why so many opt against believing, preferring to dedicate their time and efforts to anything other than what a being they have never seen may ask of them. What God asks is actually fairly basic if you get down to it. That's one of the beautiful things of Christ's message among man. The mission of the Messiah explains how we are saved. We love God, love one another, and repent.
There is very little that God could ask of us that He could not do better than we. The things He asks are things He cannot do for us. He cannot force us to follow Him. He cannot prove that we mean it when we follow. We evince our status as believers because being leads to doing. The true believer repents and changes his ways. The true believer does what God asks of him. The true believer helps other people reach a point in their lives where they can choose to follow God. The true believer doesn't do this to be seen or just for a time. He makes it stick.
The best we can do is to be our best and turn to Him who is best. When I decided to accept God and follow Him, that choice came with a sacred obligation that I promised to do. We recite it every week in our worship service, attesting to our willingness to be and do all that we can be and do so that God will be with us. There are many people even in my own congregation who do not understand this, and there are many whose minds are so filled with the distracting din of the Deceiver that they do not know they are not on the road less traveled. For this reason, we preach, teach, expound, exhort, and invite all to come to Christ. You see, life is all about turning to the Savior, and when we do, we feel a desire to turn others to Him so that they can find peace in this life and hope for a better world in the life to come. We promise to act like Christians so that people will desire to know more about Him because they know about us. I don't know how well I do at that, but I do what I can here and in all as many of my interactions with people as I remember so that I will be a good example of the believers as Paul admonished us to be (I Tim 4:21).
Sometimes because of circumstance, people are unable to see their way from where they are to a life of faith. I believe this is why God asks us to minister to the sick and the afflicted, to comfort the mourners and the old, to give of our time and treasure to the naked and hungry. When we alleviate their current distress, we free them to spend more time on the things of eternity than they do on things of the moment. When our physical needs are met, we can turn from things of no moment to things of eternal consequence. Also, it helps us to act as Christ would if He were among them, and sometimes we are the answers to their prayers. God does not need our money or our hands. He allows us to help Him bless the lives of His people, and it gives us the opportunity to prove that we really do intend to follow Him. You see, the fullness of the gospel as James wrote in his epistle to the church involves first tending to those with physical affliction and then keeping ourselves free of spiritual wickedness (James 1:27).
Ultimately, we are the most important person we can turn to Christ. Ultimately, the disposition of your soul is the most important work to which you can attend. For this reason, Christ came to forgive sins, to admonish us to repent, and to show us the way to walk that would please His father. During His carnation, Christ quoted Isaiah 61: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord". All of this means that He came to invite sinners to repent, to invite the captives to come forth, to bind up the spiritually wounded. This is why He called prophets then and in our day, to continue the clarion call to change our hearts, to change our direction, to change our aim, by repenting and turning to Christ. All of these things, including weekly worship and the commandments, exist to teach us how much we need a Savior and to give us encouragement and opportunity to turn to Him. Repentance and change are difficult because they ask us to acknowledge our own nothingness and turn to a being we have never seen to rescue us from ourselves. I find that funny because we think nothing of turning to Doctors when we need surgery to set us right, but we don't really know if they really did go to medical school or just printed their diplomas from the internet. Why do we trust them more than Christ? He also wore a white coat. The Master Physician invites us to turn to Him and be healed.
Our lives are carefully orchestrated to help us realize who we are and what we ought to be doing. We have opportunities to speak with people we meet about what we believe and how it helps us. We have myriad opportunities to be the miracle in the lives of those around us, even when they don't know it. We constantly make mistakes that require recompense, reminding us that repentance renders us remedied. We suffer afflictions so we will remember Christ. We alleviate the suffering of others so that they can see Him in our actions. We teach of Christ so that people can understand that we are saved by grace after all that we can do, that Christ is He who heals. We repent so that we can remember that all we can do is to repent, and then Christ makes us whole again.
Life is pretty simple then in its execution. You choose to believe in God or to believe in something else. If you choose something other than Christ, it matters very little what you believe. If we choose to believe, we repent, we reorient, and we rededicate ourselves to evince that our belief is real. If we believe in Christ, we turn to Him for answers and for rewards. All we can do is know that He is God, that He has all power and all knowledge, and that He loves us for who we are. He knows we are children of God. He volunteered to be sent here to save us from our sins, from our circumstances, and from ourselves. All we have to do is repent and turn to Him with everything that we are. If we desire to completely heal, we must completely commit to what the Master Physician asks of us and then go act like we do.
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