Learning To Will What God Wills

I invite you to take a moment now with me to escape the chaos and confusion of this world and travel back in time nearly 2000 years to a historical event from the Book of Mormon. It’s 33 AD in Ancient America, and the world around us is trying to recover from chaos similar in nature to what we just left behind.

You personally experienced and survived the terrible destruction that devastated your home. You, along with friends and family that also survived, just heard the voice of the Father and witnessed the Savior descend from Heaven. Moments ago, He invited all, including you, to come forth and have a private moment with Him.

Some time has passed and you are next in line to stand before Jesus Christ and feel the marks in his hands, feet, and side. What are you thinking? What do you feel?

Now it’s your turn.

You step forward and gradually meet eyes with your Savior. In that sacred moment, what eternal truth does the Spirit teach you?

The Will of God

I’m sure there are a myriad of wonderfully inspiring and joyous feelings that could come to any one of us in a moment such as this. As I have visualized this experience, I have felt the Spirit teach me a powerful truth:

God’s will is to save me.

And not just me. God’s will is to save you. He wants you to live with Him again and bask in the warmth of the eternal light, glory, and happiness that He enjoys. But no matter how much He wills it, He cannot force it on us. We have our agency. It is His greatest gift to us. God’s deepest desire—His very will—is for you to use that agency and choose to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, to choose to live His gospel, and to choose to keep His commandments. He wants this so that you will be prepared to live the kind of life that He so desperately wants to share with you.

Christ has opened the way and shown us the path. In order for us to grant God His deepest wish, we must make it our deepest wish. We must will what He wills; that is, we must intrinsically desire to follow His Son, our Savior, and emulate His divine character. With this new perspective, our understanding of God’s will deepens:

God’s will is for me to choose Him by choosing His Son.

Aligning our will with the Father boils down to strengthening our relationship with Jesus Christ. In April 2019, President Russell M. Nelson taught that, “Jesus Christ teaches the way back to our eternal home. He understands our Heavenly Father’s plan of eternal progression better than any of us. After all, He is the keystone of it all. He is our Redeemer, our Healer, and our Savior.” ¹ Jesus Christ is the only one who can change our hearts and assist us in willing what the Father wills. So how do we strengthen our relationship with the Savior?

Make Time for the Lord

Before we can begin to strengthen our relationship with Christ, we have to make the time to do so. At General Conference in October of last year, President Nelson pleaded with us to “counter the lure of the world by making time for the Lord in your life—each and every day.” He then promised that “[the Lord] will lead and guide you in your personal life if you will make time for Him in your life.” ²

This pandemic has shown us just how quickly our lives can change, and much of it feels out of our control. It is helpful in these situations to focus on the things we can control. President Nelson encourages us, “There are many things we can control. We set our own priorities and determine how we use our energy, time, and means.” ²

For many of us, myself included, it’s been a slow process learning how to control the seemingly uncontrollable. I have personally grappled with challenges of feeling lost in a relentless sea of troubles and tribulations. However, through it all, I’ve found courage in focusing on Jesus Christ. The late Dr. Stephen R. Covey called this focus “The Divine Center”: when the center of our life is on Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. This center has brought increased clarity, perspective, and purpose to my life on a daily basis.

In a similar way, President Nelson has said, “If you really want to embrace a new normal I invite you to turn your heart, mind, and soul increasingly to our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. Let that be your new normal.” ³ I testify that as I have made the Divine Center my new normal, I have seen miracles in my life personally as well as the lives of my family.

That said, none of this has been easy, and it most likely won’t be getting any easier. This is why President Nelson urges us saying, “It is now time that we each implement extraordinary measures—perhaps measures we have never taken before—to strengthen our personal spiritual foundations. Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures.” ⁴

So once we dedicate a slot of time, no matter how small, to a personal experience with Jesus Christ every day, what do we do during that time? I’d like to suggest five things we can do with this time based on what our prophet has emphasized in the last 4 years since he was called.

1 - Repent

The first thing we can do is make time daily to focus on repentance. Oftentimes we think repentance is a singular significant event that happens on rare occasions in our lives, reserved only for bigger mistakes. I prefer to think of it as a daily opportunity to check in with myself and with God. The Greek roots for the word “repent” as used in the bible translate essentially into “a change of thinking or living”. This change occurs gradually as we take small moments throughout our day to pause and reflect on how we can do better at aligning our will with the Father’s.

I love how President Nelson teaches about repentance. He says, “Nothing is more liberating, more ennobling, or more crucial to our individual progression than is a regular, daily focus on repentance.” ⁵ Such a positive perspective!

With that perspective, it’s important to remember that “repentance” and “perfection” are two separate things. Repentance is the process by which we will eventually become perfected, but that won’t happen until the next life. Although perfection is not the expectation in this life, increased purity is. President Nelson taught, “Daily repentance is the pathway to purity, and purity brings power. … The forces of evil have never raged more forcefully than they do today. … Inviting priesthood power into our lives through daily repentance is the only way you will keep yourself and your family spiritually safe in the challenging days ahead.” ⁵

2 - Seek Pure Truth

The second thing we can do is seek pure truth. I don’t know about you, but I find it almost impossible anymore to distinguish between facts and opinions. Every time I listen to the news or scroll through social media I’m bombarded with information, and not all of it is true. At times I struggle to know where to go for truth on temporal issues.

Thankfully, this is not the case with eternal matters. President Nelson teaches that, “Contrary to the doubts of some, there really is such a thing as right and wrong. There really is absolute truth—eternal truth. One of the plagues of our day is that too few people know where to turn for truth.” ⁶

The doctrine of Christ is a fundamental source of eternal truths that we can apply in our lives to help us align our will with the Father. It helps us find and stay on the covenant path. And we are promised that “staying on that narrow but well-defined path will ultimately qualify us to receive all that God has. Nothing could be worth more than all our Father has!” ⁶

3 - Seek Pure Revelation

The third thing we can do is seek pure revelation through daily personal prayer. In a world where everyone around us is looking left and right for answers, we must look up. The Bible Dictionary teaches that “Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other.” ⁷ To me, there is no more powerful way to understand who God is and build a relationship with Him than through meaningful daily prayer.

The best thing about prayer is that it’s a conversation. Recently, President Nelson conveyed that “One of the things the Spirit has repeatedly impressed upon my mind since my new calling as President of the Church is how willing the Lord is to reveal His mind and will. The privilege of receiving revelation is one of the greatest gifts of God to His children.” ⁸ It makes sense that soon after his call to preside over the church, President Nelson launched the #HearHim campaign. And it’s still going!

Hearing Him isn’t easy. It takes proactivity and, at times, sacrifice. We must put in effort and make time to find a quiet place where we can regularly go, humble ourselves before God, and pour out our heart to our Heavenly Father. ⁸

In the Book of Mormon we learn that we are commanded to “pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance … for the welfare of thy soul.” ⁹

We may not always want to pray. I know I don’t. Sometimes I’m so frustrated or upset at my situation that it’s the last thing I want to do. But I know that when I overcome my misgivings, hit my knees, and express my frustrations to Heavenly Father, He listens, He loves, and He comforts. I would not be where I am today without prayer. I would not have made it through my mission. I would not have met my wife. I would not have been able to endure many of the trials that we have faced together. Prayer is my lifeline, and I know that it can be yours if you make the sacrifices necessary to “increase your spiritual capacity to receive revelation” and give prayer a chance. ⁸

4 - Worship in the Temple

A fourth thing we can do with the time we dedicate to the Lord is serve in the temple. President Nelson teaches us that, “The ultimate objective of the gathering of Israel is to bring the blessings of the temple to God’s faithful children.” ⁴. The temple is where we make the covenants that endow us with power from on High, ultimately allowing us to receive all that the father has—His very will.

Our prophet has warned us that as we progress closer and closer to the second coming of the Savior, “The assaults of the adversary [will increase] exponentially, in intensity and in variety. Our need to be in the temple on a regular basis has never been greater.” ¹⁰

Even though it may be a sacrifice, it is an investment in the future—for ourselves and our families—that one day we will be extremely grateful for. Many of us may not have the opportunities that we want to attend the temple now, but there are ways that we can keep the spirit of the temple within us. We can hold a current temple recommend. We can set aside time to rehearse in our hearts and minds the covenants we have made. As we invite the spirit of the temple into our hearts, lives, and homes, we will feel closer to God and increase our desire to remain close to Him.

5 - Minister to Others

So far we’ve covered personal things that we can do individually to strengthen our relationship with the Savior and help align our will with the Father’s, but none of us live in a bubble. Even during a pandemic, technology and other inspired methods enable us to interact with others around us. It’s in the act of developing and strengthening these interactions and relationships that I believe we can draw even closer to God.

Loving and serving others in the new and holier way of ministering is an opportunity to experience the kind of life God lives. He is constantly ministering, and He has invited us to do the same through His prophet. ¹¹

As we do what we can to minister, there are “hearts we can heal, burdens we can lift, testimonies we can strengthen, lives we can save, and joy we can bring into the homes of the Latter-day Saints.” ⁸ As the prophets, including President Nelson, have taught us, “Living that second great commandment is the key to becoming a true disciple of Jesus Christ.” ¹²

Choosing His Will

At the end of the day, everything is our choice. God has given us our agency because it is prerequisite to His ability to give us all that He has. He has also given us a Savior so that we can learn to develop His will within ourselves within the safety of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. As we learn to exercise these two gifts on a daily basis, we will notice a transformation within ourselves that will lead to greater purpose, meaning, and fulfillment in this life and in the next.

I testify that what President Nelson has said is true: “God, our Heavenly Father, wants you to choose to come home to Him.” ⁴

We have to want to choose. It’s all about changing our center. We must center our life on Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Only then will we discover the strength inside us to live according to His law and “learn Heaven” while we live on Earth so that we will want to be there when we depart mortality. The choice will be difficult at times, but we are not alone. Our Savior, the very brother we are choosing to be like, is there with us every step of the way and can lift and strengthen us when we feel too weak to go on.

Conclusion

As we strengthen our relationship with Jesus Christ by making time for Him every day through repentance, pure doctrine, pure revelation, temple covenants, and ministering, we will learn how to align our will with God’s. We will want to choose the life we need to live to be with Him again. I testify that no matter what we do, our Heavenly Father will love us. However, He can only bless us if we align our will with His.

In closing, I would like to personalize a well-known scripture. “For behold, this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” ¹³ May we consider the personal nature of God’s will by reading this to say, “For behold, my son/daughter, this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass your immortality and to give you eternal life.”

I testify that as we choose to strengthen our relationship with the Savior, we will come to will what God wills. We will learn to love what he loves, and we will want nothing more than to devote all of our heart, might, mind, and strength to Him and His cause.