(Please excuse the Hannah Montana song title. I couldn't stop myself!)
There was a time that I thought I had to be perfect all the time. There are still days when I do not feel like I am enough. I feel like as a member of the church, sometimes we are expected to be perfect. We are given a lot of expectations and if I fail at even one of them, then I must be failing my Heavenly Father, right? Wrong. I feel like as we have feel like we must be perfect, we feel like others are judging us if we are not. I felt that a lot in high school. I felt like if I didn't do everything right 100% of the time then my peers would judge me and my faith. I felt like I could not make a mistake because everyone was watching. But WHO CARES?
We weren't sent to this earth to be perfect. If we had, then we would be living Satan's plan. But we are not. We have agency. We came here to "take chances, make mistakes, and get messy" (is it bad to quote Ms. Frizzle in a semi-serious blog post?). Anyway. We were sent her to make mistakes. We were sent here to be tested and to learn from those mistakes. So why do we often feel the need to be perfect? Often in my faith we are told to be like Jesus. He is perfect--so shouldn't we be?
This has been an idea that I have been thinking about a lot recently. A couple days ago, I made some mistakes and hurt a good friend. I am not perfect. I do not claim to be. I make mistakes every single day. So coming back to the idea that we are supposed to be like our Savior, how is it that we make mistakes every single day?
As I had been pondering this, this idea came up in a discussion today in my Doctrine and Covenants class. (Side note, if you have not taken D&C from Brother Esplin, you should...he is AMAZING!). Anyway, so we were reading from Section 76 and Brother Esplin read this verse to the class:
Please don't get me wrong. I am not saying that we can just throw the towel into the center of the ring and do anything that we want in the world. We still have to try, but we do not have to be exactly perfect just yet.
In Institute today, we also talked about the Fall of Adam and Eve. During this discussion, again I thought about how Heavenly Father knew that we would not be perfect. He knows that we make mistakes. We are His children and He loves us, so He put a plan in place to help us in our imperfections. He sent His Son to atone for us.
So in our mortal state, we cannot be perfect, but we can be perfected. We can repent for our mistakes through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I am so grateful to know this. I am so incredibly grateful to have access to this wonderful gift from our Father.
I am not perfect. I do not have to be perfect. I am okay with that.
This is my life!
Come what may and love it!
There was a time that I thought I had to be perfect all the time. There are still days when I do not feel like I am enough. I feel like as a member of the church, sometimes we are expected to be perfect. We are given a lot of expectations and if I fail at even one of them, then I must be failing my Heavenly Father, right? Wrong. I feel like as we have feel like we must be perfect, we feel like others are judging us if we are not. I felt that a lot in high school. I felt like if I didn't do everything right 100% of the time then my peers would judge me and my faith. I felt like I could not make a mistake because everyone was watching. But WHO CARES?
We weren't sent to this earth to be perfect. If we had, then we would be living Satan's plan. But we are not. We have agency. We came here to "take chances, make mistakes, and get messy" (is it bad to quote Ms. Frizzle in a semi-serious blog post?). Anyway. We were sent her to make mistakes. We were sent here to be tested and to learn from those mistakes. So why do we often feel the need to be perfect? Often in my faith we are told to be like Jesus. He is perfect--so shouldn't we be?This has been an idea that I have been thinking about a lot recently. A couple days ago, I made some mistakes and hurt a good friend. I am not perfect. I do not claim to be. I make mistakes every single day. So coming back to the idea that we are supposed to be like our Savior, how is it that we make mistakes every single day?
As I had been pondering this, this idea came up in a discussion today in my Doctrine and Covenants class. (Side note, if you have not taken D&C from Brother Esplin, you should...he is AMAZING!). Anyway, so we were reading from Section 76 and Brother Esplin read this verse to the class:
We had been talking about the Celestial Kingdom and for those of you who don't know what this is it is basically the highest kingdom of Heaven to put it simply. (Check out this website for more information.)From this scripture, it tells us that we do not have to BE perfect to get into the Celestial Kingdom, but we have to be MADE perfect. We can be perfected through the atonement of our Savior. We do make mistakes, but Christ already paid the price for them."Those are they who are just men made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood." (D&C 76:69).
Please don't get me wrong. I am not saying that we can just throw the towel into the center of the ring and do anything that we want in the world. We still have to try, but we do not have to be exactly perfect just yet.
In Institute today, we also talked about the Fall of Adam and Eve. During this discussion, again I thought about how Heavenly Father knew that we would not be perfect. He knows that we make mistakes. We are His children and He loves us, so He put a plan in place to help us in our imperfections. He sent His Son to atone for us.So in our mortal state, we cannot be perfect, but we can be perfected. We can repent for our mistakes through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I am so grateful to know this. I am so incredibly grateful to have access to this wonderful gift from our Father.
I am not perfect. I do not have to be perfect. I am okay with that.
This is my life!
Come what may and love it!
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