The Grace of God

 Prepare yourselves…

Ready?

A preachment, dear friends, you are about to receive, on John Barleycorn, nicotine and the temptations of Eve.

That tribute to Olde Tyme preaching is from a song, Let It All Hang Out by the Hombres, a one-hit wonder from back in 1967. Oddly, the introduction has nothing to do with the song that follows, and probably nothing to do with my talk either!  It’s just a bit of fun (well, I had fun), an attention getter and… I was short on time.

But I do have a real talk.  Shall I read it? Yeah?  Okay.

The following is an excerpt from a talk by Spencer W Kimball, wherein the prophet is meeting with a couple about to marry and is offering them some advice. About achieving a happy marriage, he says:

Happiness is a strange commodity. It cannot be purchased with money, and yet it is bought with a price. You ask, "What is the price to pay for happiness?" You will be surprised with the simplicity of the answer. The treasure house of happiness may be unlocked and remain open to those who use the following keys: First, you must live the gospel of Jesus Christ in its purity and simplicity. Second, you must forget yourself and love your companion more than yourself. If you do these things, happiness will be yours in great and never-failing abundance.

When I first heard this talk and he said he was about to give out the secret for happiness, I was all ears. Frankly, I was a bit surprised to hear that keeping the gospel is the direct road to happiness.  I thought we kept it because it was the right thing to do.  But the more I thought about it, the more I thought this must be so.

Righteousness is whatever will lead to man’s happiness and wickedness is whatever leads to man’s misery. But the main difficulty is, it’s so hard to recognize what happiness or wickedness looks like, particularly during times of temptation. There’s only one way to know: we need to be told. Passing along the truth of the gospel is the role of parents, prophets and whatever administering angels the Lord sends. And once we’ve learned the truth about the path of happiness, we must pass it on, especially to our sons and daughters. 

But can we really be sure that the happiness the gospel promises is real? Christianity is a fairly strict discipline, does it really pay off?  To this, all I can do is offer assurances that there is a God, He is both the father of our spirits and the creator of our mortal bodies. He understands what we go through and wants to do everything He can to ease our burdens. To this end, He has revealed the gospel, the discipline we undertake to find happiness.  And He also encourages us to seek Him in private consultation “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

The Savior has fought the same everyday battles that we face and overcame all things.  But we still are “growing in grace” and might need to reassess if we’re being true to our godly nature.  What then? Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.  We don’t always win our battles with temptation.  It’s a lifelong struggle. But we can win if we just never give up. Never give up!

Regardless of how many times we fail, so long as we are willing to acknowledge our sins as weakness, the Savior will be able to heal us.  But we cannot say our weakness is just the way we are, the way He made us.

Alma describes the resurrection as a restoration, that the spirits of both the righteous and wicked are restored according to their desires:

Alma 41:5 The one raised to happiness according to his desires of happiness, or good according to his desires of good; and the other to evil according to his desires of evil.

Alma 34:34 Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.

Alma 34:32 32 For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.

In this life and in the final day, the Savior can only heal us if that’s what we really want.  This mortal probation is the time to form our eternal spirit and to overcome the sin that leads to misery. 

How are we relieved of the burden of temptation? In this life, we are healed by the Grace of God.  Maybe the term “Grace of God” sounds like something that only a Bible scholar would be interested in but it has a significant meaning. Really, it’s what we’ve all been praying for.  According to the Bible Dictionary, Grace is the divine means of help or strength, given through Jesus Christ. The word translated "grace" in the New Testament means “favor, blessing, or kindness.” Isn’t that what you’ve been praying for, a favor or a blessing or a kindness? 

I have a story, about the Grace of God, a testimonial even of a very wayward son, a Rock ‘n Roll legend from the 70’s: Alice Cooper.  Alice Cooper was brought up in a very religious household, attended church several times a week even.  Just like we do.  Alice Cooper is, of course, a stage name, his birth surname is Furnier, son of Ether Moroni Furnier.  His grandfather was an apostle in the LDS church established by Sidney Rigdon. But he ditched it all to live a life of excess and indulgence and rock n roll stardom.  Alice Cooper was, in his time, a big name, popular, rich and very much committed to the rock n roll lifestyle.  He ran and became weary and grew faint while walking.  Instead of wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, the destroying angel pursued him relentlessly.

After a little less than ten years of this, he woke up in bed barfing blood.  The doctor told him he’d be sharing a grave with all his drinking buddies in about a month.  His wife dragged him off to rehab.  It is here where he began, once more, to feel the divinity within himself we all share.  In his own words, he says “I’m not a cured alcoholic, I’m a healed alcoholic.  God took it away from me.  The doctor said ‘It’s impossible that you don’t fall off the wagon at least 3 or 4 times.  You’re a classic alcoholic.’  And I said, ‘What you don’t understand is God took it away from me. It’s a miracle. God works like that.’”

This is the grace of God. Divine means of help or strength, given through the mercy and love of Jesus Christ.  And I close with the words I left for my wife on a note by the chocolate cake she baked last night:  Pray for the grace of God that you might resist temptation.