Is "God ... is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him"?

Hebrews 11:6
"But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him."

The part of this verse that struck me recently is the last part - that to come to God we have to believe that he will reward those that seek him.  We have to believe in His goodness and love for us and His desire to bless us abundantly.  The problem is, this can be really hard to do when hard times come, and we pray for relief but don't seem to receive any.

In your darkest times, how do you hope that God will reward you when you come to Him?  How can we help others when they don’t see this?  What would you say to someone who was struggling to believe that blessings (and better times) would come?

Richard G. Scott made some comments in May 1996 that have resonated with me in this regard.   (from "Finding Joy in Life," May 1996 Ensign, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1996/05/finding-joy-in-life?lang=eng )
He gave this talk about one year after the death of his wife Janine.

Sadness, disappointment, and severe challenge are events in life, not life itself. I do not minimize how hard some of these events are. They can extend over a long period of time, but they should not be allowed to become the confining center of everything you do.

Learn from inspiring individuals who have made peace with their challenges and live with joy amid adversity. A lovely woman with an aggressive terminal disease consistently found joy in life. She understood the plan of happiness, had received the temple ordinances, and was doing her best to qualify for the promised blessings. Her personal journal records: “It is a beautiful fall day. I picked up the mail and sat down on the swing. I was so happy and content in the warm sun, the sweet smell of nature and the trees around me. I just sat and gloried in the fact that I am still alive on this beautiful earth. … The Lord is so good to me. How I thank him that I am still here and feeling so good. I am soooooo happy I just want to shout and dance through this beautiful house as the sun streams into the big windows. I love being alive.”

Simple, rejuvenating experiences surround us. They can be safety valves to keep the tension down and the spirit up. Don’t concentrate on what you don’t have or have lost. The Lord promised the obedient to share all that He possesses with them. You may temporarily lack here, but in the next life, if you prove yourself worthy by living valiantly, a fullness will be your blessing. 

Find the compensatory blessings in your life when, in the wisdom of the Lord, He deprives you of something you very much want. To the sightless or hearing impaired, He sharpens the other senses. To the ill, He gives patience, understanding, and increased appreciation for others’ kindness. With the loss of a dear one, He deepens the bonds of love, enriches memories, and kindles hope in a future reunion. You will discover compensatory blessings when you willingly accept the will of the Lord and exercise faith in Him.

In spite of all that was just said, don’t expect that it will always bring comfort.  Don’t expect that you will always be able to feel happy or hopeful.  Those difficult times will come and in those moments all of these thoughts will seem to matter little.  Those times must simply be endured.  It is ok if you still feel lost and hopeless at times even with all that you know of the Lord’s promises and goodness. Try to hold on to these thoughts, to notice the compensatory blessings, and when you come out on the other side you will see clearly again.

In a recent talk Elder Holland shared some helpful thoughts.  Watch the video at this link.  The whole thing is great, but I would focus on 10:30 to the end.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1999/10/an-high-priest-of-good-things-to-come?lang=eng

I hope there was something here that resonated with you.  

Peace Through the Gospel

I was assigned to give a talk in church in September 2019 and I thought I would share it here.  Writing this was a learning experience for me and I hope you find it helpful.

(Photo from our trip to Germany in Oct. 2019 - doesn't that look peaceful?)

Peace is always available to us through the gospel.

In John 14:27 the Lord said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”  The promise of peace is unique, because it is something that we are actually promised that we will have in this life, while so many other promised blessings are often delayed until later or until the next life. This promise comes in D&C 59:23, where it says, “…he who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come.”  The happiness that the gospel promises (eternal life) may not always come in this life, but we can expect a measure of peace even in this troubled world through the gospel plan.

Peace from the Atonement in the Midst of our Shortcomings

So how do we access the peace that the Gospel promises?  What do we have to do?  I believe that we can have peace in Christ at any time, no matter what we have done.  As we took the sacrament just now, was one of you feeling guilty because you have done something wrong, maybe something seriously wrong.  Or maybe you have tried to change many times and slipped back into the same sins.  Or maybe you now realize that you weren’t even paying attention during the sacrament, and so you feel guilty for that :).  In any event, I believe that each of us can have peace in Christ in this very moment, even if we are struggling with big sins.  Why?

I think this is explained well in a story that Brad Wilcox tells of counseling with a BYU student who was struggling to do all that she felt she needed to do, and be all that she was expected to be, to the point that she just wanted to give up.

She said, “I know I need to do my best and then Jesus does the rest, but I can’t even do my best.”

She then went on to tell me all the things she should be doing because she’s a Mormon that she wasn’t doing.

She continued, “I know that I have to do my part and then Jesus makes up the difference and fills the gap that stands between my part and perfection. But who fills the gap that stands between where I am now and my part?”

She then went on to tell me all the things that she shouldn’t be doing because she’s a Mormon, but she was doing them anyway.

Have you ever felt like that?  I know I have.  It isn’t very comforting to know that Jesus makes up the difference between my best efforts and perfection, because I have no idea what my best efforts are anyway, and even if I did I rarely seem to be able to give them.  To help this girl understand, Brad took out a piece of paper and drew two dots.  One at the top representing where God is, or perfection, and one at the bottom representing where we are.  The gap between is all the sin and mistakes we have to overcome to be like him.  Continuing the story,

I then said, “Go ahead. Draw the line. How much is our part? How much is Christ’s part?”

She went right to the center of the page and began to draw a line. Then, considering what we had been speaking about, she went to the bottom of the page and drew a line just above the bottom dot.

I said, “Wrong.”

She said, “I knew it was higher. I should have just drawn it, because I knew it.”

I said, “No. The truth is, there is no line. Jesus filled the whole space. He paid our debt in full. He didn’t pay it all except for a few coins. He paid it all. It is finished.”

I really like that thought. Christ’s atonement didn’t fill part of the gap, he paid ALL OF THE DEBT.  There is nothing left for you to pay, no minimum that you have to meet.  No matter how many times you mess up, and no matter how dark your sins, he has paid them.  Whatever you were feeling guilty about a minute ago, he paid for that already.

Given the culture that we’ve grown up in, you may be resisting this idea.  You may be saying, there must be some catch, something that is required of us, something that we have to do. So what is it?

After the earthquakes and fires and destruction that accompanied the death of Jesus Christ, as the people sat in the darkness and mourned their losses, they heard the voice of the Lord.  That voice told them of Christ’s sacrifice and began to explain what it meant to them.  It said,

3 Nephi 9:19 And ye shall offer up unto me no more the shedding of blood; yea, your sacrifices and your burnt offerings shall be done away, for I will accept none of your sacrifices and your burnt offerings.  (In other words, those sacrifices that you were making that you thought were to pay for your sins, you can stop them now.  Now I want something different.  The scripture continues to explain what this is.)

20 And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost...

The way this makes sense to me is to say that the plan of Grace really comes down to your heart.  Is your heart pointed towards Christ?  You can change the direction of your heart in an instant, and be reconciled with him and on the right path.  Then peace can begin to be yours in that instant, because you know that you are taking a step towards Him.  There is no list of things you first have to do. The debt is paid, and now you are a debtor to Him.  Will you point your heart towards him and keep trying, and do that day after day, getting back on track when you slip and turn your focus to other things?  It sounds so easy, right?

But this is a two-edged sword.  If we were hoping that we could meet some minimum requirement and get grace now that won’t work.  We can’t cram the night before, the way we would for a school assignment.  We can’t get there by doing things on a checklist, because we might do those things with our hearts still pointed the wrong direction.  There isn’t a faceless, nameless agency holding our debt.  It is now held by a person who paid it personally and knows us, knows all the struggles and baggage we have to overcome, but also knows what we are capable of as well as we do.  Will we turn to him and offer him “a broken heart and a contrite spirit,”?

So what about works?  Can we forget about having to do any good actions?  Well, for one, sometimes the best way to get our heart pointed in the right direction, is to move our feet in that direction!  We’ve all had the experience of not wanting to go to a church activity, or on a ministering visit, but we do it anyway and come home grateful and blessed, more in tune with the Lord.  In a case like that I think that it wasn’t that there was some action that was required on our part, the action just helped us to get our heart pointed in the right direction.

As I have tried to turn my heart to God, it can be difficult to not be overcome by guilt because part of me still really does want to follow the world and not Christ.  Part of me still wants to continue in certain sins.  When I read that a “heart can be changed, so that it has no more desire to do evil” I just feel more guilty because mine has not yet changed.  I’m 40+ years old, shouldn’t I be done struggling with _____ (fill in your favorite sins) by now?  What am I doing wrong?

In other words, we may not find comfort in knowing that grace just comes down to our hearts, because our hearts are rotten also.  It may be tempting to try to just ignore this and put on a happy face, to “fake it until you make it.”  I’ve tried that, and while it worked great for me in my job, it hasn’t worked very well in my relationship with Christ.  What I think has worked better is to try to acknowledge my feelings, honestly look at where I am now, and what I want to be, and to begin to accept both of those with a peaceful heart.  When I do this I can turn to the savior and say, “here is what I was able to offer today.  I know that it isn’t much but I hope you can accept it.  I want to be good and trust and follow you, and so I’ll see if I can offer more tomorrow.”  Then, be prepared for a rollercoaster.  Sometimes tomorrow’s offering ends up being worse than today’s.  But, at least I know that each effort, each attempt to turn to Him is worth something. That brings a measure of peace.  And, slowly, over the course of, say, a year, I can see myself growing closer to Christ, I can see the ways he has helped me to do and be more, and I can begin to believe that with the savior's help it will be enough.  Our best efforts will always be enough, but more importantly, since we never really can give our best efforts, our imperfect efforts are also enough.  He has already paid the price for ALL of our sins. All we have to do now is to keep trying to turn our hearts to God.