Kindle Notes & Highlights
The need which the Christian faith answers is not so much that we are ignorant and need better information, but that we are lost and need someone to come and find us, stuck in the quicksand waiting to be rescued, dying and in need of new life.”1
“There is no doubt, if a person lives according to the revelations given to God’s people, he may have the Spirit of the Lord to signify to him His will, and to guide and to direct him in the discharge of his duties, in his temporal as well as his spiritual exercises. I am satisfied, however, that in this respect, we live far beneath our privileges.”
The natural man or woman wants to sin. The spiritual man or woman—the one who has enjoyed the cleansing power and directing influence of the Holy Spirit—this person may make mistakes, may be guilty occasionally of sin, but repents quickly (see D&C 109:21), eager, even driven to get back on the gospel path and continue consistently the trek toward the tree of life. In short, there is a difference between the natural man and the spiritual man who lives in a natural, fallen world.
Children are innocent through the Atonement of Jesus Christ—not by nature.
“When Jesus received the attributes and powers of his Father’s glory, He received grace for grace; that is, He received the divine endowments of the Father’s glory as He gave grace to others. Service and dedication to the welfare of others, in doing the will of the Father, therefore were keystone principles in Christ’s spiritual development.
Learning to surrender, to submit, to lay our burdens at the feet of the Savior—these are the lessons of a lifetime. They entail putting off that natural man within us that wants to take control, sacrificing the animal within us on the altar of God.
Restoring what you cannot restore, healing the wound you cannot heal, fixing that which you broke and you cannot fix is the very purpose of the atonement of Christ.
14. Note the following from Richard John Neuhaus: “When I come before the judgment throne, I will plead the promise of God in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. I will not plead any work that I have done, although I will thank God that he has enabled me to do some good. I will plead no merits other than the merits of Christ” (Death on a Friday Afternoon,
It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.
