You wouldn't know it from most of my posts, since I'm usually trying to address all the loopholes in complicated issues, but I like to see things simply. To me, a beautiful idea is one that is very simple but explains a lot of things. So today I would like to approach things that way. I would like to state things that I think profound simply.
God loves you. God lives the happiest sort of existence possible. We are God's children. He has all power. Therefore, He wants us to be happy the way He is happy, and He has the power to make it happen. He wants us to grow up to have the same kind of existence that He enjoys. Because He is happy, He wants us to be like Him. However, this kind of happiness requires that we want it. What does it profit a man if a gift is bestowed on him and he receives not the gift? But God has this gift which He wants to give us, the greatest joy possible, the kind of existence that He lives. While He won't force us, for we wouldn't get the joy out of it if we were forced to do as He would do, that is His great hope. He wishes for us to be agents to ourselves, to act rather than to be acted upon, and He wishes for us to use this power to choose to grow up to fulfill our ultimate potential and be happy.
We do not have the power in ourselves to make of ourselves beings of a kind greater than we are. We don't have the strength to become something else through sheer willpower. In addition to this, justice is an eternal law, and justice demands payment in response to error and wrongdoing. Thus, to grow up and become the kind of beings that God wants us to become, beings like Him which enjoy the kind of happiness He enjoys, and in order to satisfy the eternal demands of justice which prevent us from enjoying this kind of happiness, we need help. For this reason, He prepared a plan and a way, to which Jesus Christ, His Beloved Son, is central. Through the Atonement (the suffering, death, and resurrection) of Jesus Christ, the demands of justice are satisfied and we can become greater than we are today and enjoy a kind of existence greater than what we enjoy. To do so, we must allow ourselves to be changed and to receive these blessings, we can always reject them. For this reason, God prepared the Gospel, the good news, the plan by which, through the Atonement of Christ, justice may be satisfied and we may obey and be changed. By faith, repentance, and reception of and obedience to the ordinances and covenants of the Gospel, we grow up and gain this joy.
In order to teach this perfect plan in purity, God chooses from among those who are willing to listen and capable of understanding Him, and calls these as prophets. God can talk to anyone, and in fact He really wants to, but it takes time to learn to listen and understand. Because of this, there is strength, safety, and security in calling one to be a prophet. Through this prophet, God establishes an organization, a Church, with power and authority from Him, to act in His name, to stand in His place. By giving men this power, He enables us to serve one another and to grow. This authority is required in the ordinances in His plan for us.
God has prepared a way for everyone to enjoy this power and His blessings. In this life and afterward, this power is working to help us to grow, and in this life and afterward, everyone will have the opportunity to accept or reject the opportunity to grow.
That's what it's all about. God is our Father, we are His children, and He just wants us to grow up to be like Him, so that we can be happy like Him. I know that this is true. God Himself has revealed it to me. God loves us. Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. Christ was born, lived, died, and rose again the third day, and He lives. Through Christ's Atonement, His great sacrifice, we can grow up to be like our Heavenly Father and to be happy like our Father. Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and through him God's authority, power, and Church were restored to the earth, and it continues on the earth today as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God. Christ leads those who will listen today through him. In this Church is the true Gospel of Christ, the one way to grow up to be like our Heavenly Father and be happy like Him. Jesus Christ lives, and through Him there is real power in the Gospel. He lives!
Title: 2 Nephi 9:13
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