A PERSONAL GOD

 

I came across a comment recently on YouTube by a well-meaning Catholic man who admonished us to repent and to ask “our Lady of Fatima to pray for us and give our hearts to her as an offering to the Lord”.

I asked this person who this lady is and why we should pray to her. He gave a short description of her but never said why we should pray to her. I concluded that he himself didn’t know, only that his religion has taught him to do it, and I sorrowed that this man might never come to know God in this life.  

I have over the years expressed many times my gratitude to God for the truth that I have in my life. This truth has come to me by way of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ which has taught me to have a personal relationship with God.

Until the recent years, the Saviour was in the forefront of my mind. He was all that I could see. Now who I see first and foremost is the Father. This has always meant to be so. The Church brings us to Christ and Christ brings us to the Father. Revealing the Father and making Him personal to us was one of the main purposes of the Saviour’s ministry among men (see Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Grandeur of God”, October 2003 GC)

Now when I pray to the Father I feel such closeness to Him that I yearn for His presence. This I believe is the culmination of years and years of yielding my heart to His Son. I also believe that yearning for the Father’s presence is the true and higher purpose of prayer.

This yearning was so strong in me one day as I prayed that immense fear gripped me that I might not ever enjoy being in His presence again. This opened the visual vista of being lost and living eternally with loneliness and unfulfilled longing. But then hope came to me so forcefully because what followed that fear was the deepest understanding I have ever received of the Atonement of Jesus Christ which filled me with inexpressible joy.

This time my understanding of this crucial Gospel principle was not educational, theological or intellectual but something so personal that it made God more real to me than ever before. I felt rescued and saved from eternal damnation. I understood what Jesus had done for me. That moment in my life was the beginning to my ever-growing desire to please the Father and be a source of joy and delight to Him.

It should sear our hearts when we read of Him weeping over His disobedient children (Moses 7:28,29). On Judgement Day, those who refused the redemption of Christ will know the deepest sorrow known to man. They will long for the Father they once knew and loved. Imagine the sorrow the Father too will know in that moment. It should be the quest of our lives to never allow Him to experience this…..but so live that we will make up for His loss.

When my days on earth are done

I will lift above the world below

And I will seek the gilded gate

To welcome me to my eternal home.

 

I will approach the foot of His throne,

I will kneel and I will weep

When in hope I give Him joy

For eternity to keep.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art: Father and Son by Danny Hahlbohm)