TO KNOW YOURSELF

 

“Why did the Lord ask such things of Abraham? Because, knowing what his future would be and that he would be the father of an innumerable posterity, He was determined to test him. God did not do this for His own sake for He knew by His foreknowledge what Abraham would do; but the purpose was to impress upon Abraham a lesson to enable him to attain unto knowledge that he could not obtain in any other way.

“That is why God tries all of us. It is not for his own knowledge for He knows all things beforehand. He knows all your lives and everything you will do. But He tries us for our own good that WE MAY KNOW OURSELVES; for it most important that a man should know himself.”

-          George Q. Cannon, (Gospel Truth, comp. Jerreld L. Newquist, 2 Vols [1974] 1:113)

I am beginning to see the truth of this. Just as God wanted Abraham to know what Abraham would do in the most severe of circumstances, he desires this for us too. We can only know what we will do if we are placed in a situation that requires our response. To know our commitment to God, we have to be asked to show it under adverse conditions.  To know our strength, we have to be asked to flex our muscles.

There are tests of faith where we have to reach back past our earthly lives and into our pre-mortal lives to discover who we truly are and have always been. Mortal life is a state of weakness. It’s also a state of inheritance of intergenerational habits and teachings we have be programmed to follow. That is not to say that because one of our parents was weak with something, we have to be weak too but sometimes breaking the cycle of weakness is a daunting task.

Many of us do not believe in ourselves. Either we have been taught to feel that way since birth or we have had a particularly adverse experience that has caused us to mistrust ourselves. The biggest disadvantage, however, is that we do not remember how brilliant we were before we came to this earth. Consider this thought:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure…it is our light, not our darkness, which most frightens us. You may ask yourself, “Who am I to be brilliant, talented and fabulous?”  Actually, who are you NOT to be? You were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within you. It is not just some of us…. It is all of us. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. “ (Marianne Williamson, “A Return To Love – Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles”)

We of the second estate were brave enough to fight the Son of the Morning and his angels for our turn on earth and our eternal destiny (Revelation 12:7-9; D&C 76:25-26; Moses 4:1-4; Isaiah 14:12-15; Abraham 3:27-28). This is the strength and this is the power which we need to reach back for when we are tested to be proven worthy of that which we wanted before we were born –  eternal life with God – our eternal destiny.

Right now I am going through the testing ground I did not expect. I feel like God has put me in a jail and said to me: “You will not be able to do anything unaided. I will bring you down to the depths of humility and show you your weakness and your strength. I will make you lose the you that you have become in this mortal shell and I will reveal to you who you have always been, who you were when you were with Me. To get to know yourself, you have to lose yourself.”

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness

But trailing clouds of glory

Do we come from God, who is our home.

(William Wordsworth, Ode on Intimations of Immortality)

 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Enlightenment by Judy Cooley)

Judy Cooley Art – Uplifting & Joyful LDS Paintings – Altus Fine Art