That All May Be Profited.

I love profound testimonies.  The ones where the expressions of the provider soar though the room, fill up your ears, enliven your mind, but connect at your core.  The type that produce thoughts that encourage sincere pondering, which wander through your heart and awaken and embolden pieces of your own testimony.  This is my choice method of development.  I am grateful for individuals who have the ability to supply such an opportunity.  I encountered a circumstance like this in a fast and testimony meeting a few months ago.  As a member of my ward stood at the pulpit bearing genuine testimony, the eloquence of their delivery was originally striking, but it was the power and intensity of their understanding that commenced my personal reflection.  The most impactful portion of their words went something like this:

When you study darkness and light, you come to find that there is no such thing as darkness, it is merely an absence of light…I have utilized this understanding throughout my life, and have found significant similarity between it and the way we judge ourselves.  What I have discovered is that we tend to judge by what we lack, instead of by what we are.

These words have been echoing through my mind ceaselessly.  I believe them to be extremely accurate.  Our personal reflections seem to place spotlights on our areas of frailty and lack focus on our places of ability.  Now, I am a firm promoter of self identification, especially in being aware of both strengths and weaknesses.  Knowing where we are strong provides confidence, appreciation, and encouragement into spheres in which we have  been blessed with talents.  Additionally, understanding our flaws provides the opportunity to place attention to weakened areas that they may be labored towards perfection, striving towards a day where this behavior, characteristic, or habit could be listed within our category of strength.  However, we must never allow a current imperfection to establish our value, nor the definition of who we are.  Neither should we allow them to diminish the illumination and recognition of our strengths.

When we utilize the explanation released through the testimony above, we can gain a changed viewpoint relating to our weaknesses.  Our imperfections are only portions of our soul that have yet to be enlightened.  They are not, have never been, and never will be finalized or fixed pieces of our identity.  They are places that are simply unrefined.  They are darkened segments that await our attention, which focus allows the entrance of light.  When we recognize our flawed areas, they should empower us, not enslave our perceptions or energies.  Because we are not perfect in all ways does not denote that we are incapable, inadequate, or deficient, it simply means we are in a currently undeveloped state.  It means that we are mortal.  I love that perspective because it makes so much sense: So, we are imperfect.  Which means we are mortal.  Which means that we are exactly what and where we are supposed to be.  If we had no failings, we would be celestial beings living aside our Father.  But we aren’t in this moment.  We are His incomplete, beloved children, currently following the path which leads home, which has been composed and designed for our development.  We are divinely created beings, which means that we are made up of light.  We are not constructed of darkness.  Our places in need of improvement only presently have an absence of illumination.  Once we reach the opportunity to enhance these areas, the darkness will shatter and our seraphic light will shine forth. 

When we perceive our reflection to be defective, our weaknesses drawing all of our attention, we can understand that we are viewing ourselves through Satan’s lens.  He is the author of darkness and a murky perspective is formed by him.  He desires us to define who we are by our failings because we naturally turn to him and his ways as we mistakenly seek to obscure, conceal, or compensate for what we believe we lack.  He is also captivated with the chance to assist us in dwindling our view relating to our self worth.  It makes us miserable, which he adores.  It creates an obstruction of memory pertaining to our divinity, which he hungers for.  It terminates our journey towards perfecting our current limitation because instead of seeing it as a brief portion of our character, we obsessively embed and permit it to transform our identification, which is his goal. 

Our Heavenly Father, He never views us as such.  Never.  When He looks upon His child, His vision is filled with light.  The most perfect thing about comprehending this, He has a exact knowledge of every weakness we currently possess.  But He loves us, as imperfect as we are.  Why?  Because our Father in Heaven, He sees through an eternal perspective.  He recognizes our potentials, capabilities, and knows our talents incomparably.  He knows His child.  He knows them through and through.  He realizes what most of us lack recognition in, what we can and what we will become if we but labor towards this objective.  We must crave and seek to open our celestial eyes, which enables our vision to be filled with eternal perception.  To do so we must interrupt our observations which come through the worldly eyes Satan has generated.  One way we can do this is by prayer.  Pray to the Father that He will open your eyes.  Pray that our reflections will be indistinguishably identical.  As we do so we will turn from the theory that what we currently lack assembles who and what we are.  Instead, we will view our weaknesses as opportunities to progress.  And the very greatest thing about that: this road is traveled hand in hand with the Savior.  Allow our imperfections to bring us hope, knowing that through trial and testing we will be allowed to toil, alongside our Savior, towards advancement.  Don’t wish it away.  Don’t become discouraged.  Don’t disrupt such an experience.  Accept it.  Love it.  Enjoy the journey, every whit. 

I do believe that this darkened perspective extends beyond our own personal specification.  Now more than ever, I find that we fall into the trap, which Satan has personally laid, of judging others by what they lack, instead of by what they are.   There are a multitude of facets regarding this type of critique, but as I have contemplated I feel strongly about one specific area: that we eagerly seek to identify others weaknesses because we become fearful or offended by their individual strengths.  It seems like we exist in a world of constant competition.  It is as though one’s success or triumph represents a decline in our own value.  It is a repellent attitude to acquire, but it is heavily enticed by Satan, and we have to monitor ourselves individually to ensure we do not become ensnarled. 

We were each sent to earth with differing strengths and divergent weaknesses, and aren’t we grateful for this blessing!  Can you imagine what type of world we would exist in if we were all powerful in one area, and all lacked in another.  It would be disastrous.  However, Satan seeks for us to see these varying abilities as a hazard.  He wants us to view another’s accomplishment as a threat to our own achievements.  He pushes and introduces jealousy.  This is where we may search to find one’s weaknesses seeking to highlight them because it assist us in neglecting to recognize their areas of fortitude.  Perhaps when we see that they have faults, we find peace in our own imperfections.  We cannot be driven into such a mentality.  We must find ways to celebrate the incredible strengths of others, and offer loving praise for their attainments.  Instead of coveting what we have yet to achieve, join with them in treasuring the unique blessings and abilities they have been given, or have acquired through labor.  Engaging in such a way will empower us to seek individual progression that we, too, may obtain what we are working towards.  When we recognize others for what they are, creating a focal point on their light, we find that our love better aligns with that of our Father, which is exactly what we are striving to acquire. 

Perhaps we are launched down a different path, and although distinct, still equals in the devaluing of differing abilities.  Instead of producing feelings of envy, Satan assembles thoughts that make us depreciate our own gifts simply because they do not duplicate another’s.  We take one’s achievements inwardly as a sign of inferiority that we are unable to accomplish the same thing.  We begin to belittle our own strengths, minimize our areas of power, and constantly compare what we aren’t to what others are.  This is a dangerous pathway.  It creates a selfish obsession, one in which we are constantly focused on ourselves, and avoiding the acknowledgement of others.  We find embarrassment or shame regarding the talents we have been endowed, and instead of exerting to magnify them, we seek to keep them hidden, because we fear they will be viewed as inadequacies.  We find we lack motivation to procure new abilities because we are apprehensive that we will fail, or will fall short to another.  This is perilous because we have been taught that what we do not develop will be taken from us, and nothing more will be provided.  We must seek to appreciate what we have been given.  No, it may not match your sibling, your friend, or a member of your ward family, but it is uniquely yours.  This gift has been presented for a specific purpose and as you strive to enhance it you will have opportunity to bless and strengthen others that so desperately require what you have that they currently lack.  For every gift is given to benefit us all.

For all have not every gift given unto them; for there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God.  To some is given one, and to some is given another, that all may be profited thereby. (D&C 46:11-12)

Our individual gifts, especially differing gifts, allow us to come together, and to work jointly, as a family in Christ.   It produces unity and helps us realize how intensely we need one another.  We should shout with joy when one accomplishes a great feat, for their newly gained strength will add immense good to our life, or to another that is in need.  We need never feel insufficient because we cannot perform or execute a specific ability synonymously to another.  Instead we should seek to uplift and appreciate them for what they offer, and in turn extend our strengths that we can add blessings to those that surround us.  We are unified.  We are one.  We have been sent to assist and help each other.  We must conduct ourselves as such.  

We are magnificent, uniquely wonderful children of our Heavenly Father.  We are divinely established and are made up of light.  There are areas within us that may be dim, but they simply have an absence of illumination, and are awaiting our focus.  We have specific and significant importance here upon this earth.  We have each been blessed with individual gifts and abilities.  They differ from each other, but that is what makes us such a necessity.  We require others and what they have to offer us, and we are essential to them.  As we align our perspectives to the eternities, blocking the temporal outlooks that are created by Satan, we will find that our strengths take center stage, our weaknesses become optimistic opportunities, and our delight comes from admiring and applauding others.  The Lord created us divergently that we might learn a prerequisite of celestial living, that we are profited as we engage in collaboration, for the eternities are made up of endless unification.