Pardon me while I break down the barriers of the unspeakable today, but to lay across the table, the depth of the atonement, one must crawl into the hearts of its listeners and loosen the bindings with which the spirit is kept. I did not attempt this talk to merely repeat a Sunday school lesson, but instead to give each of you the hope that perhaps you are looking for. That I was looking for. To provide for you, the knot in which you shall tie in your ropes of life, to keep you from slipping to your fall. The grace and beauty and genius of the atonement is not meant to take lightly. But to have such power as to bring meaning to a soul that is hollow, to feed a deprived spirit with a food that is everlasting, to give purpose to the broken hearted, to ensure hope for a broken home. The atonement is life changing. So I hope that as I share with you the captivating and divine gift Christ has given to you that you will listen. That you will let the spirit speak to you, because I testify if you are receptive to the spirit today, you will feel Christ’s love for you. You will feel the atonement.
Writing this talk has been very difficult for me. As I began to study the atonement of Christ, and learned of His divine purpose, and the undeniable way it brings every soul light, I began to feel very inadequate. The Atonement is the gospel of Christ. It is the very purpose of the reason we live, every day. It is the reason we chose to come here in the preexistence. It is the answer to all our worries, all our questions. The answer to life. It is also the reason, we know God and Jesus Christ love us.
Who am I to share with you the weight of the gift that makes its receivers speechless? The gift to the world? I am no perfect person. I come not even close to being perfect. I do not live everyday the way my God wishes me too. I am loaded with inadequacies and failure. I am haunted by unconscious words that hurt those i love. I live everyday in the misery of entrenchment of selfishness. I bare trivial burdens with every step I take. I do not study my scriptures every day, i do not pray every night. I anger easily, and I am frequently acquainted with the devil of jealousy. I did not believe in myself enough to share with you the power of the Atonement. To me, it does not make sense how i can go to knowing that heavenly father DOES exist, and that Christ does love me, to being so lost, because of everyday strifes, and stresses, and capacitated hatreds. I felt unqualified to bring to you today, the Glory and Mercy of life. But as i studied the true meaning of the atonement this past week, i realized that perhaps i am qualified, for my very existence is dependant on the gift our saviour gave us. as well as all of yours. because we are all receivers of his mercy. For is not the atonement made for every person who's walked this earth? Whether they be at the end of their rope, or so close to god, they feel his presence every where they go? Was not the atonement created for the purpose of taking away the feelings that lead you away from God? Was not the atonement created to purify all the uncleanliness and sweeten the bitterness we are doused in? Was not the atonement created to alleviate the very inadequacies we feel? Was not the atonement made to not just purify, but to lift? Is not the atonement the very source of all life, light, power, truth & love? Than Perhaps I am qualified to tell you of the power of the atonement, because i use it everyday. I must. "for there is no loneliness so great, so absolute, so death defying, as the loneliness of a man who can not believe in his God."....
Some two thousand years ago, a man knelt in a garden called Gethsemane. Here, this perfect man bled for the pains and sins, and hardships of the world. Gouts of blood poured from every pour in his body, as he suffered for those he loved. He turned himself in to those he trusted, like Judas. Who then took him to meet kings that would accuse, and smite, and attack Christ in all ways that saw possible. He stood in quite refrained, divine dignity while his people cast their foul saliva down his face, weakening his pain engulfed body. Not an angry word escaped his lips. They scourged his back till blood flowed smoothly, with a whip that had strands of sharp bones and cutting metals woven into its hideous form. They scourged him forty times, save only one. yet he remained resolute uninitiated. They stripped him of his clothes and covered him in a scarlet robe. They placed a crown made of thorns upon his head, and shoved into his skull till blood became trapped in his brow. The torture of our savior did not end there. They gave his battered and strenuous body a heavy cross to carry across the city. The very cross he would be nailed too. the design of his own death. While others pointed at him, spit on him, mocked him. He walked alone. At the hill of Calvary they laid him down and drove nails through his diffident divine flesh. Not once, not twice, but five times did they drive stakes of iron into the saviors body.
"He suffered more spiritually and physically than any man ever could, except it be unto death." Perhaps though, that the most remarkable part of his entire life, his legacy of suffering, is that with one sound from his lips, all his enemies could have fallen to the ground in trembling heaps from his power. Angles could have descended from the heavens and saved Christ, They were waiting for his very words through every step of his afflictions agonizing in the pain of watching their god suffer from the world. All he had to do, was ask. And it would be done. But Christ did not. From the time he was born in a lowly manger, till the time He was hung from a cross on Calvary, our King lived through perfection of love, and trust, and great divine knowledge of what his purpose on this earth would be. He suffered his afflictions, his very death, for those who personally drove the stakes through his hands, he suffered for those who lived before Him that mocked the prophets of old, and he suffered for every single person with in this room.
Christ did not just suffer for our sins. He suffered all of our pains, our fears, our disappointments, our inadequacies, our hatred, our handicaps, our loss, our despair, our discouragements, our abandonment, our illness, our weaknesses, our guilt, our regret, our grief, our natural disasters, our broken hearts. He took upon himself every single emotion that can build a wall between Him, and us. Because the main purpose for the atonement is to create a relationship with yourself, and God.
I don't know exactly how. but i know He did. Because He loves us. We must believe this, in order for the atonement to work miracles in our lifes. we MUST believe in Christ. One Elder once said that The atonement is not just a figure of hope. its as real as gravitiy. its a grand constant in nature. all we have to do is believe it is there. know it is there. and remember it is there.
I know that Christ does love us. you. and me. and everyone else in this entire world. Like i said, i don't know how, and quite frankly, to me, it does not matter. I'm just so blessed, and humbled to know, that the worlds saviour knows me. and loves me. and i hope that one day, i can stand before Him and make Him proud of the daughter of God I can become. How blessed i was for this opportunity. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
