Becoming the kind of person who thinks and acts like Christ, like God, is a process of change. It is not done overnight or even all in a lifetime. But we need to begin the process or we will never arrive at our final destination, which is becoming like our Father in Heaven.

Everything in mortality is designed to help us become what we currently are not. For example, we have the seeds of compassion in our soul, but we struggle with those parts of ourselves that prevent us from always putting compassion in its proper place. And we have experiences that tell us we have had spiritual witnesses, but we are often unsure as to what we know and what we only suspect to be true.

In this effort to learn where we stand in our efforts to change ourselves, there are some things we need to remember about how the Lord works. By noting some of the rules of the game we can better steer our course toward our eternal home.

The nature of blessings

The Lord has this wonderful way of maximizing any blessing so that it doesn’t just bless one person. In Acts 10:34 – 35 Peter discovers for himself that God does not respect or favor one person over another person. This is the end result of the revelation given to him that the gospel was really supposed to go to all the world, not just the world of the Jews. With this realization he began to send missionaries, like Paul, throughout all of the Mediterranean.

34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:

35 But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.

Since the Lord is no respecter of persons, not favoring one over another, when He blesses one person that blessing bleeds or spills over into the lives of all those around the main recipient of the blessing, thus blessing many.

For example, in Jacob 2:18 – 19 Jacob teaches us that if we want to seek the riches of this world there is a proper way to do it.

18 But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God.

19 And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.

Once we have sought the blessings of heaven and the Lord sees that our first priority in life is Him and the good of all then if He blesses us with riches in this life it is with the understanding that we will use that gift for the benefit of others. We are expected to clothe the naked and feed the hungry, etc. He blesses us with riches specifically because He knows that we will, in turn use that blessing to share what we receive with others.

When the Lord blesses a person with personal joy and peace does that person feel inclined to silently sit on that knowledge and do nothing? Does that improve the peace and joy? No. When the Lord blesses us with something that makes us happy it is the nature of that happiness that we want to share it with those we love. Love not shared withers and dies. To keep it alive it must be shared.

This then is the nature of any kind of blessing. It must be shared. It must affect the life of more than just the receiver of the blessing in order for it to have its full effect. We need to understand that becoming like God involves other people. This is not a process that can be done in secret and alone. The love of God, in order to flourish within us must be shared with others.

The nature of learning

Learning new things in the gospel can be done all at once or a little at a time. The normal way is to learn things a little at a time. There are some specific revelations we read about in the scriptures, like when Moses is shown the creation of the earth and all the inhabitants of the earth from the beginning down to the very end of days that are of the “all at once” variety. But those revelations are not the norm.

Of the several places in the scriptures where we are told that we receive knowledge line upon line, 2 Nephi 28:30 is my favorite, because it gives more of an explanation of the process.

30 For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.

Why do we need to learn at such a slow pace? I think, speaking from my own experience, that it is because it takes us a while to fit new information into perspective. When we learn the law of tithing it takes a while of honoring that law before we gain a better appreciation for not only how it works, but what the blessings are that come from living it. It needs to season and mature within us. This is no different than any other doctrine or law in the gospel. There is an incubation period that takes place before we come to appreciate and understand what we have learned and how it fits with other laws and commandments. This adds to our eternal perspective of the nature of God’s gospel plan.

Even something as “simple” as scripture study can take years of effort before we begin to fully appreciate how needed it is in our life. It takes many experiences with the miracles that come from consistent study of the scriptures before we see just how vital the practice is in becoming like our Father in Heaven.

The nature of witnesses

When the Holy Ghost converts a person it can be done between just that person and the Holy Ghost. Someone can pick up a copy of the Book of Mormon, read it, and receive a witness of its truthfulness. Witnessing to truth is what the Holy Ghost does.

So why does the Lord insist that we be missionaries and talk to people about our own testimonies? Why do we have to say what we have learned from the Spirit out loud? There must be a purpose to this process or the Lord wouldn’t have us do it.

The purpose of requiring us to bear our testimonies to one another is that it is in the bearing of our testimony we come to know and understand just what we really do know, and to an extent, how deeply we know it. It is like the difference between thinking a prayer and having to formally put it into the spoken word. The act of translating what we feel into the spoken word changes the experience into a reality we can define and measure. It makes it more real, and deepens our commitment to it. The Holy Ghost uses the bearing of our own testimony as a tool to further teach us what we have learned from our experiences with Him.

President Boyd K. Packer, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said:

“It is not unusual to have a missionary say, ‘How can I bear testimony until I get one? How can I testify that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that the gospel is true? If I do not have such a testimony, would that not be dishonest?’

“Oh, if I could teach you this one principle: a testimony is to be found in the bearing of it!

“Somewhere in your quest for spiritual knowledge, there is that ‘leap of faith,’ as the philosophers call it. It is the moment when you have gone to the edge of the light and stepped into the darkness to discover that the way is lighted ahead for just a footstep or two.”

Boyd K. Packer, “The Quest for Spiritual Knowledge,” New Era, Jan. 2007, 6.

By bearing our witness to what we have felt from the Spirit, we leap across that chasm of space from feeling to knowledge. We solidify our learning into something that can be put into words. It can be a scary experience, especially the first few times we do it, but what a thrill to open our mouth and find that we really do have something to say! For priesthood holders, we have the same experience the first time we go to give a blessing and have to put what is in our mind and heart into words. It is a humbling and often frightening experience, but so rewarding!

The nature of change

Even big changes, like the conversion of Saul in the New Testament, took time. He had to spend time processing what he had learned from his vision, and what he learned from the members of the Church into a new way of living. Most of us don’t have grand revelations that change the course of our life forever.

What we do have though are daily promptings. We feel impressed to do good, to remember a covenant, to call a friend, to go to someone’s house. We do our duty and fill our Church callings with service and try to have a good attitude about it. All these things are done as little things, small choices that make a difference in the direction of our life.

The nature of change is normally small and incremental. We learn patience as parents gradually as the children grow, until we sit and smile at how impatient our children are with their children. We learn the principles of the gospel through constant living of those principles.

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Little by little, line upon line, the ways of our Father in Heaven become our ways. His thoughts begin to be our thoughts. We learn wisdom from the Spirit through experience and life lessons. We learn compassion and humility by experiencing our own failings and shortcomings.

In our quest to become like Christ, and our Father, it really is the little things that count. And it takes time. Fortunately, we are as eternal as our Father in Heaven, and what we don’t master in this life will be waiting for us to continue our lessons in the next life. We just need to make sure we are doing all we can to master as many of those lessons as we can while we are here.

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