Our Heavenly Family (Lesson 2)

In my calling as a ward mission leader, I have the opportunity to teach the Gospel Principles Sunday school class.  Jennifer and I are team teaching, alternating weeks.  It has occurred to me that my lessons might serve as an opportunity to for me to make occasional posts on gospel subjects.  I don't know if I will post every single lesson I teach, but will keep myself open to the opportunity.  We have started at the beginning of the Gospel Principles manual as of last week.  Jennifer is taking the odd lessons, and I am teaching the even ones.  Today I taught Lesson 2: Our Heavenly Family; this is where I've decided to begin.

A fascinating doctrine taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the belief in a pre-mortal existence.  At birth, we didn’t suddenly flare into existence.  We lived with our Father in Heaven as spirits before we came to earth.  To the prophet Jeremiah, God declared: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (1:5).  God also asked Job, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? . . . When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" (38:4, 7)?  Later, during the Meridian ministry of the Apostles, Paul testified that "we are the offspring of God" (Acts 17:29).  Taught President Thomas S. Monson: “Since we know that our physical bodies are the offspring of our mortal parents, we must probe for the meaning of Paul’s statement.  The Lord has declared that 'the spirit and the body are the soul of man' (D&C 88:15).  Thus it is the spirit which is the offspring of God. The writer of Hebrews refers to Him as 'the Father of spirits' (Hebrews 12:9).  The spirits of all men are literally His 'begotten sons and daughters' (D&C 76:24)” (Ensign, May 2012, 91, emphasis added).  Why would Paul call God the "Father of spirits" if we have no familial connection to Him?

To anyone who may be reading this, take a moment to think about what the above paragraph proclaimed.  Does it have any impact; does it change your perspective about who you are?  Honestly, it should.  You are a son or daughter of a Heavenly Father.  Your connection to Him is more than worshiper to the worshipped; it is parental.  More then that, however, we are all connected to each other as brothers and sisters.  Moreover, in our heavenly home, we had the opportunity to develop personalities and talents.  Our development into the people we are now began before we were born.  This fact was strengthened for me when my sons were born.   As I watched them in those first days, weeks and months, I realized quite unequivocally that we not born into this world as a "blank slate" (as John Locke and others have postulated) to be molded and shaped by experience and sense perceptions.  I quickly discovered they both had personalities; likes and dislikes.  I also noticed they were different; not cut from the same cloth.  When Isaac was born, Jennifer and I figured we were set.  Since Benjamin had paved the way, we would know exactly how to deal with his younger brother.  It didn't take long before we realized our premise was a mistake.  What worked to calm Benjamin when he was upset didn't work for Isaac.  Jennifer and I had to come up with new tactics and different approaches.  When I gave them their baby blessings, I felt a special connection to them.  I remember not wanting to let go of them as I returned to the pew; I didn't want that feeling between us to go away.  I knew they possessed a innate spark within them that transcended mere mortality.

In the same way I have come to look at my sons as the years have passed and see so much potential in them (potential I am trying to help them see within themselves), Heavenly Father saw the same in us: His spirit children.  Collectively, He has so much love for us and wants all of us to achieve the potential we have within us.  While he loves us all collectively, He also loves us individually.  As our Father, He knows us and He wants us to become the best individual people we can become.  To Moses He proclaimed: "For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39).  "Man" in this context covers both genders, but think about the word itself--He doesn't say "men" the plural form encompassing His entire family; He uses "man" the singular form which focuses on the single individual.  Everything He does is designed to bless the life of the one and to bring the one back to Him.  President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Second Counselor in the First Presidency taught: "Our Heavenly Father created the universe that we might reach our potential as His sons and daughters.  This is a paradox of man: compared to God, man is nothing; yet we are everything to God" (Ensign, Nov. 2011, 20).

When we, His spirit children, looked at Him and realized He had "a body of flesh and bones" (D&C 130:22), we wanted the same.  We also saw He lived a life which offered Him a fullness of joy and we desired a similar life as well.  Realizing we could not reach our full potential unless given a chance to be proven "to see if [we would] do all things whatsoever" He commanded us (Abraham 3:25), He called us together in a Grand Council before this earth was created and told us of His plan for us.  What we heard was breathtaking.  The plan would allow us to reach the potential we have within us to become like Him.  To do so, He explained that we would come to earth to gain a mortal body created in His image; we would forget what it was like to live with and be taught by Him, but He would not leave us without help.  Through prayer and scriptures and prophets and the influence of a member of the Godhead: the Holy Ghost (to name a few), we would have the ability to hear His voice and feel of His love.  He explained that not everyone would achieve this ultimate goal, but each of us would be given the opportunity to try.  Our reward would be based on how well we followed His commandments.  To pass the test of earth life, we would be required to receive His ordinances and live His principles; doing so would ultimately bring us a fullness of joy and return us to Him to live the type of life He has.

This is why we shouted for joy (see Job 38:7) at that pivotal moment.  Many of us wanted to take the test He offered to us.  While we are cut off from His presence here on earth, we can still feel His influence and His love for us as individuals.  There may be times when you feel completely alone, but I can testify to you that those feelings are false.  No matter who you are or what your earthly circumstances may be, know for a fact that you have a Heavenly being: a Father, who loves you more than you can know in you corner.  He loves you; He is pulling for you; He wants you, more than you can know, to succeed and return to Him.  He feels this way for you because you matter to Him (click this link for an Apostle's testimony of this fact)!