With His Stripes We Are Healed

With His Stripes We Are Healed
WHAT CAN I SACRIFICE TODAY FOR MY SAVIOR?

This week I was asking myself this over and over and even though it was hard to achieve it, I found great strength in daily prayer and in the scriptures... for my trials were hard but my Lord gave me strength. While studying I always think of the people here and about all of you my great family. Having this question in mind, I came upon a talk by Elder Bruce C. Hafen called THE TEMPLE AND THE NATURAL ORDER OF MARRIAGE. No worries,I  am not thinking about marriage yet, haha, but in this talk he explained about our Saviors ultimate sacrifice, the atonement, and why He did it. He said that "Animal sacrifices symbolized the Father’s sacrifice of the Son, but the sacrifice of a broken heart and a contrite spirit symbolizes the Son’s sacrifice of Himself." This helped me to understand even more and to know without a doubt that He loves us, they both do, and I testify that they both live....

 

In Moroni 10 it says, 32 "Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, YE CAN IN NOWISE DENY THE POWER OF GOD."

By His sacrifice we have the privilege of knowing our pains, our sadness, our worries, our trials, are removed by His death. We are reminded that we once denied Him, but he was willing to restore the trust we once lost with Him and show us, like Elder James E. Talmage of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles wrote that “Jesus died of a broken heart.” In similitude, we now offer ourselves—our own broken hearts—as a personal sacrifice. I testify if we deny not His power, we will understand that sacrifice is a big part of life and of obtaining everlasting joy comes with a high price. I now know the Savior didn't die because they killed Him, but because He was willing to sacrifice His own heart for us. I invite all of you to ponder upon this and to think what are we willing to sacrifice for Him today? Don't let what happened in Isaiah53 happen again.....

 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

 

Elder Blanco