Perfection

With less than 60 days left until my mission, I "figured" that I should start to form a better habit of studying my scriptures. You know, mission worthy with scripture journal and all. (Typically, I just read my scriptures at night in bed before I turn off the light. Both in English and in Spanish. Not too shabby, but...) And so, I began tonight. Since Preach My Gospel is EVERYTHING in the mission, I decided to start there. I was given journals for Christmas and I started to use one of them. I outlined on a separate piece of paper how I wanted to organize my scripture journal, then turned to Chapter 3 of Preach My Gospel: Study and Teach. The first heading was: God is Our Loving Heavenly Father. (Great one to start off on, FYI)
I wrote out a simple, brief summary of what that meant to me, then I search the scriptures listed under the "Scripture Study" section, highlighted in blue. I wrote a few of them out in my Journal just to start forming a memory of them.

When I got to 3 Nephi 12:48, I goofed when I started writing it out. "Be ye therefore perfect..." That's not what it said. So I looked at it again and scribbled it out in my journal. Looking over it again the second time gave me knew inspiration:

A brief background on the Chapter 12 of 3rd Nephi--This is when Christ is with the Nephites and He is teaching them the same things that He taught the people at the Sermon on the Mount. (Wonderful Chapter, also FYI)
This is the Scripture:

48 Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.

                                    

Christ says, "I would..." 

I have probably read this countless times before and probably overlooked it as I almost did today. "I would..." I looked up "Would" in the dictionary just for a clearer understanding. Wish. Desire. Want. 

Christs wants us to be be perfect! 

Because...

He desires that we become like HIM and His FATHER!!

Yes. We are, in other scriptures, commanded to be perfect! And that of course seems like an impossible task! We see that, and ask ourselves, "How can we ever hope to achieve that?!" 

Here's another question to ask though: "Would God ever really give us an Impossible task?" An impossible commandment? Command us to do something if He knew we could never accomplish it? NO! "God is Our Loving Heavenly Father!" He gave us the very best tool we could ever need. 

He gave...His only begotten son... Our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Christ gave His Life for us. Atoned for Our SINS. All of our sad, miserable, lonely, heart wrenching moments of pain---He took them away! And Because of that, through Him, We CAN be PERFECT. And He wants us to know that! To Believe that, and Trust in Him and His atonement.

I'm always so hard on myself, but that's because I'm trying to become perfect, by myself! What a ridiculous endeavor?! He has shown us the way back to our Father and He willing chose to walk that path with us.  

I am so grateful that my Heavenly Father and my Savior Jesus Christ love me enough to want me to become like them. And even more grateful am I that they are willing and wanting to help me in that eternal progress.

Striving for Perfection,
Hermanita Holly Howell