Confidence in Christ, Not in Myself - 14 June 2022

 

ME + MORE -> MIRACLE?

Or ME + CHRIST -> MIRACLE?

A particularly probing item on the Christlike attribute self-assessment in Preach My Gospel asks: “I have enough faith in Christ to accomplish anything He wants me to do—even miracles, if necessary.” Whenever I have read this statement, I have always struggled to say “Yes.”

But these days, I’m learning that faith in Jesus Christ is more than just believing that Christ CAN work miracles in my life, or even that He WILL work miracles in my life–if I can ever get to the point where I am perfectly following His teachings. Because I am imperfect, having “enough faith in Christ to accomplish anything He wants me to do” requires believing that He can and will work miracles in my life EVEN THOUGH I fall short of His teachings–all the time. It requires believing that Christ’s love and compassion is sufficient to motivate Him to extend His gifts to “those who love me and keep all my commandments, and him that seeketh so to do” (D&C 46:9).

Too often, we write off the possibility of receiving the Lord’s miraculous help or guidance because we feel we are not good enough. But worthiness is not flawlessness, and living perfectly is not what the Lord expects of us here and now. Rather, we are promised that if we “love God with all [our] might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for [us], that by his grace [we] may be perfect in Christ” (Moroni 10:32). To me, loving God with all our might, mind, and strength suggests trying to be good–even while recognizing that our current abilities to be good are finite and exhaustible.

Faith in Christ sufficient to do and see miracles must be centered in Christ’s perfection, not our own. We must believe that He “reaches [our] reaching.”