Created In The Image of God - March Visiting Teaching Printable Handout
The March message concentrates on being created in the image of God.
What is the benefit to a belief that we are created in the image of our God?
It allows a sincere, real, understandable connection to Him.
If our God is untouchable, some unknown matter, how can He relate to us? How can he know the struggles we face, what it's like to have a body, to feel pain and heartache, to know joy and achievement?
The knowledge that God is like us, or rather, we are like Him, nurtures a faith in knowing Him.
It nurtures the ability to connect to Him.
I chose to focus on this area of the message...“[The Prophet] Joseph Smith also learned that God desires that His children receive the same kind of exalted existence of which He partakes.”
As God said, “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39).
People of other faiths, even Christian faiths, find this doctrine to be an arguing point, the thought that each of us has the potential to attain all that our Heavenly Father has, to be like Him.
I guess if you see God as an all powerful entity that wants to all glory and power, it would be unfitting for him to offer that to anyone or anything. I can see the argument, that if we can have all He has, how can He still be God?
If you see God as a loving Heavenly Father, who's children we are, the perspective changes a bit.
I want my children to have all that I have, if not more.
That doesn't diminish all that I currently have, or will attain hereafter.
They will have to work hard, just like I did, but I want that for them.
Working to become like our Heavenly Father aligns my view.
And, being able to partake of the atonement of His Son, refines the work that I do on myself.
There is a thought... 'Heaven is not earned, it is learned.'
I believe there are things we do to qualify ourselves for the best of 'heaven'.
But, always having my agency, my opportunity here on earth is to learn how to live it, to make it who I am.
This is a process, it requires work, experience, growth.
The handout I created this month is a quote from Lorenzo Snow (whom I love) who was the 5th President of our church. It comes from the TOP manual, chapter 8.
More from this chapter that I love:
Now, if we really desire to draw near to God; if we wish to place ourselves in accord with the good spirits of the eternal worlds; if we wish to establish within ourselves that faith which we read about and by which ancient Saints performed such wonderful works we must, after we obtain the Holy Spirit, hearken to its whisperings and conform to its suggestions, and by no act of our lives drive it from us: It is true that we are weak erring creatures liable at any time to grieve the Spirit of God; but so soon as we discover ourselves in a fault, we should repent of that wrongdoing and as far as possible repair or make good the wrong we may have committed.
By taking this course we strengthen our character, we advance our own cause, and we fortify ourselves against temptation; and in time we shall have so far overcome as to really astonish ourselves at the progress we have made in self-government, and improvement.5
Last one: ...like the child with the toy or the plaything, we too often satisfy ourselves with the perishable things of time, forgetting the opportunities we have of developing within us the great, the eternal principles of life and truth.
The Lord wishes to establish a closer and more intimate relationship between Himself and us; He wishes to elevate us in the scale of being and intelligence,
and this can only be done through the medium of the everlasting Gospel which is specially prepared for this purpose. Says the Apostle John: “Every man that has this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He (Christ) is pure.”
If you like to give things to the ladies you visit you can pair this thought with anything that 'grows', or faux grows! I used a little jar with fake spring flowers.
