Email to Family and Friends
We had the baptisms of KayLoni Blair and Ryan Johnson this weekend! They were both very spiritual, and I am so proud of them. I'm so thankful to have been able to get to know them. KayLoni is becoming into a very strong LDS woman, and like wise her newly wed husband, Jacob Blair, is also turning into the mighty priesthood man that his family needs him to be.
"Leave the Past in the Past"
Part of a talk I had the privilege of giving at the baptism of KayLoni Blair on 1-14-17.
(1) There is something in us, at least in too many of us, that particularly fails to forgive and forget earlier mistakes in life, either mistakes we ourselves have made or the mistakes of others.
As I have seen couples in life who are deeply hurt or even just deeply stressed, they tend to reach farther and farther into the past to find yet a bigger brick to throw through the window "pain" of their marriage.
When something is over and done with, when it has been repented of as fully as it can be repented of, with life has moved on as it should and a lot of other wonderful good things have happened since then, it is not right to go back and open up some ancient moon that the son of God himself died trying to heal!
Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and improve.
The past is to be learned from but not lived in. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future.
If something is buried in the past, leave it buried don't keep going back with you a little sand pail and beach shovel to dig it up, wave it around, and then throw it at someone, saying, "Hey! Do you remember this?" Splat!
Because more than likely the other person will say "Yeah, I do remember that. Do you remember this?" Splat! And before you know it, you both are all dirty and uncomfortable.
I speak unto all, to leave the past in the past! There is no greater requirement for us then to do as the Lord Himself said He does: "Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more " (2)
If we have repented, The Lord won't remember our sins, and neither should we nor anyone else!
Now, like the anti-Nephi Lehi's of the book of Mormon, bury your weapons of war, and leave them buried. Forgive, and do that which is harder than to forgive: Forget. And when it comes to mind again, forget it again.
God doesn't care nearly as much about where you have been as he does about where you are and, with his help, where are you are willing to go. I say these things in the holy and personal name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Elder Philip R. Bredsguard
917 Amoretti St Thermopolis, WY 82443
Notes
- Based off of a talk given by Elder Jeffery R. Holland titled "Remember Lot's Wife", I would encourage all to listen to it, it is much better than this ^ :)
- Doctrine & Covenants 58:42
Sent from my iPad
