Counterfeit Blessings

We just had our Stake Conference yesterday, and several blogworthy thoughts were shared. I'd like to share a few of them from my notes, starting with the distinction between opposites and counterfeits. It seems as though everything has an opposite, and for everything God wants for us, Satan wants us to have the opposite. God wants us to be happy; Satan wants us to be miserable. God wants us to be together forever; Satan wants us to be alone forever. God wants us to love everyone, including ourselves; and Satan wants us to hate everyone, including ourselves.

But even though Satan wants the opposite of what God wants, that's not what he offers us. He's too clever for that. He knows that if he blatantly offers us misery, loneliness, and loathing, we're going to turn him down. So, instead of offering us the opposites of what God wants for us, Satan offers us counterfeits. Instead of telling us "Hey, do this and you'll be miserable," he says "Hey, do this and you'll have fun." Fun is not the opposite of happiness. Rather, it's a counterfeit of happiness. It creates a similar feeling, but it's not quite the same and it's not quite as good. Having fun is a pleasant, if brief, experience, but it's nothing compared to the feeling of being truly happy.

The same is true with love and lust. Satan offers us lust as a counterfeit for love, and when we act according to our lusts, we tend to end up with hatred. I'm not sure what the counterfeit of togetherness is, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was one, and if Satan offers it to us, knowing that, if we accept his counterfeit, we're going to end up feeling alone.

We shouldn't settle for Satan's counterfeits. We're capable of obtaining so much more than that. We can have true happiness, eternal unity, and perfect love for ourselves and for our families. Satan's counterfeits can be tempting, but just like counterfeit money, it's worthless. His counterfeits can also be convincing, but once you've felt true happiness, unity, and love, there's really no substitute for that. Satan can't fabricate blessings as good as the ones God offers us, and he wouldn't offer them to us if he could. Satan doesn't want us to be blessed. He tries to trick us with counterfeit blessings to keep us away from the real blessings. I know that the blessings God wants for us are real, but I also know that we can't obtain those true blessings while we're falling for Satan's counterfeits.