Love Encourages Change

Yesterday, I again started to blog about this month's batch of General Conference talks because the month was almost half over and I had only blogged about one blog post so far. I figured that if I wanted to blog about every talk from the Sunday Afternoon Session of the April 2017 General Conference before the end of the month, I had better get on it. At the time, I hadn't counted on Elder S. Mark Palmer's talk. Elder Palmer's talk was an insightful one, and it includes a few messages on unrelated topics that I would like to share, many of which were conveniently spelled out at the end of the talk. I plan to touch on at least two of them before moving on to the next talk.

The first topic I would like to cover is that love encourages change. Elder Palmer based his talk on the conversation between Jesus and a rich young man. This young man was also, evidently, fairly righteous, as he addressed Jesus as "good master," asked what he could do to gain eternal life, and reported that he kept every commandment Jesus listed. “Then Jesus Beholding Him Loved Him” and issued him the commandment that made the rich young man famous: "go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me" (Mark 10:21).

Elder Palmer latched onto those six words: “Then Jesus beholding him loved him.” He spoke about how Jesus' love inspires Him to call us to repentance. Elder Palmer said that he could vividly imagine "our Lord pausing and beholding this young man. Beholding—as in looking deeply and penetratingly into his soul, recognizing his goodness and also his potential, as well as discerning his greatest need."

Because of Jesus' insight into our potential and because of His immeasurable love for us, He has a strong desire for us to reach our potential, and the only way we can do that is by changing for the better. That is at least part of the reason is so persistently insistent that we repent. Repentance is how we change for the better, and it's the only way we can reach our full potential and claim all the blessings of God. If Jesus didn't care about us, He wouldn't care what happens to us. But because He loves us, He wants what's best for us, which is why He so sincerely wants us to repent.

Elder Palmer said that as we learn to love others the way Jesus loves them, we will be filled with the same feelings. We will want them to repent because we will love them enough to want them to qualify for God's greatest blessings. The same can be true of ourselves as well. When we see ourselves the way God sees us, complete with the eternal perspective and the undying love, we will want to change ourselves for the better. Love, particularly God's pure love, inspires people to want to change and to want to encourage others to change as well. God's love is a great motivator, and when we have God's love in our hearts and His perspective in our minds, we will be filled with a strong desire to change and to help other people change as well.