Coming to Know Him

In his recent talk in general conference, Elder Teh spoke about coming to know the Savior in addition to knowing about Him. He recounted how on his missionary “a very intellectual man” had interviewed him and his companion and wrote an article about Jesus Christ “that contained wonderful words and phrases about the Savior.” He recalled his feelings at the time that he was “impressed but not necessarily lifted. It had good information but felt hollow and lacked spiritual power.” The man had, he implied, know about the Savior without coming to personally know Him. So his witness lacked any power of testimony and conviction. Elder Teh also repeated this question from Elder Bednar to all of us: “Do we only know about the Savior, or are we increasingly coming to know Him? How do we come to know the Lord?” Of course to know the Savior we must first learn about Him; we read in the scriptures about His character and His actions, His teachings and His great atoning sacrifice. We learn how He healed the sick and raised the dead, how He uplifted and admonished those around Him. But we must learn even more than these things if we are to find eternal life as He taught us: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). He must become, as the title of Elder Teh’s talk suggests, our personal Savior.

                Elder Teh offered three suggestions for how we can truly come to know the Savior. The first was to “recognize that knowing the Savior is the most important pursuit of our lives. It should take priority over anything else.” In other words, it must be a burning desire for us in our lives to know Him. This reminds me of President Nelson’s powerful statement and invitation several years ago about our desires to come unto Him: “When you reach up for the Lord’s power in your life with the same intensity that a drowning person has when grasping and gasping for air, power from Jesus Christ will be yours. When the Savior knows you truly want to reach up to Him—when He can feel that the greatest desire of your heart is to draw His power into your life—you will be led by the Holy Ghost to know exactly what you should do.” We have to truly want it. Second, Elder Teh taught, the testimony of the scriptures about the Savior must start to become our own words and feelings: “As we are increasingly coming to know the Savior, scriptural passages and the words of the prophets become so intimately meaningful to us that they become our own words. It is not about copying the words, feelings, and experiences of others as much as it is coming to know for ourselves, in our own unique way, by experimenting upon the word and receiving a witness from the Holy Ghost.” This is exactly what Elder McConkie expressed in his final talk in general conference about the atonement of Jesus Christ. He prefaced His telling of the Savior’s suffering, death, and resurrection, in which he used scriptural phrases with this statement: “In speaking of these wondrous things I shall use my own words, though you may think they are the words of scripture, words spoken by other Apostles and prophets. True it is they were first proclaimed by others, but they are now mine, for the Holy Spirit of God has borne witness to me that they are true, and it is now as though the Lord had revealed them to me in the first instance. I have thereby heard his voice and know his word.” In other words, the testimony of the scriptures had become his testimony, the words of the prophets had become his words because the voice of the Spirit had born witness to him of their truthfulness. That is what Elder Teh suggested that we must do: come to know for ourselves that the witnesses of the Savior in the scriptures are true.

                The third suggestion from Elder Teh was to seek to see how the Savior’s sacrifice affects us personally: “An increasing understanding that the Atonement of Jesus Christ applies to us personally and individually will help us know Him.” He continued, “The Atonement of Jesus Christ is infinite and eternal and all-encompassing in its breadth and depth but wholly personal and individual in its effects.” For me the power of the atonement comes as I face challenges at work or in my family and plead with the Lord for help. Invariably that help comes in one form or another, and I know that is indeed the power of the Savior enabling me to overcome my struggles small and large. I have learned that He has power to lift me up and that He wants me to increase in my own abilities. As I have sought to know Him I have learned that He wants me to stretch and become far better than I am. I love how C.S. Lewis put it: “Imagine yourself as a living house.  God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing.  He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised.  But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense.  What on earth is He up to?  The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace.  He intends to come and live in it Himself.” As we come to truly know Him, as Elder Teh invited us, we must be willing to let Him change us and stretch us and mold us into the person who is even as He is.