Ask for forgiveness

 

 

 

Remember that our outlook reflects what we nurture within. We all have within us an “upward reach” and inherent desire to fulfill our greatest potential. So, see the best in yourself and enjoy the journey toward realizing your greatest possibilities. “He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”

 

James Allen

 

 

“The adversary uses despair to bind hearts and minds in suffocating darkness. Despair drains from us all that is vibrant and joyful and leaves behind the empty remnants of what life was meant to be. Despair kills ambition, advances sickness, pollutes the soul, and deadens the heart. Despair can seem like a staircase that leads only and forever downward. Hope, on the other hand, is like the beam of sunlight rising up and above the horizon of our present circumstances. It pierces the darkness with a brilliant dawn. It encourages and inspires us to place our trust in the loving care of an eternal Heavenly Father, who has prepared a way for those who seek for eternal truth in a world of relativism, confusion, and of fear.”

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

 

Faith is a gift from God, and blessed is the man who possesses it.

“He who carries the lamp will not despair”

“A testimony is fragile. It is as hard to hold as a moonbeam. It is something you have to recapture every day of your life.”

 

Harold B. Lee

 

 

“Be grateful. Every day is a new canvas—a new opportunity. Our beloved President Gordon B. Hinckley has said: ‘My plea is that we stop seeking out the storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight. I am suggesting that as we go through life, we ‘accentuate the positive.’ I am asking that we look a little deeper for the good, that we still our voices of insult and sarcasm, that we more generously compliment and endorse virtue.

Joseph B. Wirthlin.

Please Forgive Me

“Somehow forgiveness, with love and tolerance, accomplishes miracles that can happen in no other way.”

Gordon B. Hinckley

“It is of great significance to me, that I may at any moment and in any circumstance approach through prayer the throne of grace, that my Heavenly Father will hear my petition, that my Advocate,

him who did no sin, whose blood was shed, will plead my cause.”

D. Todd Christofferson

 

Worth repeating…….Please Forgive Me

“Somehow forgiveness, with love and tolerance, accomplishes miracles that can happen in no other way.”

Gordon B. Hinckley

 

The Savior asked, “Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” What do we see when we look at others? What judgments do we make about them? None of us is perfect. I know of no one who would profess to be so. And yet for some reason, despite our own imperfections, we have a tendency to point out those of others, making judgments concerning their actions or inactions. Thus the commandment: “Judge not.”

Thomas S. Monson

 

first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly…….

 

All of us have been hurt and wounded at some point in our lives, some of us many times and we may feel a lot of resentment, anger even hatred towards the people who were responsible…. We have be taught to forgive our enemies or to turn the other cheek, but we may find it very difficult to do so, even if we’re willing. Merely thinking about forgiving someone rarely works.  Forgiveness comes from the heart and, as French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17 century,

 

“The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.”

 

Feelings do not yield to our will, they have a life and a flow of their own. So, try as we might, we may find ourselves unable to muster a genuine feeling of forgiveness for someone who’s done us wrong. Consequently we may feel torn between our willingness to forgive and our inability to do so, and we may feel guilty for having feelings of resentment and rage.  It becomes a vicious cycle. I must forgive them, the more we trigger resistance in our heart and the more we blame ourselves for it.

                                                                                          

We may feel we are morally in the right, that the other person just doesn’t deserve our forgiveness, that we cannot forgive them for what they have done. In effect, we feel superior to them. We are good, they are bad, We become like a king, a governor, a president, a judge, someone who has the right to grant a pardon to a condemned person.

We revel in the power we believe we have over others.

 

The practice of the gift of forgiveness changes our mental script. We are no longer seated on the throne of our ego. We no longer weigh whether to show largesse and forgive those who have maliciously hurt us, judging whether these people deserve to be forgiven. Instead, we become aware of our own judgments.   We realize how these judgments have led us to close off our heart and to hurt ourselves even more, using whatever other people may have done to us as justification. Using the practice of the Gift of Forgiveness, we ask forgiveness from them.

 

In choosing to ask for forgiveness, we move from a place of self-importance and pride to a place of humility.

 

Oliver Clerc & Don Miguel