Cookies. The answer is cookies.

 

“Simply giving up our own negative attitudes is the best thing we can do to help

others give up their negative attitudes and grow."

 

 

by Emily Freeman and David Butler

You are going to love this lesson…And once you are done reading it, you might want to bake some cookies.  I did. The other night I got a phone call from a friend of mine.

The phone call and the question took me off guard. “How do I forgive someone?” I asked some follow up questions.  His responses included everything you should say.  I know why I should forgive. I understand the doctrine of forgiveness.  I like being forgiven.    I would like to forgive.  But I just can’t.  How do you actually do it?

I started thinking about how often I ask this same question in different ways: How do I actually become patient? How do I love someone I don’t want to love?

How do I become reflexive in my desire to help?  To serve? How do I make myself pure? How do I prevent myself from ever thinking negative thoughts?

Have you ever asked questions like these? Have you ever wanted to know how to change your own heart?

Here is the answer I have learned from Ezekiel.  Here is the answer I gave to my friend:

Cookies.  The answer is cookies.

Stay with me.

Have you ever had an unexpected guest pop over to your house with a plate of cookies and say something like, “I baked these cookies for you.” Now, I know what they mean, and I wouldn’t ever say this to them, but the truth is, they really didn’t.

They didn’t bake them. The oven did.

They bought, and cracked, and sifted, and stirred.  But they didn’t bake.

They might have even preheated, opened, and placed.  But they didn’t bake.

No person on earth can actually take a mixture of eggs, flour, butter, sugar, salt and a teaspoon of vanilla and turn them into baked cookies.  You could breathe hot breath on them all afternoon, but you will not be able to transform dough into cookies.  You can try it.  But please don’t.  It would be a waste of time.

It would be as much of a waste of time as someone trying to force a change of their heart to make it patient, or pure, or holy.  People cannot change their own hearts.  Only God can.

After Jerusalem had been destroyed, the Lord gave the Israelite captives in Babylon hope of a return to their land and their promises.  But this would require change.  A turning of desires, thoughts, and actions from a people of habitual sin back to Him.  How would this happen?

“Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness…will I cleanse you.

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

…And ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.”

Ezekiel 36:25-28

I want this to happen to me.  I want Him to change me.  I want to become like He is.  I want to think His thoughts.  I want to respond to situations how He would.  I want a new heart.

So I will stir, and sift, and crack, and pour and prepare as much as I know how.  Then I will try to put myself in places where the Holy Ghost can apply the miracle of the Atonement to my heart. And I will plead to be changed. As I look back on my life I can see the sifting and the stirring taking place—in small ways.  There are things I used to like that I don’t anymore.  There are commandments I now love to keep that I once didn’t.  I can feel Him changing me.  I am trusting His promises.  And I want that to continue.

One of the most important functions of the Holy Ghost is to take the cleansing and transforming power of the Atonement and bring it into our hearts.  We can be born again—a new creature in Christ.  With new motives.  With new desires.  A brand new heart. Ezekiel and other prophets are sent to teach us what we need to do to qualify for this change—to sift out the good, to stir our hearts until we are ready to be put in the oven, ready to be baked—and this extremely important. But it is the Lord who will actually transform us. He will make us like He is.

“The wounds in his hands, feet, and side are signs that in mortality painful things happen even to the pure and the perfect, signs that tribulation is not evidence that God does not love us. It is a significant and hopeful fact that it is the wounded Christ who comes to our rescue.”

 

Jeffrey R. Holland