But it’s important to remember that when most people experience the Church of Jesus Christ for the first time, they aren’t thinking about priesthood authority or ordinances or the gathering of Israel. What they’re likely to notice, above all else, is how they feel when they’re with us and how we treat each other.
“Love one another,” Jesus said. “By this all will know that you are My disciples.” Very often, a person’s first testimony of Jesus Christ comes when he or she feels love among disciples of Jesus Christ.
The Savior declared that He restored His Church so “that faith … might increase in the earth.” Therefore, when people visit our Church meetings, the Savior wants them to leave with stronger faith in Him! The love our friends feel among us will lift them closer to Jesus Christ! That is our simple goal every time we gather.
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Now, I realize that I’m describing the ideal. And in this mortal life, we rarely get to experience the ideal. And “until the perfect day,” there will always be a gap between the ideal and the real. So, what should we do when the Church doesn’t feel like the perfect day? When, for whatever reason, our ward doesn’t yet nurture perfect faith or love? Or when it feels that we don’t fit in?
One thing we should not do is give up on the ideal!
The
title page of the Book of Mormon includes this important caution: “If there are faults,” it says, “they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God.”
Can a book—or a church or a person—have “faults” and “mistakes” and still be the work of God?
My answer is a resounding yes!
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So, while we hold ourselves to the Lord’s high standards, let’s also be patient with one another. We are each a work in progress, and we all rely on the Savior for any progress we make. That’s true for us as individuals, and it’s true for the kingdom of God on earth.
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It’s natural to want to be around people who look, talk, act, and think like we do. There is a place for that.
But in the Savior’s Church, we gather all of God’s children who are willing to be gathered and who seek the truth. It is not our physical appearance, our political views, our culture, or our ethnicity that brings us together. It is not our common background that unites us. It is our common objective, our love for God and love for our neighbor, our commitment to Jesus Christ and His restored gospel. We are “one in Christ.”
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If you love God, if you want to know Him better by following His Son, then you belong here. If you’re earnestly seeking to keep the Savior’s commandments—even though you’re not perfect at it yet—then you are a perfect fit for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
And what if you’re different from people around you? That doesn’t make you a misfit—it makes you a needed part of the body of Christ. All are needed in the body of Christ. The ears perceive things that the eyes never could. The feet do things that the hands would be ineffective at.
That doesn’t mean your job is to change everyone to be like yourself. But it does mean that you have something important to contribute—and that you have something important to learn!
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Mosiah 18:8. When we are baptized, we witness that, among other things, we want to be part of a people who “bear one another’s burdens” and “mourn with those [who] mourn” and “comfort those that stand in need of comfort” (verses 8–9). In other words, when we join the Church of Jesus Christ, we are saying—humbly but clearly—that we want to become more like our beloved Savior, and we want to do it together.
