Talk given by Dad at church (2/22/15)
Come unto Christ
Several months ago I had a truck come into the dealership that was really broken. I work for a Chevrolet dealership so this kind of makes me an expert on this brand of cars. I also have an additional responsibility at this dealership that I have learned the diesel engine that is called the duramax. When a Duramax engine comes in I am usually the one who gets assigned to work on it. So when this truck came in it came from another repair shop that could not figure it out. This truck was very sick and it could barley run. I spent a lot of effort in diagnosing what was wrong with it. I had found that it needed a fuel pressure regulator. I sold this repair to the customer and then installed it. To my dismay it did not fix the truck. I had made a change as to how it was operating but it was still not completely fixed. I then rechecked the work that I had done and indeed it was operating in correctly. I went back to the drawing board again and spent some more time looking into what was wrong. After more time it was found that the engine was sabotaged by another person. I found that a rag was sucked into the vanes of the turbo and this was the other problem with the truck. I removed the rag and the engine then started and ran well. The only problem left was that it was billowing black smoke out the tail pipe. All of the raw fuel that was not properly atomized was stuck in the exhaust system and this was causing the black smoke. I then had to do a regeneration of the exhaust system, this entails that the truck run a test where the exhaust will heat up to 1200 degrees and burn out the impurities in the exhaust. This process had to be run when no one was in the shop because it would smoke out the entire shop. The next day I went into work really early and started this process. It was funny because halfway through the process the fire department arrived wondering what was on fire.
Exodus 8 versus 1-14 tells of Moses trying to get his people free from the wicked pharoa. This is interesting to me. Please read the first 10 versus.
1 And the Lord spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they mayserve me.
2 And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs:
3 And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs:
4 And the frogs shall come up both on thee, and upon thy people, and upon all thy servants.
5 ¶And the Lord spake unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch forth thine hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers, and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up upon the land of Egypt.
6 And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt.
7 And the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt.
8 ¶Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and said, Entreat the Lord, that he may take away the frogs from me, and from my people; and I will let the people go, that they may do sacrifice unto the Lord.
9 And Moses said unto Pharaoh,///// Glory over me///: when shall I entreat for thee, and for thy servants, and for thy people, to destroy the frogs from thee and thy houses, that they may remain in the river only?
10 And he said, To morrow. And he said, Be it according to thy word: that thou mayest know that there is none like unto the Lord our God.
So in this story wind find that Moses needed to convince the pharaoh to let his people go and in doing so caused a plague to come upon all of Egypt where the frogs came out of the rivers and water ways and they were living with all the people the frogs were in the housed and in the ovens and in their beds and everywhere they turned there was a frog. Moses told the pharaoh that to let him know God is in control that he would ask the lord to remove them from this plague of frogs whenever he felt that he wanted to see the frogs go away. The thing that I am finding interesting is that the pharaoh did not go to Moses immediately and “now, pray now that these frogs are gone.” Instead he waited to live with those creatures yet another day, yet another night. I am not sure how he could have gotten any sleep at all that night knowing that he could have said now. But yet he did not he waited until tomorrow to have the plague removed.
I find it interesting that we as humans do the same thing. I find that I may be out of shape but rather than doing anything about it I say “I will start my exercise program tomorrow” why not start it today. When people say that they are overweight they say tomorrow I am going to start eating better, yet today I am still going to eat all of those twinkies. Instead of giving up their sins today they keep living with frogs when they don’t have to. All that the people have to do is go unto the lord and start the repentence process now but some are not willing they have to wait; to hang on to the frog a little longer; to live in misery and little more. Are you in this situation? Are you living with a sin that the Lord is willing to take from you but you want to live in this bondage just a little longer.
Mathew 11:28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Our Heavenly Father wants to help us, he wants to help pull the load, he wants to give us peace and rest. When you are dealing with sin most of the time you can take care of that yourself through prayer and fasting. Sometimes you need to take your problems to a specialist. This specialist is your bishop. He knows how to get you through this time of trouble. He knows how to guide you through. However fixing the addiction that may bring you into bondage may indicate another problem deaper in your life; in fact I see it quite often as a bishop that a pornography problem is rooted much deeper in a problem that is not resolved from the past such as a loss of a parent, low self esteem, abuse from some one of trust. These problems can be resolved with the help of a trained bishop and with counseling from a trained professional.
The Atonement is real. The blessings of the sacrament is real. We can not afford to take the sacrament lightly. When that bread and water comes by you, REMEMBER WHAT THEY REPRESENT!!!!! We have a savior that came to the earth and atoned for us.
Even though things are repented of you may still have a time when things are a little cloudy, but eventually, with hard work living the teachings of the gospel, it will be all clear and you will know of the refining gift of the atonement. The same as the truck; even though it was repaired it had to undergo a refinement that allowed it to run clean. The atonement will allow you to go through this refinement and be clean.
We are children of God! He loves us and wants us to be whole. He wants to bless us with blessings but we have to be willing to be a disciple of his and call upon those blessings. We have to take ourselves to the specialists when needed and remove all of the frogs from our lives.
This is my testimony that God lives! He sent us a savior so that we can make it back to him. We have to live the teachings of the Gospel in order to fully understand the glory of having the spirit to be with us always.
