Area Presidency Message
A Divine Love
“We have the privilege of experiencing mortality because we sustained His plan. Why? Because even then, we were already witnesses of His love for us and of His desires for our exaltation.”
Anyone who stops to reflect deeply on the reality of our earthly existence comes to the conclusion that life as we know it is the greatest mystery of all time. Consider a seemingly intelligent earth that rolls on through the day and then through the night, and which brings seasons as it flies through space while self-tilting one way and then the other without toppling over, to expose as much of its surface as it can to the sun. Or the mind-boggling variety of unique life forms and unique individuals of each type of life on the earth’s surface in and on multiple types of soils and between the stillness of rocks, and within the unrelenting sway of its great oceans and its lakes. Moreover, as one turns one’s eyes towards the clear night sky, one beholds an unbelievable vista of dots of light that announces billions upon billions of stars hiding unseen earths. Well did the prophet Psalmist exclaim:
“O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! . . .
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
“For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
“Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet” (Psalm 8:1, 3–6).
The true measure of a parent’s love for a child is the preparation and the opportunity that the parent makes available for the growth and development of the child.
The declaration of God: “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39) is manifest to all who seek a witness. The Father’s work and glory is acknowledged first through our mortal experience of the reality of the grandeur of the universe He has prepared for our existence on this earth. Second, it is acknowledged through faith in the promise of eternal life through the gift of the Atonement of His Only Begotten Son, and the peace and deep-seated joy of all who fully embrace this hope. In this is the testimony of the Father’s enduring love for us as His children.
Before the foundation of this earth, He—through His Only Begotten Son—presented to all His children, the plan by which our current reality would be, and by which our future will be created:
“We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell;
“And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;
“And they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; and they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom with those who keep their first estate; and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever” (Abraham 3:24–26).
We have the privilege of experiencing mortality because we sustained His plan. Why? Because even then, we were already witnesses of His love for us and of His desires for our exaltation.
Throughout the dispensations of the gospel of His Son, Heavenly Father has shown us by the example of His anointed servants how to love Him the way He loves us. His invitation to us to love Him is constant in all dispensations:
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself” (Luke 10:27).
On the face of it, this invitation appears to place a burden on the invitees. However, the irony is that all who respond in positive ways draw the greatest blessings of heaven upon themselves. Loving God the Father is in fact the very best way that anyone can love themselves.
We see this in an especially magnified way in the life of Jesus Christ, about whom the prophet Abinadi declared that He loved the Father so much that His will was “swallowed up in the will of the Father” (Mosiah 15:7).
At the foundation of the earth, He chose to put the Father’s will before His own:
“Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever” (Moses 4:2).
In His mortal life, He testified and lived according to the principle of complete submission to the Father’s will:
“I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me” (John 6:38).
And we have it on record that at the end of His earthly ministry, after showing His unfailing love for the Father in all His teachings and through all His trials, Jesus revealed to His disciples:
“All power, is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18).
Never seeking to exalt Himself before the Father nor to lift Himself above His fellow men throughout His mortal life, He acquired the fulness of the gift of divine love, and the Father exalted Him. Therefore, in bearing witness of Him to the world, the Father declared:
“Behold my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name” (3 Nephi 11:7).
We have been witnesses of the Father’s divine love from the foundations of our existence to our current mortal reality. May we each seek diligently to respond to the invitation to love Him with all our heart, might, mind and strength by loving our Heavenly Father with the perfect love that He has shown to us through His Only Begotten Son—and by loving our fellow brothers and sisters as ourselves—that we may glorify our Father’s name, that He may be pleased in us, and that He may grant us His power.
Joseph W. Sitati was sustained as a General Authority Seventy in April 2009. He is married to Gladys Nangoni; they are the parents of five children.