Conversion, the Atonement, and the Change of Heart

By Allie D.

One thing we know from the gospel is that the ultimate goal of everything we go through is to bring us back to God's presence. The things that separate us from God are sin and death. Alma taught that the Atonement bringeth to pass the resurrection of the dead. The Atonement, however, also offers us salvation from the damning effects of sin, which preclude us from joining God. We overcome sin by accessing the Atonement through repentance. These aspects of Jesus's atonement give us the opportunity to overcome both sin and death, and live with God, happily, forever, in our eternal families, as we make and keep sacred covenants such as the ones we make at baptism. Because of the Atonement, we can be assured of the possibility of happiness in the eternities, having perfect bodies, being united with God and all our loved ones.

However, a truly miraculous aspect of the gift of the Atonement is that we don’t have to wait for the Resurrection, after we are dead, to enjoy it--and make no mistake, the Atonement is a gift that is meant to be enjoyed. We are meant to enjoy it. God yearns for us to take this gift with both hands, and clasp it to our hearts, and cling to it and use it every single day. He longs for us to love this gift and use it to find joy in our day to day lives, here and now.

God begs us to use the Atonement to repent, to receive divine forgiveness of our sins. This forgiveness is one of the many reasons we chose to be baptized with the authority of the priesthood, and why it feels so breathtakingly amazing to get out of that water, knowing that you've left your sins behind. God wants us to feel that post-baptismal joy all the time. That’s why we meet here every week, to renew our baptismal covenants through the taking of the bread and water, and hopefully to find the same joy each week as we partake of the sacrament as we did when we were baptized. God loves us and wants us to consistently experience the joy that comes from His forgiveness.

God wants us to use the Atonement to find joy in our forgiveness of others. A few years ago, my family found out that my disabled brother had been horribly and intentionally hurt and that he would suffer the consequences of another person’s evil for the rest of his life. This was after he broke his hip. I was asked not to tell my other brother, Sam, who was serving a mission at the time, out of concern for his state of mind. But I felt strongly that I should tell him, and I did. And that knowledge broke his heart just as it broke ours.

But he wasted no time in accessing the Atonement. He knelt down to pray and gave that burden over to Jesus Christ, whose Atonement enabled Him to take the weight off my brother’s shoulders. And that night, my younger brother was filled with forgiveness for my older brother’s assailant. Through the miracle of the Atonement, in the darkest hour my brother was able to find peace. It was through the Atonement that I myself eventually found peace regarding that situation. You can’t have joy without peace in your heart. God desires for us to seek that peace, so we can feel that joy.

The Atonement heals us from our sorrows, when we use it for that purpose. As part of the Atonement, Jesus became one with each of us, personally and literally experiencing everything that each of us has gone through and will go through. Because of his intimate and first-hand experience with our personal trials, He knows exactly how to comfort us. When we are brave enough to hand over the angers and the sorrows, the disappointments, the doubts, the regrets that we cling to--when we are brave enough to pry our fingers off those things and hand them with open palms to Jesus Christ, He takes them from us. The more completely we turn our burdens over to Him, the more completely He takes them from us.

If you’ve ever been motivated by anger, or revenge, or guilt, or bitterness, you know it can feel as though those things are occupying important and irreplaceable parts of your heart. It can feel as though without those things, you’ll be left with just a hole. But in reality, when we give those poisoned pieces of our hearts to Jesus Christ, He heals us, and fills our hearts with love and light.

When Adam and Eve first partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and first realized the difference between right and wrong, the first thing they realized was that being naked in public is wrong. So they tried to hide their nakedness by making themselves clothes of leaves.

When The Lord found them and they confessed what had happened, and that they were trying to hide their nakedness now that they knew public nudity was wrong, He was understanding of their clothing predicament and made for them garments of skins, to keep them safe from both the sin of being inappropriately nude, and from physical discomfort. When we show The Lord our own spiritual nakedness, He clothes our hearts in figurative garments just as He first clothed Adam and Eve, and for the same purpose: The Lord longs to offer us the warmth and the protection and the strength and the peace that come from being enrobed in His forgiveness, His love, and His righteousness--but, like Adam and Eve, we have to seek Him, give up our fig leaves without reserve, and accept His offering to us in return.

We can use the Atonement in our daily lives: it is as simple as asking God for help in its application. If you don't know how to use the Atonement, pray and ask. God wants to answer that question. He wants you to use the Atonement every day and love it.

Preach My Gospel states that everything that is unfair about life can be made fair through the Atonement. In the eternities, God uses the Atonement to repay us with joy for every sorrow we experience on earth. And God delights in the chance to reward us with joy for our sorrows.

The Atonement enables us to experience the mighty change of heart that makes us more like Christ--the change of heart crucial to our salvation. As the first prophet of the Restoration taught, a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has the power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation. Taking advantage of Jesus's sacrifice for us requires sacrifices of our own, as we give away all our sins to know Him, as Lamoni of old. No unclean thing can enter into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus's Atonement enables us to repent so that we can become clean, new creatures in Christ, and return to God's presence. When we repent, we allow God and Jesus Christ to change our hearts so we no longer desire to do evil.

It is one thing to believe that Jesus is the Christ, and another to let that belief work in us until we are changed. We are saved by His grace when we are changed by His grace.

I know that Jesus is our Savior, the only means whereby man can be saved and receive true peace and joy. I know He loves us.

D&C 19:16-19:For behold, I, God, have ^asuffered these things for all, that they ^bmight not suffer if they would ^crepent; But if they would not repent they must ^asuffer even as I; But if they would not repent they must ^asuffer even as I; Which ^asuffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might ^bnot drink the bitter cup, and shrink—Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and^afinished my preparations unto the children of men.

How has the Atonement impacted your life? Have you ever felt the peace that comes from repentance?