Jul 12, 2014

Bear Up Their Burdens With Ease

Bear Up Their Burdens With Ease
by Elder David A. Bednar

The unique burdens in each of our lives help us to rely upon the merits, mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah.

"Each of us. . .carries a load.  Our individual load is comprised of demands and opportunities, obligations and privileges, afflictions and blessings, and options and constraints."

The loads we carry, or the hard things we experience in our lives, are necessary.  They are part of the Plan of Happiness.  "Sometimes we mistakenly may believe that happiness is the absence of a load." But it's actually the load that provides "traction" in our lives, helping to grow, and reminding us what our ultimate goal is.

We don't have to carry the load alone, we have help- we have a Savior, Jesus Christ.

"Making and keeping sacred covenants yokes us to and with the Lord Jesus Christ.  In essence, the Savior is beckoning us to rely upon and pull together with Him, even though our best efforts are not equal to and cannot be compared with His.  As we trust in and pull our load with Him during the journey of mortality, truly His yoke is easy and His burden is light."

Use the Strengthening Power of the Atonement
"We are not and never need be alone.  We can press forward in our daily lives with heavenly help.  Through the Savior's Atonement we can receive capacity and "strength beyond [our] own."
"I wonder if we fail to fully acknowledge this strengthening aspect of the Atonement in our lives and mistakenly believe we must carry our load all alone-through sheer grit, willpower, and discipline and with our obviously limited capacities . . .the Lord desires, through His Atonement, and by the power of the Holy Ghost, to enliven us- not only to guide but also to strengthen and heal us."

The Lord wants to help us.  He is just waiting for us to ask Him.  
He may not take our burdens away, but he will help strengthen us which will make our burdens become lighter, easier to handle.

The Savior Succors His People
Succor- assistance and support in times of hardship or distress

". . .the Savior has suffered not just for our sins and iniquities-but also for our physical pains and anguish, our weaknesses and shortcomings, our fears and frustrations, our disappointments and discouragement, our regrets and remorse, our despair and desperation, the injustices and inequities we experience, and the emotional distresses that beset us."
"There is no physical pain, no spiritual wound, no anguish of soul or heartache, no infirmity or weakness you or I ever confront in mortality that the Savior did not experience first. . .the Son of God perfectly knows and understands, for He has felt and borne our individual burdens. . . He can reach out, touch, succor, heal, and strengthen us to be more than we could ever be and help us to do that which we could never do relying only upon our own power."

More about this topic HERE in this month's (July 2014) Ensign

Next Week's Talk:
by Elder Robert D. Hales
and
by ELDER l. Tom Perry

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