-2 Nephi 25:23
I recently posted on my sister blog about my experience of rapid learning and growth in music.
(http://rantingsofacrazyteen.blogspot.com/2015/09/who-you-are.html)
I would like to share a little more about that.
As noted in the article, my career in music began quite suddenly (as far as the viola is concerned) just before ninth grade. I decided to teach myself how to play and I practiced feverishly in attempt to become my best every day. I saw rapid progress. What I didn't mention was how hard that was on me. I mean, it was difficult, sure, but that's not the point. Playing music waaaay out of your level has a certain degree of difficulty to it, but it also adds a lot of stress. I was way out of my league and could not handle the situation I was putting myself into. The strain of it was mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. I was putting my all into songs that I look back on now with ease, but then they were so foreign in the skills that they required, it was strenuous.
I remember sitting in my room, setting up to work at it, and just practicing for hours. It wasn't easy, and I couldn't do it on my own.
Hold that thought in the back of your mind for a moment.
Grace.
It's a word we hear constantly in the whole of the christian world. Jesus saves us with his grace because he is the savior of the world and that is what he truly wants to do because he loves us.
That's pretty widely accepted, in christian beliefs anyway.
Well there's something amazing about Christ's atonement. It has no time limit. No expiration date. The saints of the old testament used the atonement to repent and they focused their lives on it with sacrifices and covenants made to point them toward Christ's infinite sacrifice long before it had physically taken place. In the time of the new testament, Christ taught disciples to repent and utilize the atonement before he had died on the cross and bled for our sins. Today, two THOUSAND years later, we still repent through the unending power of the atonement. His grace still saves.
But it's not just that.
In the book of Mormon we read that "we know that it is by grace we are saved, after all we can do" and that alone is amazing, but it's not just that either.
His grace saves us in our weakness, notice it doesn't save us in our sins, because Jesus tells us to "go and sin no more"
I used to think that it looked a bit like this when we were judged, that our works were tallied up and then we got to see if you'd done enough to make it into heaven based on the grace you were allowed:
but think. Think of the moments when he has come to you, when he has run to you, when he has succored you and buoyed you up. Hasn't it been in your weakness? He doesn't just abandon us and tell us to do what we can and then he will clean up our mess after we've completely failed, he helps us in the moment to achieve far more than we are capable of by helping us along the way, and then he goes and fills in the gaps and makes up for all of our shortcomings.
I think it would really look a little more like this:
Now back to the music thing.
Music is my passion, and I have been incredibly blessed to have such a love for it and to have had such amazing teachers and resources and everything, and I've worked Really Hard, but it's not just me.
I've been sustained through my work, inspired in my practice, blessed to understand, and given the resources I have.
Gospel principles apply everywhere, and I'm not just painting it into a pretty picture for you, I'm completely serious.
Grace is earned. Not entirely, but it's given based on the intent of our hearts, judged and bestowed, by a perfect, all-knowing God. Our Father.
When we really commit and we work hard, we are built into something greater. We are blessed and strengthened and multiplied. Amazing things become possible.
So yes, like the other article says, we have to believe in ourselves and if we work and we believe in ourselves and we really try to become who we are, it will happen, but you should realize that that's the same as faith.
Faith is having an assurance in God. It is believing that he will help you to become, but truly having faith means that you know and understand that you have to do your part. You have to emulate your goal however possible and work your hardest to receive it and know that when you really do, if you dedicate your work to glorifying your Father in service to others, that you will be blessed.
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