This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the October 2005 Conference.
This week, I really liked Elder Uchtdorf's talk about developing Christlike attributes. I was also studying Elder Renlund's most recent talk on the Doctrine of Christ cycle, and the two talks went really well together. Elder Renlund talks a lot about how repeated repentance changes us, and Elder Uchtdorf talks about some of the ways those changes can be manifested in our lives. He says,
Developing Christlike attributes in our lives is not an easy task, especially when we move away from generalities and abstractions and begin to deal with real life. The test comes in practicing what we proclaim. The reality check comes when Christlike attributes need to become visible in our lives—as husband or wife, as father or mother, as son or daughter, in our friendships, in our employment, in our business, and in our recreation. We can recognize our growth, as can those around us, as we gradually increase our capacity to “act in all holiness before [Him].”
Then he says (and this would have fit right into the Elder Renlund talk):
Christlike attributes are gifts from God. They cannot be developed without His help. The one help we all need is given to us freely through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Having faith in Jesus Christ and in His Atonement means relying completely on Him—trusting in His infinite power, intelligence, and love. Christlike attributes come into our lives as we exercise our agency righteously. Faith in Jesus Christ leads to action. When we have faith in Christ, we trust the Lord enough to follow His commandments—even when we do not completely understand the reasons for them. In seeking to become more like the Savior, we need to reevaluate our lives regularly and rely, through the path of true repentance, upon the merits of Jesus Christ and the blessings of His Atonement.
I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father didn't leave us on our own in our efforts to become like Him. I'm so glad we have Jesus to follow, and I especially love that He has given us the perfect method for developing the Christlike attributes we need—that constant, seemingly mundane cycle of faith, action, repentance, and improvement. I am learning to trust that cycle in my own life even when I can't really see much progress in myself from day to day! And I love the positive way Elder Uchtdorf ends his talk (with airplane imagery, of course):
Our faith in Jesus Christ will provide power and a strong forward thrust; our unwavering and active hope will provide a powerful upward lift. Both faith and hope will carry us across oceans of temptations, over mountains of afflictions, and bring us safely back to our eternal home and destination.
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