Note: This is a talk I gave in church in December 2019. It was significantly based in Brennan Manning’s book “The Ragamuffin Gospel” and contains several quotes from it. I’ve made some minor adjustments so as to better fit an online format, as well as some minor adjustments in wording and grammar, but it is otherwise untouched and retains it’s original tone and message.

I feel impressed to speak today about God’s love and grace, topics that feel impossible to cover in any depth or range that does justice to their power and scope. I especially feel inadequate to this task, and as such I plead for the Holy Ghost to be present.

I have been studying, reading, praying about this topic for a while now, and I feel I only have a small understanding of the depth and breadth of Father’s love for us. I absolutely do not fully understand it, and my whole life I have struggled to feel it, but I’m working on it, and I have learned and had experiences recently that have helped me to know that it is real, and it is strong, and it is often not at all what I expect it to be.

Jeffrey R. Holland said, “the first great commandment of all eternity is to love God with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength—that’s the first great commandment. But the first great truth of all eternity is that God loves us with all of His heart, might, mind, and strength.”

Do we believe that? Do we trust in it? In my experience, I have often felt it’s very true. For other people. I think, “I know He loves everyone, but how could He love ME? After all I’ve done, after I keep falling into the same sins over and over again, there’s no way.” We believe that we are unworthy of God’s love until we can fix our mistakes by ourselves, and then He will accept us. 

That is wrong.

Christ says to us:
“Come now. Don’t wait until you get your act cleaned up and your head on straight. Don’t delay until you rescue your reputation, until you’re free of pride and lust, of jealousy and self-hatred. Come to Me now in your brokenness and sinfulness. Come now, with all your fears and insecurities. I will love you just the way you are–just the way you are, not the way you think you should be.” (Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel)

Our confusion and disbelief that God still loves us even when we sin shows that we misunderstand the reason He loves us in the first place; He does not love us because we are good, He loves us because we are His.

Consider the parable of the Prodigal Son. The son went and spent his inheritance on riotous living, doing who knows what with goodness knows who. And then after losing everything and living in destitution, he decides to go back to his father. He plans what he’s going to say, preparing his speech, and is ready to accept the lowest position in his father’s house, but when he returns, his father sees him from afar and runs to him. His father doesn’t even care what he’s done; he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t even give his son a chance to give his speech and apologize. The father runs to him and embraces him and kisses him. 

So it is with us. God and Christ run to us. They are not concerned with what we’ve done or who we were. They care only that we have turned to them and desire to be good. 

As Ronald A. Rasband said, “God does not really care who you were and what you did. He cares who you are, what you are doing, and who you are becoming.”

As Brennan Manning said, “God wants us back even more than we could possibly want to be back.” (The Ragamuffin Gospel)

This is so much easier to say than to do. Brennan Manning also said, “For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God, it requires enormous trust and reckless, raging [faith] to accept that the love of Christ knows no shadow of alteration or change” (The Ragamuffin Gospel)

I struggle with this constantly. My mind often drifts to the sins and mistakes I can’t seem to overcome, the things that I keep doing over and over, and I feel that disappointment. I ‘know’ God loves me, but I can’t believe it because of all the things I’ve done. That’s when I really experience that need for reckless, raging faith. The active, concentrated belief that He loves me even when I don’t love myself.

It’s hard. Good gracious it’s hard. But it’s true; He loves you even when you don’t love yourself. 

Reverend John Claypool said, “We all have shadows and skeletons in our backgrounds. But listen, there is something bigger in this world than we are and that something bigger is full of grace and mercy, patience and ingenuity. The moment the focus of your life shifts from your badness to His goodness and the question becomes not ‘what have I done?’ but ‘What can He do?’ Release from remorse can happen.” (As quoted in The Ragamuffin Gospel)

It is true that God still ‘cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance’ (D&C 1:31), but that doesn’t mean that when we come before Him dirty from sin that He is disgusted by our presence, sending us off to try to clean ourselves up before He accepts us. Instead, He sees that we are dirty from head to toe and helps us clean up; He anoints our head and smiles up at us as He washes our feet. We mustn’t think that we must repent on our own. It is impossible, and He wants to help us.

In stake conference President Stacy Peterson said, “Forgiveness isn’t repentance. The goal isn’t forgiveness, the goal is change.”
It has also been said that, “Repentance isn’t what we do to earn forgiveness, it is what we do because we have been forgiven.” (The Ragamuffin Gospel)

Christ is already there offering us forgiveness, offering us His grace. We just have to accept it.

Now you might think, yeah I know that’s what I have to do, but how do I do it? How do I access God’s grace and allow it to change me?

The first step to accessing God’s grace in our lives, even before the basic primary answers (read the scriptures, pray, and go to church), is to be honest. 

The writer Walter Anderon said, “Our lives improve only when we take chances–and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.” And, I would add, honest with God.

It may seem obvious, but there is no point in trying to hide who we are from God. Yet sometimes that’s exactly what we do. That’s what I’ve done. I become aware of some aspect of myself that I hate, and I don’t want God to think that that’s the kind of person I am, so I never bring it up. I pretend it’s not there. I pretend that, while not perfect, I don’t do things that are that bad. 

But we don’t have to hide from God. We don’t have to pretend we’re something we’re not, or pretend we’re not something we are. Elder Gerrit W. Gong said, “Remember, he knows all the things we don’t want anyone else to know about us–and love us still.” God meets us wherever we may be; he reaches down as far as we have fallen, then lifts us back up. 

Brennan Manning said, “To live by grace is to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side, I learn who I am and what God’s grace means.” (The Ragamuffin Gospel)

Grace enters our lives proportionally to how honest we are with God and with ourselves. We must bring ourselves, our WHOLE selves, to God, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, and lay it at His feet.

“The Good News means we can stop lying to ourselves. The sweet sound of amazing grace saves us the necessity of self-deception, It keeps us from denying that though Christ was victorious, the battle with lust, greed, and pride still rages within us. …When I go to church I can leave my white hat at home and admit I have failed. God not only loves me as I am, but also knows me as I am. Because of this I don’t need to apply spiritual cosmetics to make myself presentable to Him. I can accept ownership of my poverty and powerlessness and neediness.” (The Ragamuffin Gospel)

“God expects more failure from you than you expect from yourself.” (The Ragamuffin Gospel)

If you feel like you are struggling to feel God’s love, or that you have been left alone to try and sort out the pieces of your broken life alone, I urge you to talk to God. Tell Him how you feel. Be honest with Him and say the things you wish you could say to your friends and family. Too often we feel like He is a distant being, an uninterested dealer of justice alone. Not so. He is here, full of mercy, knocking at our door, waiting for us to open up to Him. His is not a passive or a distant love, it is active, immediate, and accessible. We just need to turn to Him.

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