This week has been a good one again. Everything went perfectly for Katlynn's baptism. It was a tough baptism because she technically lives in the Camp Hill ward but comes up every weekend to go to Church with her grandmother in the Lewisberry 1st ward. Through some very stressful phone calls that involved two stake presidents, two bishops and the mission president, things clicked and we had a wonderful service. Both Bishops are very much in love her and her family now. However in preparing for Katlynn's baptism and actually performing the ordinance myself, I think that I felt more temptation to be descend below what was expected of me throughout this week than ever before. But yet for some reason after the baptism had been completed, simultaneously the temptation stopped.
It was interesting how much Satan wanted me to fall and the whole week was me pitted against him. It all came down to who did I love more. Not just God but if I loved Katlynn too. I've been learning a lot about charity this week and how the true meaning (namely the pure love of Christ) has been so lost throughout our modern day. True charity, true love, endures. And the degree of our charity really determines how we act. Elder Curl (a past district leader) once told me that there was a hierarchy to motivation:
- That the lowest motivation was to obey or keep the commandments or serve others or whatever because of fear or duty. That perhaps if you didn't do these things, the consequences would certainly be undesirable and so you act to relieve yourself of that kind of tension. Not a bad motivation, but not the purest, he said.
- The next kind of motivation was to act because of temporal reward. That those who keep the commandments might get something out of it, immediately that would bless their lives and make things more comfortable. Yes, the state of those who keep the commandments are blessed and happy in all things (see Mosiah 2:41) but there is yet purer motivation.
- Surely no one would frown upon the motivation of eternal reward, that perhaps if we do the best we can here, we surely will be comfortable in our mansions above. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth," said the Savior, "But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." (Matthew 6:19-20) That our stride through eternity and our degree in the Celestial Kingdom would be our motivation to act and serve one another is a good desire. But still there is a purer way to serve.
- "If ye love me, keep my commandments," Jesus said (John 14:15). Truly the purest motivation to be our best selves should be the motivation our Savior had for helping us, namely that pure love, which is charity. Charity for God and charity for our fellow man.
Unfortunately without this love, really nothing else matters, for without charity, Paul said, all our good works "profiteth [us] nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:3). I'm starting to see more and more how a pure motivation and love of God casts out any desire to do evil. Satan cannot be where the pure love of Christ shines.
I saw this charity in one of our investigators this week. I told you last week about Zack and how he decided to be baptized before I left Pennsylvania last week. We were talking to him this week about prayer and scripture study, about how they were not just commandments but the only way through this dark and dreary world. The iron rod - the communicated "word of God" (see 1 Nephi 11:25) - marks the solitary path that leads safely to where we want to be. We referred to his reasoning for wanting to join the Church and how he told us the previous Sunday that he had been praying about the decision to join while reading the Book of Mormon. Expecting a grand answer of his sacred communications with the Father through this constant recourse of prayer and reading, he surprised us by telling us that in addition to that he saw the example of his wife growing up through high school. He noticed something different about her, a light that she had that he didn't. He says he had no idea how they ended up together but he changed a lot for her - he gave up chewing, smoking, drinking, and now in meeting with us a hardcore addiction to coffee. He knows he wants their home and their family to be like hers and that was very important to him.
Can love change people's very nature? Can it change our desires? Can it thwart the very powers of hell?
Absolutely. For charity never faileth.
Elder Low
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