The importance of understanding a perfect fathers love

I picked up this guy in Sugarhouse one evening. He was standing out front with his friend and they didn’t know which one the car was for. Finally we figured it out and he got in the car and we started driving. He said that he was grateful for the how quickly the ride got there because he said he was ready to go home and go to bed.

He was getting ready to go on trek the next day and wanted to get home and get some good sleep. He said, you’re Mormon aren’t you? I said yes!. He told me how much he admires the church, the structure and the family orientation it provides in the community but then he said I just don’t believe the story.

He talked a little bit more and again he said, “I just can’t believe the story”. I could tell he was baiting me and me wanted to respond to that. I was ignoring it on purpose. I really need to be careful about people who are baiting me into saying things.

As I thought about it the spirit put me at ease about discussing the church with him. One more time he said in today’s modern society anyone who came out saying what Joseph Smith said would be considered crazy. I just don’t buy the story.

He said that his wife goes to church every Sunday and that occasionally he’ll go as well which is how he got roped into trek but that he’s not a believer.

He asked me if I believe the story and I said yes! I know it’s true. I told him that God can walk with us and help us and that he has protected me several times while I drive. I told him a couple of stories where the hand of God protected and saved me.

I instantly got the impression that someone had said something to him that hurt him or angered him immensely and hurt his spirit. I asked him who damaged you, who was it who hurt you?

He said, no one sexually assaulted me when I was a child. I said, that’s not what I was referring to. Someone said something to you that offended you so much that you haven’t been able to get past it and you’re punishing God for it. One more time I asked him who did that to you?

He talked to me about how when he was young he had a drug addiction. He said that now for the most part he stays away from all addictive substances except for that occasionally he has a beer or two.

I said and you never feel filled do you? I explained to him how our soul is programmed and designed to have at its core the feeing of the spirit of our relationship with our heavenly father. We crave the presence of our father and Satan tries to fill that craving with drugs and alcohol.

I told him, to this point you have been filling that hunger with potato chips instead of meat and that’s why you seem unsatisfied. That’s why you can’t seem to find peace in your soul.

He told me that this sounds exactly like something his father would say. I told him that’s because it was true.

He said I still can’t believe the Joseph Smith story. I sat there for a moment not knowing what to say and the spirit told me to testify. I told him that I wanted to bear my testimony and I did. The power of the spirit came into the car. It was palpable and I could tell he was feeling it.

I said do you feel that? He said, yes I said that’s the Spirit of God testifying that what I said was true.

The next thing that happened was a incredible experience for me. I was taught something at the same time I was being prompted to say it.

I told him that he would never be able to have a testimony or an understanding of the Joseph Smith story unless he started praying and developing his own relationship with his father in heaven.

I told him that when people don’t have a relationship with God themselves that burns in their soul, believing in revelation, prophets and the story of Joseph Smith’s first vision is more difficult. I told him that unless he was willing to get to know his father in heaven he could never understand the love of a father performing the extraordinary act of visiting his son in the sacred grove.

He was quiet.

I sat there thinking about what I had just heard myself teach. The fact that we are children of a loving father in heaven isn’t just nice, that love is the foundation for everything. How appropriate it is that missionaries teach that early and often.

I told him that a lot of people have doubts but they understand the love from their father in heaven overcomes all and that he provided a way.

He put his hand on my shoulder and told me you’re what my mother-in-law would call an angel, sent here to scoop me up. He laughed.

He told me that he had been pondering more deeply what I said about him being damaged by someone earlier on.

Then he said you need to know that when I was a kid I was in one of those wilderness treatment programs run by church members. They used the church in their treatment. I had a friend in the program who they forced to say he had been sexually abused as a child even though he had never been sexually abused. They told his friend that the spirit was directing them that he had been assaulted and that he should pray to have strength to admit it. In the end his friend lied and told them what they wanted to hear to get them off of his back. He lowered his head and said that he so distrusted them after this experience that he decided to rid his life of anything that they stood for or taught.

I told him that it was time that he quit holding his father in heaven accountable for the unworthy manipulation of his words and the manufacturing/manipulation of what they said was of God. I told him it was time that he came back. I told him that it was time he go to church.

I had the prompting to tell him that he had wanted to come back to church but that he had felt that he couldn’t. I told him that Satan was whispering there in his ears and that every time he heard a reason not to go back it was Satan.

Then I had a very clear prompting to tell him that five years from now he’ll be sitting in a sacrament meeting and he’ll think back on that day in the car with me. He will see the hand of the Lord and how it moved in his behalf. He will see the hand of the Lord and how it rescued him. I told him that he will see the hand of the Lord in his marriage and the happiness in his wife’s face.

He said this has been incredible. He asked me to excuse the saying but that In every way this has been a come to Jesus meeting. He said that he knew that God had sent me and that it wasn’t a mistake.

He said there was something different about the ride all the way along. He said he could feel something different. He said that I got there so quick it astounded him and from that moment on I had him a little bit off guard. He said that he felt the spirit in the car. He said it was something that he hadn’t felt or hadn’t recognized for many many years.

He said he felt like he had a desire to grab on to that and hold on tight. I told him, you’re going on trek, you better hold tight onto something. We laughed. I told him it was very important that he remember the spirit that he felt that night in the car and seek to do the things that would bring it into his life.

I asked him what those things were and he said first and foremost, praying like you told me to. I need to start praying and I haven’t done that for years. We discussed reading the scriptures and going to church and he committed to do those things.

I know that I am not the angel that he was speaking of but I know 100% that there were angels in the car that night and the Spirit of God was there touching and softening his heart. I saw it happen right in front of me.