One night I picked up a girl down by the apartments near Costco in Orem. It was a little bit crazy finding her because the GPS had us on opposite sides of the building and she was a little frustrated trying to find me. Finally, we talked on the phone and we put it together and she got in the car.
I could feel a tremendous sense of frustration with her and I knew it had nothing to do with not being able to find me. I asked her, how are you doing? She said, not good. Even though we’re not supposed to pry and ask personal questions, I decided to do exactly that. I asked her what could possibly be going wrong.
She said that her aunt was being a problem. She said she had some trauma in her life earlier in her life and that her aunt had offered to have her come out here and help her. She said she was grateful for that but now her aunt had changed things up. She said that her aunt had withdrawn her support and she didn’t know what she was going to do, where she was going to live and how she was going to be able to do the therapy that they had all agreed she needed.
As I looked at her, I had the impression that she loved children and they loved her. I had the impression that she felt safe with children and that she felt love from and for them. I said, you love children don’t you? They’ve always responded well to you haven’t they? She kind of was quiet for a minute and almost brushed it off. She asked, why would you say that? I said, I just felt by the spirit that this was one of the gifts you have. It’s something that brings much joy to your life. She smiled and kind of changed the subject. I knew that the impression was true and was puzzled as to why she kind of dodged the subject.
I felt very impressed to talk to her about the atonement. I felt like she needed the atonement on so many different levels at this point. As I thought about the atonement, I also received a prompting that she was a member of the church even though she hadn’t indicated that in anyway.
I went full in talking about the atonement. I talked about how the atonement of Jesus Christ is the way God helps us through life. I told her that family members will fail us, people around us will fail and we even fail ourselves but through the atonement of Jesus Christ we can all be reclaimed. I told her that the atonement of Jesus Christ is like a medicine that makes everything better.
I asked her to think about a soccer player that gets a light hit on the field and then rolls around like he’s been shot. I told her to think about how the trainer comes out and sprays him with this aerosol spray. I said that normally they just jump right up like nothing ever happened. I said, that spray is magic. She laughed. I said, the atonement is something that. If we understand it and how to apply it, in almost every circumstance, it can lift our burdens and make it so that we can go forward unscathed and be happy.
I said, the first thing the atonement does is it helpsus forgive other people. I told her that people let us down and sometimes it feels very personal and it’s difficult. I felt impressed that the person who had abused and hurt her was very close. I said, when that person who abused or hurt you did these things, God was sad. I told her that God loved her because she was his daughter and these events made him very unhappy.
I told her that her Father in Heaven loved her and wanted her to access the atonement so that she could feel his love and have her burden lifted. I told her that Satan teaches us to blame God. Satan teaches us to reject the people in church who are not perfect because they may let us down. I said, Satan teaches us to point fingers but God points to Jesus so that we can look to him and live.
I told her that through the atonement of Jesus Christ she could begin to heal, forgive and move on. I told her that the power of atonement is how God pulls each one of us out of our difficult circumstance. I told her that in that atonement Jesus Christ suffered for all of our pains, inequities, injustices and every negative thing that we could experience in life. He suffered those things so that we don’t have to and we can look at him and have him take that pain on for us. I told her that this was God‘s plan. She asked, why did God let these things happen to me? Wouldn’t a loving God do something?
I told her that he gave us the atonement of Jesus Christ so that we could have our burdens lifted. Then we could use our abilities to lift those around us who suffer in a temporal way. I said, it’s our job to lift and help and then through the atonement of Jesus Christ we can be healed.
I told her that Heavenly Father sent us here so that we could be tested. Heavenly Father gave us agency but some people use that agency poorly. I said, when they do, many times people suffer. I told her that even though we might be the victim of someone else’s agency, Heavenly Father still has a plan to give us comfort, light and love then bring us home.
I told her that through the atonement of Jesus Christ she would be able to put down the sword that she was carrying. She said, I never want to put myself in those situations again. How can I forgive those people? She said, they abandoned me. She said, my mother died when I was young, my father and his wife were just horrible to me. She said, in the end, they just abandoned me. She said it was very abusive.
I could feel that she felt alone but I also had the impression to teach her that she was never truly alone and that her Heavenly Father wanted her to know how much he loves her. I taught her that we lived with our father in heaven for thousands of years and the feeling we felt in his presence was essential and central to who we are. I told her that we are hardwired to seek that love. I told her that this love was manifest to us when we read the scriptures, when we pray, and when we access the atonement of Jesus Christ.
Her response kind of surprised me. She said, I love Jesus but I don’t know about Heavenly Father. I said, your Heavenly Father and your relationship to him need to be improved. You need to learn about him and you need to have his spirit in your heart.
I asked her what problems she had with Heavenly Father . She said, all my life I felt like I’ve been abandoned by my father. I don’t know that I can trust him not to abandon me. I said, he’s been there with you all along and I believe he put you in my car tonight. Your father in heaven loves you and he’s reaching out to you. This is why you are here tonight.
I said, unless we have a knowledge of his love and the power of his spirit, I don’t know how we can move forward in this life. I said, I don’t know how we would function in this life. I can’t imagine life without the blessings he gives us and the love that he shows. This includes the fact that he sent his son Jesus Christ for us. I told her that it was very. important that she begin to develop a relationship with her father in heaven. I told her that he wants that more than anything.
She said, I’ve always just tried to do it with Jesus. I have always thought that this is enough. I said, I love Jesus Christ, he’s my older brother, but our Heavenly Father sent him and gave him his power.
I perceived by the spirit that she was looking at Heavenly Father as a punitive person just waiting to punish us. I said this to her and she agreed. She said, that’s kind of how I look at it. I said, Heavenly Father is a perfect loving father and he wants all of us to come home to him. He is trying to do everything he can to get us home, every one of us, if we will. I said, that’s why we have the temple and that’s why we go to church. This is why we take the sacrament so that we can have his spirit to be with us so that we can go home.
I said, Satan is telling you that Heavenly Father doesn’t love you but Satan is a liar and he has tricked you. I told her that to have the kind of life she wanted to have she needed to have a relationship with her father in heaven. She needed to go to church and take the sacrament, she needed to say her prayers and speak with her father in heaven and she needed to read the Book of Mormon.
She said, well, I go to church but I love Jesus and so I read the Bible, I don’t read the Book of Mormon. I said, these things will make a difference in your life. I promised her that if she would do these things, she would feel the love of her father in heaven and her life would begin to change.
She said, I just haven’t had great success with fathers in my life. I told her that this one would never let her down and that he would be there for her. I talked to her about how faith is one of the most important things that makes it possible for us to accomplish the tasks put before us in life. I asked her about Nephi’s bow. She didn’t remember the story. I told her about Nephi‘s bow and how when it broke, they had to learn to rely on God instead of their own abilities and their own knowledge.
I told her that because of this experience they were able to have enough faith to build a boat that they didn’t know how to build, put it in an ocean that was very large and sail it to a world that they didn’t know for sure existed. I said, these were very difficult things. They didn’t have the faith, knowledge or ability to do them. Through the power of God accessed through their faith and by following his directions, they were able to accomplish something that they were not able to do on their own.
I said, in your life you feel like you have been confronted with things that are very difficult for you. You don’t know if you can accomplish these things, in fact you don’t think you can. I tell you here tonight that you can’t do it but God can and if you will look to him he can lift your burdens and see you through your trials. The spirit was strong in the car and I testified to her of the truthfulness of these things. I testified to her of the power of faith as well as the power of the love of God that we each seek. I said, he’s calling to you.
I felt like we had turned the corner. She talked about her boyfriend and how things were really hard with him. She mentioned that he struggled sometimes emotionally. She said, sometimes I feel abandoned by him too. It’s just not healthy. We both felt like we were prompted by God that we shouldn’t be together but that only lasted for about three weeks and it’s not going very well.
I said, you should do what God says. You should follow the spirit and trust your revelation. I felt like it was important for me to identify the spirit in the car and I asked her to tell me what it felt like. She said it felt very peaceful, loving, and warm. I said, that’s how you feel in the presence of your father in heaven and it’s how you feel in the presence of the spirit. I said, we need to learn to follow this and it will bring us home to our father in heaven.
I talked about how important faith was in this journey. She said, I learned that on my mission. I was shocked. I asked, a mission? When did you go on a mission? She said, I went in 2016 to the Independence Missouri visitor center. I asked, how was that? She said, it was good and she liked it but that she hadn’t had any of those feelings for quite some time.
I felt like it was important to double back and reiterate, the previous instruction that I had received for her by the spirit. I said, well, just like you taught on your mission back then, the Book of Mormon is the word of God and you need to be reading it. I said, it teaches about our father in heaven‘s love for us and the atonement and mission of his son Jesus Christ. It teaches us how to come home.
I said, you need to pray, you need to ask Heavenly Father to help you access the atonement of Jesus Christ. I said, as you do that, you will feel love fill your heart. Patience, and understanding will guide you and your burdens will be lifted.
I said, you need to go to church and take the sacrament with these things in mind. I told her that the sacrament would fill her spiritual tank so that she could have strength and power from a spiritual perspective to do the things that she needed to do.
I told her that her father in heaven wanted her to be successful in her relationships too. She said, I don’t think anyone can love me. I said, your Heavenly Father loves you tremendously and as you embrace his spirit and do the things that we’ve talked about, people will want to be around you and the kind of people you want in your life will find you. You will find love in that group.
I said, it’s past time for you to quit making excuses for bad behavior and embrace this higher expectation and this higher level of love. I said, it’s past time for you to quit accepting abuse and making excuses for it. It’s time for you to realize that as a daughter of God, you deserve to be treated as such.
I said, you need to find that light in your soul that you have let dim and make it glow. It will attract the kind of people you need in your life. I said, most of all if you felt the spirit say you shouldn’t be doing something you shouldn’t be doing that thing. This includes your relationship.
She said, well, he is a good person. I said, just because he’s a good person doesn’t mean that it’s right for you or that it’s right for you at this time of your life. Your Heavenly Father knows best and you need to follow that prompting.
She said, he is even in a bishoprick. I’ve always thought that because he had a position in the church this would make it so that I could be fine with him. I told her what my grandma always said. My grandma always said that position in the church will never save a man, but it may well condemn him. I said, positions in the church are how we serve God. Obedience to the commandments and the atonement of Jesus Christ are how we are saved. I said, the two should go hand-in-hand, but they don’t always go hand-in-hand and we need to trust and have faith in the whisperings of the spirit.
I said, if you both felt it, I would say the debate is over. I said, you deserve to be treated right. You deserve to be treated like a daughter of God.
She said, I needed to hear this tonight. Before I left, I prayed and asked that someone would be sent to help me. I’ve been here in the car and I feel like everything you’ve said are all of the things I need to do. I feel like God answered my prayers .
I told her that God puts people in my car and gives me the words to say to them from time to time. He shows his love to them in my car. I never cease to be amazed how much he loves people. I said, he loves to help them find their way home. I said, tonight several times he has given me words to say in my heart and I said them. She said, I’ve been astounded at how you knew to say everything that I needed to hear. You’ve told me things that there is no way you could’ve known and the spirit has let me know that this came from God. I need to do what you said. I need to do what God says!
I said, Heavenly Father is there for you, he sees you as his child. I told her about a situation I had when I was struggling with a sick family member and prayed for help. All of a sudden, I had a vision of them with their head in my hands like a child. It was like when a child comes up to their parent and puts their head in their hands and smiles up at them. When that happened I felt love for that person. I told her that at the first of the ride when she was struggling, I saw her like this. I saw her like her head was in my hands and she was smiling. I told her that I knew that this reflected how her father in heaven saw her. I told her that I could feel his love for her because I had seen her in this light.
She got choked up and said, I have to tell you, earlier you said that I loved children and I blew that off. I want you to know that I do love children. I’m a school teacher by training because I love to be around children. I was a little taken aback because I didn’t know how you could know this. Now I know, I know that the spirit let you see this and I know God was working through you
She said, you’re like a dad or a grandpa that I’ve never had. You’ve been telling me the things that I’ve needed to hear and you’ve brought the spirit of God back into my life. By this time, we had been sitting outside of our destination for an hour and 10 minutes. The place where she was going to go had already closed during that time. The spirit had been so strong and the love of God so present in the car that she embraced it totally and refused to walk away from it.
I took her to another place to drop her off. She asked me if it was OK if she gave me a hand hug, (a handshake) and I said yes. She got out of the car and went in to the building where I dropped her off.
As she got out of the car, I thought about the difference between the light in her eyes and the smile on her face contrasted with the angst and frustration I felt when she got in the car. Her countenance had changed and her father in heaven had approved of her decision to change her life and make better decisions.
As she left I looked at her, she was exuding happiness. She had felt the spirit of her Heavenly Father and she knew he loved her. Contrasting that with the anxiety, doom and gloom that she personified when she got in the car, it was amazing to see. This was the change that the spirit touching her soul had made.
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Sometimes God sends you a lift 