Conversion: What Lack I Yet? How to Deepen our Conversion

Earlier this week I was listening to Elder Lawrence's General Conference talk from October 2015, "What Lack I Yet?" Here is the part I was focusing on and trying to understand how to implement in my own life: 

The journey of discipleship is not an easy one. It has been called a “course of steady improvement.” As we travel along that strait and narrow path, the Spirit continually challenges us to be better and to climb higher. The Holy Ghost makes an ideal traveling companion. If we are humble and teachable, He will take us by the hand and lead us home.

However, we need to ask the Lord for directions along the way. We have to ask some difficult questions, like “What do I need to change?” “How can I improve?” “What weakness needs strengthening?”

President Harold B. Lee taught, “Every one of us, if we would reach perfection, must [at] one time ask ourselves this question, ‘What lack I yet?’”

Then this morning I was reading a talk by Elder Ballard that he gave to Church Education System teachers in February 2016 discussing how to help ourselves and others deepen our conversion. He suggested that each of us should take some time and ask ourselves some personal interview questions. He provided 3 references in the scriptures that we can use to ask ourselves how we are doing. He said:

May I suggest you hold a personal interview with yourself on occasion and review 

·         2 Nephi 26:29–32 

·         Alma 5:14–30

·         Doctrine and Covenants 121:33–46. 

That will help to identify the kinds of temptations we all may face. If something needs to change in your life, then resolve to fix it.

I did my own personal interview this morning, pausing after each sentence in each of these verses. It was a powerful and humbling experience. If anyone else has found similar references I would love to add them to the list.

Then later, as my daughter and I were discussing how to make this all happen in our own life, she shared with me this great message from President Henry B. Eyring. It is long, but very worth it:

Now your impressions will not have been quite like mine, but you have felt a tug, maybe many tugs, to be someone better. And what sets those yearnings apart from all your daydreams is that they were not about being richer, or smarter, or more attractive, but about being better. I am sure you have had such moments, not just from my experience, but because of what President David O. McKay once said. Listen very carefully:

“Man is a spiritual being, a soul, and at some period of his life everyone is possessed with an irresistible desire to know his relationship to the Infinite. … There is something within him which urges him to rise above himself, to control his environment, to master the body and all things physical and live in a higher and more beautiful world” (True to the Faith: From the Sermons and Discourses of David O. McKay, comp. Llewelyn R. McKay [1966], 244).

That pull upward is far beyond what you would call a desire for self-improvement. When I felt it, I knew I was being urged to live so far above myself that I could never do it on my own. President McKay had it right. You feel an urging to rise above your natural self. What you have felt is an urging from your Heavenly Father to accept this invitation:

“Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

“And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot” (Moroni 10:32–33).

That urge to rise above yourself is a recognition of your need for the Atonement to work in your life, and your need to be sure that it is working. After all you can do, after all your effort, you need confidence that the Atonement is working for you and on you.