Several years ago, then, Elder Nelson challenged the young adults and then the whole of the church to read and mark all the scriptures in the standard works about Jesus. We are to do this by using the topical guide and the 57 different names or topics by which Jesus is categorized. At the time I didn't take the challenge because I figured I had already read all these scriptures in my normal reading and I didn't catch the vision of how going through and reading them separately would help me gain a greater testimony of Christ. I had already read the scriptures, and had a testimony of Christ, why did I need to do it again?
Then about a year and a half ago I was listening to his conference talk about Jesus where he challenged the church to also do this and in it he said that after he was done he was a changed man. I remember hearing this statement when he first gave the conference talk but it didn't impact me that day as it did on the day I was listening to it a few years later. I thought, "if he is a changed man and he is an apostle and he had already read all those scriptures as well I guess there must be something to it." So I decided to take on the challenge.
I decided to mark each scripture in gold pen so that I could easily see what scriptures were about Jesus, and that way I could highlight them or point them out to my children as we read the scriptures as a family. It took about a year-and-a-half, with a break to work on President Nelson's next challenge which was to read the Book of Mormon by Christmas, and 5 gold pens. But I just finished. And I am a changed woman.
I have grown more in my testimony, in my holiness, in my conversion, in my relationship to Jesus Christ, and in my daily use of Christ's atonement, in the last year then I have in my whole life combined. Some days it feels like I am walking in light. I can't say how or why reading these scriptures this way can have this strong of effect, but it did.
I am so grateful for President Nelson and his prophetic visions. I'm grateful that he is challenging us, and stretching us, and guiding us. I know the he is a prophet of God and is leading and guiding this church. I know that he was prepared to lead this church at this time.
I am so grateful for my Savior, Jesus Christ. I am grateful that He loved us enough in the premortal life to make a commitment to us as His little brothers and sisters to save us, so that we could be an eternal family. I'm grateful while on this earth He never lost sight of His promise. Despite the wicked and selfish world He came into and despite Satan throwing every temptation and unfairness imaginable; He was able to escape the band's of sin and death and not only provide a way out for me but provide an example to me of how I can withstand Satan's temptations. I am overwhelmed at the thought that He could do this despite all of the injustice He felt. He came to do His Father's will, never having an opportunity to do his own will.
I know that He lives. I know that this is important because it makes Him real, and personal, and He is able to come to me and succor me, because He lives. I feel Him daily in my life, I feel him walk with me in my joys and weep with me and my sorrows. He has been there for me when no one else has. He has taken my broken heart, my broken relationships, my broken promises, and he has and is continuing to heal them. I have learned that He truly can make beauty for ashes. I know that He has a plan for me and I know that He knows me and loves me individually, and He comes to me in perfect love. He is my Savior, in the most real sense of the word. She's saved me from my huge monumental selfish mistakes and He saves me every single day when he takes my offering and he concrates it and makes it enough. He goes before my face, He is on my right hand and on my left. I love Him and I try everyday to love Him back.
