0:00:00 - 0:00:21 About Grace and justice. These are enormous topics. Uh I wanna dial it into specifically the context of gaining and losing light, which is tremendously important. And I just want to say up front, we're looking at a really tiny slice of some high level ideas uh from a larger collection that I've been 0:00:21 - 0:00:44 working on for a very long time. And it's not uh it's not ready to or the right time to share those things. But I want to share just a slice of that to give people something to work on in the meantime and to give them some bread crumbs to, to uh search into themselves. So here's a, a little diagram to 0:00:43 - 0:01:06 illustrate one. Uh Well, several key ideas from Grace and Justice. The first is Grace is one of very many words in the gospel that we throw around uh cheaply without ever spending time to understand what the heck it means. And if you ask someone what it means, they won't be able to, to define it for 0:01:05 - 0:01:30 our purposes. Today. I'd like to think about Grace as something you get that you don't deserve. Uh Justice is another word that we throw around without bothering to define it. Justice and judgment in particular. Those are concepts that people tend to think about, especially justice as negative uh concepts 0:01:29 - 0:01:55 . They, they are punitive in some way. Judgment is only punitive if you deserve punishment, justice is what you deserve. It's what you merit. And so whether it's good or bad, depends on whether you are good or bad. And because the gospel teaches us how to be good, it gives us all the resources we need 0:01:54 - 0:02:23 to be good. Justice is just what you choose. So if it's good, it's because you've chosen well and if it's bad, it's because you've chosen poorly, but it was your choice. So what this diagram shows with that little preamble is how as we ascend to greater degrees of light and truth, how we do that is through 0:02:23 - 0:02:54 uh a, a process that consists of a few important parts. One there is an injection of grace, an impartation of grace. However, you wanna phrase it two, a new distinction is made that separates who we presently are into things that are good enough to continue forward and things that we need to let go of 0:02:53 - 0:03:23 . So inside of us, the sheep and the goats are separated. God makes a difference in us between what was previously indistinguishable by us. He shows us new information about how we are, how the world is, how everyone is, what's good and what's bad. He extends and improves our idea of right and wrong 0:03:22 - 0:03:53 as he does that. And we choose to let go of newly revealed lack of value and to receive newly revealed additional value. And we integrate all of that into who we are. We make a separation. It's like a cell dividing and the better part moves on. And this new person is a composite of what, what we were 0:03:53 - 0:04:23 before that could abide a higher level of light and truth and what we received from God through grace. It's now become a part of who we are. How, because we've made the changes so that the grace ceases to be something that's lent to us without our deserving it and starts to become something we deserve 0:04:22 - 0:04:55 because we've become that way. This is an extremely important idea. So we get better things from God which show us how to make ourselves better. And as we do, we ascend to a greater level of light and truth. And the process repeats itself. Now, for the sake of making a simple schematic, I've made this 0:04:54 - 0:05:24 an explicit stepwise process. In practice, we are bombarded at all times and in all places by God's grace, we don't see hardly any of it, but it's still true. As we see it, the process becomes closer to the simplified schematic where there are explicit steps. But most of the time you're not really going 0:05:24 - 0:05:50 to be aware of when you are undergoing one of these cycles. Um You could call these tests and trials, you are not aware of hardly any of the tests and trials that God is constantly subjecting you to. Now, I don't really like that language because I think it's too easy to misunderstand, but basically 0:05:49 - 0:06:16 he's bombarding us with good things all the time. And then sometimes, uh, frequently, uh, we will notice something that's better and then we get to decide how we react and the way to ascend is to react by making it a part of you. Even if, and by the way, it almost always will, even if it requires you 0:06:16 - 0:00:00 to let go of something that you consider to be part of yourself or part of what you previously believed was good. And maybe that's letting go of something good for something better that happens a lot and maybe it's letting go of something you thought was good that God shows you is not all that good. 0:00:00 - 0:06:56 So, what are some examples of that? Well, maybe there's a person in your life, maybe someone you care about very much who, um, his best friend or boyfriend or girlfriend or something. And, uh, God says, you know what, this, this is not going to work out for where I want to take you and it might rip your 0:06:56 - 0:07:15 heart out or a job or career or something you really identify with a hobby, a, a habit you have and you say, but this is part of who I am and he says, well, not anymore, not if you want to come with me, let's go. It's not, he says it's not a part of me. So if you want to become like, I've just shown 0:07:15 - 0:07:33 you a little bit more of who I am, this is gonna have to go. So let's go. And then you go along with that. And I, I just, I have to explicitly say because I just, I know that there's someone out there who's gonna take me as saying something. I'm not saying here, I'm not saying you should divorce your 0:07:33 - 0:07:54 spouse because quote unquote, God told me to that. II I don't want to make a presentation about divorce. But um one of the funny things about there's a whole list of funny things humans do when God gives them grace or good things. And one of the things they do is they twist it to justify the bad things 0:07:54 - 0:08:19 they wanted to do anyway. So please don't do that. This is a simple idea. You aim towards what is better to the extent that you can see what is better. And that's it just keep becoming the best you know of. So, um I already said that you can read this. Let's talk about your three choices and how you 0:08:19 - 0:08:48 react to God giving you grace one, this is the best one you become like the one who gave you grace. Now I'm, this whole presentation is explicitly about God doing this, but you know, he works through, uh, his agents, his servants as well. And that's very important. It's a huge topic. Can't get into it 0:08:48 - 0:09:11 right now. But let's say you lived in the time of Moses. And here's a guy who's way more like God than anyone else around him. And he's having these interactions with God that come with abundant evidence that he has them. He has greater interactions with God than others. And he, he has this law that's 0:09:11 - 0:09:34 named after him, the law of Moses that God gives him to give to the people. The best thing that those people could have done was to become like Moses. That would have been the only way that they could fully use what he provided to them. The second reaction. So, ok, so if there's no Moses in your life 0:09:34 - 0:09:56 , um if God point something out to you, that's, that's better in your life, it doesn't matter how big or how small or how religious it sounds or not. It doesn't matter, it could be a better way to tie your shoelaces. He's showing you more of what he would do in your life and you get to choose to do things 0:09:56 - 0:10:18 the way he would do them to the extent he's revealed it to you now or not. So, of course, it, the best thing you could do is to emulate Him in every way. And so he gives you a nugget that extends your understanding of what he'd do in your place, go do it. But that's not the only choice. The other choice 0:10:18 - 0:10:48 you can make is to stay, not where you are, but to stay in uh the bounds of your present relationship, we'll say with God. So you do that you remain or abide by living Accordant with the new instructions you're given. It's not the same as becoming the example you were shown. You see the difference. You 0:10:48 - 0:11:14 live Accordant with the instructions you're given. You live the law of Moses. Now that still requires change, it still requires obedience, but it's a lower slope of, of growth. Now, I could talk about this for hours and hours and hours and I could walk you through the entire body of scripture because 0:11:14 - 0:11:41 this is an extremely important idea. It's, it's central to the gospel, these two reactions, the and, and the source, the input and then the two reactions, the impulse and the two kinds of echoes. And I'm intentionally avoiding using certain words here that will cause people to divert to old patterns 0:11:41 - 0:12:01 of thought and action that are extremely limited. So that's why I'm, I'm just keeping this simple and I'm using certain words, we're using grace and justice and that's sort of a minefield of its own. But we're gonna try to keep it at that. The third reaction that you really, really, really don't want 0:12:01 - 0:12:29 to do is to turn away from what's offered. The first thing I'm going to say here is you need to understand that any improvement of which you are aware, God controls your understanding. If you're aware of a certain improvement and you're delaying, resisting, ignoring or disobeying it, you're turning away 0:12:28 - 0:12:55 from His grace, you're removing yourself from his grace and uh that's not an all or nothing affair. And I'm going to show you in detail how this works, but it's really bad and you should not do that. It will absolutely affect you no matter how small the thing seems, it's really important to understand 0:12:55 - 0:13:17 . So what's interesting is that people who use the word grace the most often who are shouting this the loudest, this is where they tend to live. They're not doing anything differently in their life because of God's grace and yet they, they just go on and on about it and I'll leave it to you to imagine 0:13:16 - 0:13:41 how this makes God feel when he's giving this immensely valuable thing. And people are trampling all over it while shouting at the top of their lungs, how valuable it is and what it's worth to them. So when you turn away from grace, it's not as simple as losing the increment of grace that you had before 0:13:41 - 0:14:05 , that would be bad enough, right? If all it was, was ok? Well, we got this grace and we got here. If we throw that grace away, we go back to this, that would be bad enough. But uh and the reason is because all of this part of you, guess what it comes back, you get this back, you turned away from the 0:14:05 - 0:14:28 better thing God offered you and you get this back and all the problems that came with it, you get those back too, but it's worse than that because, um, you are, when you were here before you were moving up, you were full of light. Now, that light wasn't as great as this level of light, but you were 0:14:28 - 0:14:47 full of light. You were aligned with God because you had come up through everything and you were, you were fully accordant with everything you knew. When you come back down, you're not in that state anymore. You're in a state of active rebellion, you have way less of the Holy Spirit with you. And so 0:14:46 - 0:15:10 your understanding is greatly reduced, your desire for good is greatly reduced. Your, your ability to see things is greatly reduced. And so you're not here, you're here with a difference. Here's the difference. You know, the bright side is blurred out. And so this is the opposite cycle where you're cascading 0:15:09 - 0:15:34 downward as you move. It's impossible to move down without making further downward movement easier, just like it's impossible to move up without making further upward movement easier. You're really hamstringing yourself when you move down. So here's the scripture, take heed. Therefore how you hear for 0:15:34 - 0:15:58 whosoever hath to him shall be given that's moving up, whosoever Ha ha. Doesn't just mean, hey, let me give you this thing. You're holding it, you have it. Remember with God to hold something to continue to have something you need to either become that or live the minimal law associated with maintaining 0:15:57 - 0:16:24 it. And if you have to, you will be given, you'll be given more, more grace and whomsoever hath not from him shall be taken. Even that which he seemeth to have. Luke 818. This same idea is in other gospels. But I like this one because in Luke, it says which He seemeth to have. It makes it explicit that 0:16:23 - 0:16:45 the good stuff didn't come from you. Maybe you brought some of it along, but almost all of it came from God's grace in this stage and everything you had before that was good also came from God's grace at some point before nothing here ever came from you. The, the best you ever did was get out of the 0:16:45 - 0:17:12 way and receive it from God. Every good thing comes from God. Period. If you have anything good in your life, you only seem to have it because you only have it to the extent that you have God and you can turn away from Him, you can fall from grace. And this, this is what that is ok. No, you say, well 0:17:12 - 0:17:34 , God is merciful. He's absolutely merciful. I could, I could make a case for that. That would blow your socks off. He's beyond merciful. So, and then you say, well, well, I mean, isn't this the point of everything that we get a, another chance? If we mess up, we can, we get another chance? Yes, absolutely 0:17:33 - 0:18:03 . That's absolutely the case. But it's not the same, it's not the same because remember each of these differentiations came because somebody paid a price. Now you're gonna tell me. Yeah. Well, Jesus paid the price. I agree. He paid the ultimate price, but he's not the only one who pays prices. What do 0:18:03 - 0:18:24 you mean by that? Well, he his whole creation think of it as a uh a network like a waterfall network, a network of waterfalls where he's at the peak of the mountain and all the water comes from him. And that first waterfall is the biggest one because it has all the water. And then there are all these 0:18:23 - 0:18:52 uh these sub waterfalls that come after that, that split up that main waterfall into smaller and smaller uh streams of water. Every other waterfall is something or someone paying a price. That's how God's light flows through the universe. That's how God's light flows through creation. So you yourself 0:18:52 - 0:19:15 are somewhere on that waterfall and everything you do, you have the option to flow what God has given you to other people. And you're meant to realize those opportunities both in, in the literal sense of recognizing them, but also utilizing them. And, and I'm not just talking about people here, um Everything 0:19:15 - 0:19:39 God created has a purpose and as it fulfills that purpose, it pays its price and it's a gift to pay a price. But prices can't just keep getting paid. They're all discreet things you say, well, isn't the sacrifice of Jesus, infinite and eternal. Yeah. But you don't know what those words mean. If you think 0:19:38 - 0:20:03 that's a counter argument, you don't know what those words mean yet. So, um let me zoom into really specific example. There is a guy in the book of Mormon named Mormon. And uh he, he's a general and a prophet. He comes around towards the end of the book and he's very faithful man. He's full of faith 0:20:03 - 0:20:33 and his people are very wicked. They managed to persuade him to lead them in battle because they're sort of in this existential war. And uh he does it a few times and he's so disgusted by the behavior of his army because they're just really terrible people that he says he cannot pray for them with faith 0:20:32 - 0:20:55 . He's still trying to pray for them. But he, he, these are not powerful prayers because he just can't have faith that God is going to intercede for people who are just so openly wicked and they, they don't care about what's right and they do terrible things all the time. Well, when you turn away from 0:20:54 - 0:21:30 light, you impede the faith of other people. And so um this pattern of assent cannot be repeated. What happens is you get an alternative path that's slower or less extreme in slope. So when you turn away from an enormous opportunity that God gives you to ascend, you will have to wait longer. Or um it's 0:21:30 - 0:21:51 better said that I don't want to get into this in this video. Uh But there's really no such thing as a time limit with God's requirements on things. Um But I'm using this because this is commonly used and it's a, I guess, a decent uh over simplification, but we'll just run with it so that this, that 0:21:50 - 0:22:12 we don't have to go off into left field on that topic. But basically, you're creating extra constraints, maybe that's the best way to look at it. You're creating extra obstacles in your progression towards God impediments and those impediments are really expensive. And so typically what happens is if 0:22:12 - 0:22:34 you turn away from something greater, you're going to have to receive it again through something lesser. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, if this was served up on a gold platter, this is gonna be a silver platter. If this was given to you in a time of peace and prosperity, this will be given to you 0:22:34 - 0:22:54 in a time of war. If this was given to you in total plainness, this will be given to you in a way that uh you really have to mind through and think about if this was given to you uh, without you even looking for it, this one, you're going to have to crawl across the country on your knees for. Do you 0:22:54 - 0:23:23 get what I'm saying? Now, why is the cost so much greater after you turn away? Well, it comes down to, do I talk about this here? Not yet. Um, it comes down to the price that was paid in the first place. You see when this happens, when this price is paid, that price is not stamped all over the grace 0:23:22 - 0:23:47 that is put before you. This is a really subtle thing all the time. Even if so, you know, the angel Gabriel appears to the virgin Mary. That's grace and he gives her this wonderful message. If you look through the words of that message, or you think about the glory with which Gabriel appeared, could 0:23:47 - 0:24:16 you reconstruct everything Gabriel went through for that to happen? His whole existence was required for that moment. You absolutely positively would have no ability to do that. Would you be able to know everything it costs God for that to happen? You absolutely positively would have no clue. I I hope 0:24:15 - 0:24:42 , I hope some shade of what I'm trying to tell you is obvious with this. The grace never shows what it cost. You're being given all the goodies with none of the cost. Here's a practical analogy for that. Let's say that you take your kid to an ice cream shop for a scoop of ice cream. Exactly what portion 0:24:42 - 0:25:08 of what that costs. You can, that child understand nothing. Basically nothing. All they know is you got in a car and drove for a certain amount of time and handed the person your credit card. They have no idea what it costs to even get that specific sum of money. They have no idea what it costs to get 0:25:08 - 0:25:31 a car. They have no idea what it costs. You know, we just go back to chain, right? Go back up the chain. It's, it's insignificant, the portion they understand about the cost. So if a child wants to receive everything from his father or mother, that the father and mother has to give, they have to walk 0:25:30 - 0:25:55 in a permanent assumption that what they're given is immensely more valuable than they could ever understand. And when will they understand when they're an adult when they're giving that to their own kid? And that is tremendously important. And I would love to just pivot to that and talk about that for 0:25:55 - 0:26:21 a while, but I can't. Uh OK. So the good news is now, let's go here. Now I'll come back to that slide. OK. This is what I was talking about. There's a huge difference in what God sees and what you see. So when you turn away from him, you are betraying him. Let's just be clear with that. You are betraying 0:26:21 - 0:26:42 him in the New Testament. When you read about this happening at the end of his life or even during his ministry, he's very sad about that. Will you go away also? You are going away also and you don't have to make a big deal about it and take 30 pieces of silver to do it. All you need to do to betray 0:26:41 - 0:27:09 God is be aware of some way that you could be better and not be that way. So when it comes to turning back to him, that's the price because that's the price he paid that you rejected. That's the price to turn back. But what you see now someone else can come and pay most of this or some of this for you 0:27:08 - 0:27:32 . But this is what it's going to take. But what you see is you only see this tiny price because grace is gonna hide most of it from you and this is you wouldn't even see this if it were to scale. Ok? So this is much enlarged and so you're gonna think that all it takes to turn back is just that because 0:27:32 - 0:27:54 that's all you turned away from. No big deal, right? No, you turned away from this. So here's a great example of this. You remember that part in the New Testament where Mary is washing the Lord's feet with her hair and OK, there's I have to be explicit, there's a big controversy about who this Mary actually 0:27:54 - 0:28:21 was. Let's just gloss over that. We actually we don't even have to put this boom, no controversy. We choose our battles. OK? So whoever that Mary was, she was washing the savior's feet with her hair, which was basically the most embarrassing thing you could ever do in public. It is a terribly uh humble 0:28:20 - 0:28:49 thing to do. And the reason is she knew that what she had been forgiven of was immense and she knew that that was the only appropriate action for her to take, given the value of what she was given in the Lord's forgiveness. But this, this uh Simon, the leper guy, he and, and Jesus called him out on this 0:28:49 - 0:29:17 because he said, why are you letting that woman do that to you? It's highly inappropriate. And he said, Jesus said to him that those who are forgiven of much love much and that's very interesting. He called this love. You probably see it as a punishment. He calls it loving him. Is that interesting? And 0:29:17 - 0:29:48 then uh the, the he says to Simon, you've barely done anything for me, but look at what she's doing. And so he makes a comparison between these two things and he says that that, well, we could get more into that. Ok. That's the bad news. But the good news is the good, the good news is that there is a 0:29:48 - 0:30:12 path back and it's the same path you were on before. That's the funny thing. It's the same path, it's heed and diligence. It's how much do you want, what is from God and what are you willing to do to get it? The downside if you could call it? That is that it's going to require more than before. It always 0:30:11 - 0:30:40 requires more than before. If you continue to turn away from God, the price goes up, the price you have to bear goes up. Now, ultimately, ultimately, that path leads to hell where you will pay the full price for what you turned away from. And you don't get hardly any of the benefit that you would have 0:30:40 - 0:31:06 had. That's actually a very important lesson, right? But again, that's sort of taken us off the path here. But this is this principle that keeps popping up, that everything God gives comes through faith and time and experience erode the maximum amount of faith that you can have. Therefore, the more you 0:31:06 - 0:31:27 turn away from what is offered, the more times it has to be offered, the less faith you have, when you finally receive it, you can only exercise a tiny bit of faith because some things can't be done over again. When you have a mountain of evidence that you've really turned away from something valuable 0:31:26 - 0:31:53 , you cannot receive it in the same faith that you could when it was just enough evidence for a reasonable person to do it. It's a, it's a very important principle to understand. So any time you turn away from an opportunity to improve, just know that if the opportunity ever comes to you again in this 0:31:53 - 0:32:22 life, it's going to cost you a lot more, a lot more than it would have before. And it will probably require you to receive it in a different path than you could have before. So in summary know that you will never know the worth of what you turn away from. The only way to know the true full value of something 0:32:21 - 0:32:49 is to come to the point where you have it and you give it to someone else just as it was given to you. That is an important key that being said or for that reason, be exceedingly careful in how you appraise the value of what's before you. Because you are guaranteed to overvalue what has less value than 0:32:49 - 0:33:20 you think and to drastically undervalue what God offers you. You're not going to have any clue what it's worth. Now. He promises that you will have enough understanding to know what direction to turn in, but he never promises that you'll know the scope of the value of doing. So at that moment, he just 0:33:19 - 0:33:47 says, you'll know what's right. He doesn't say by how much that's part of faith when you fall, you need to presume that what you turned away from is the path that leads to the greatest fullness of everything good because it is never allow yourself to believe that turning away from improvement doesn't 0:33:47 - 0:34:13 matter or it's not gonna hurt you that much or it's not gonna hurt other people that much or that it's isolated in some way, all value comes from all value. All good comes from all good. If you turn away from anything, you are making a drastic, immense, enormous mistake. And the consequences are all 0:34:12 - 0:34:40 those things too. When you fall, you can get back into the way. But realize that doing so is going to require you to pay a massively greater price than you ever thought was attached to what you turned away from because previously, all of that was covered through grace and now subsequently, only a portion 0:34:40 - 0:35:06 of it will be and that portion shrinks every time you get another opportunity. Um I was going to include a passage here from the Old Testament, which I love where it's talking about uh these two sisters. And um basically, the Lord uses a lot of examples in the in the scriptures uh from marriage to show 0:35:06 - 0:35:33 infidelity toward him to demonstrate what that's like and what uh what it costs and all that um the gravity of it. And he uses the example of this woman who um is married in her youth, basically given all the opportunities in the world and the Lord's the husband in this analogy. And uh and he, he gives 0:35:32 - 0:35:57 to her all the resources everything anyone could ever want for her to have the ideal life. But uh she responds to that by uh through infidelity and refusing the joy that she ought to have for everything that he's given her. And so he says, I will take everything away from you and leave you as I found 0:35:56 - 0:36:22 you. And then you'll know the value of the things that you're trampling on and taking lightly. And um that is a recurring theme in uh scriptural descriptions of relationships with God. It's a really, really big deal. So let's not take these things lightly. And I hope uh with this presentation, I've given 0:36:21 - 0:36:45 you some tools to more accurately view your progress with God and also the magnitude of what is at stake when you turn away from him. So that, that um the jet wash of that turn is not such a surprise or mystery to you because um I think it always surprises people, but the saddest part of that is when 0:36:45 - 0:36:59 it's a mystery and they can't seem to figure out why their life is a mess and how this could have happened. And more importantly how they get out of it. And so hopefully this gives you something to orient towards in your own journey.