Given at the adult session of stake conference on August 12, 2023, Gastonia Stake, North Carolina
I’ve studied faith for years for a lot of personal reasons, diligently marking scriptures about it, and analyzing the strength of my own faith. I’ve also felt the power of the Savior’s infinite atonement over and over again in my life. So, I thought I was well prepared to speak on this topic. I spent the last few weeks pondering, praying for help in putting my thoughts into words, and vigorously writing down what I wanted to say to all of you. This past Monday, I even took my daughters and 3 of their friends to Carowinds, and while they went on waterslides, I sat, sweating with my notebook, handwriting my talk .
But despite my best efforts, my brain has been muddled. Not only has it been painful to write every time I’ve put pen to paper, I’ve been making countless human, but nevertheless embarrassing errors in my everyday life. So many of my attempts this past week at doing good -in my calling, in my family, with missionary work, and even temple work - have been riddled with errors caused by my faults and weaknesses. Whatever you are imagining, I promise it has been worse. It’s been so frustrating, and honestly, a little weird. I’ve felt like 16-year-old, immature, zitty and messy Katie, not middle-aged and graying, Relief Society President Katie.
Last night at midnight, I was attempting to finish this talk once again, inwardly berating myself for not being done, feeling old feelings of shame telling me that if I had just done x, y, and z, I wouldn’t have been in this situation at all. Hadn’t I improved my problems with focus and procrastination? Couldn’t I manage to write a measly 15 minute talk a week in advance? I was mad at myself for not being done, while also mad at myself for thinking that my little talk mattered enough to be this worked up about. I was telling myself, like my 17-year-old son, often tells me, “It’s not that deep.” Let me tell you, that’s not an ideal situation for feeling the spirit. In desperation, I knelt and cried, and apologized to God for getting myself into this situation, and being so angry and stressed, and I figuratively threw my hands in the air and said, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here.”
It was a little startling to me how quickly I realized that my stress and inability to move forward was being caused by trying to write about what I wanted to write about. I had wanted to write well ahead of time to make sure I expressed myself perfectly, so that I felt calm in my assurance that I could share what I knew to be true. I wanted to be unfrazzled, prepared, and well-spoken. None of those things were horrible, but I had shifted from a place of humility to a place of pride. In my thoughts and preparations I had assumed that God wanted one thing out of me, when He had something else in mind.
I had thought He wanted to use my strengths, when He had actually been waiting for me to admit my weaknesses. I wanted to speak about what I already knew, instead of being receptive to new light and knowledge that might stretch me.
It was also astonishing how quickly - after He revealed this to me and I tried to repent by realigning my desires with His - that a certain scripture came to mind, and then another, and I was soon jotting down an outline. So, having told you this story, which I promise will be relevant to my talk, I’ve put aside the pages and pages I wrote well ahead of time, and I’m going to imperfectly share the words that were written today.
One of my favorite scripture stories tells of Moses and the children of Israel in the wilderness. They have had the faith to follow Moses into the wilderness. They are bitten by fiery serpents. Moses makes a brass serpent, puts it on a staff, and all they have to do is look at it to be healed. It seems to be one of Nephi’s favorites as well, because He references it more than once, and he uses it teach his brothers about faith in Christ. In Nephi 17, he says,
41 He sent fiery flying bserpents among them; and after they were bitten he prepared a way that they might be chealed; and the labor which they had to perform was to look; and because of the dsimpleness of the way, or the easiness of it, there were many who perished.
I love this story because it simplifies faith so beautifully and hopefully. It really is that easy - when we are sick with sin, panicked and afraid, we really just need to have enough faith in our Savior to look to Him for healing, and He’ll do it! I have no doubt that most, if not all of us in this room, have had that faith and have felt that healing, and that’s why we’re here at all.
A parallel story in the New Testament is one that Elder Stanfill spoke so eloquently about in our last General Conference. The disciples are on a boat during a storm, already scared, when they see Jesus walking towards them on the water. Peter has the faith to step out onto that water and walk towards Him, but,“when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.”
Haven’t we all gained a love and an appreciation for Peter this year? We are all Peter, the same way we are all the children of Israel. We have all looked towards, and stepped towards, the Savior, when we are scared out of our minds, and we have all relied on Him to save us when we are dying and drowning. That’s faith in Jesus Christ. If you remember from my topic assignment, that’s the first part - faith in Jesus Christ. Now I want to talk about the second part of my topic, “Embracing the Priceless Gift of His Infinite Atonement,” with another Peter story.
After this incredible experience, Peter has continued to follow the Savior, showing faith in Him, and learning from Him, and now He is sitting with him at the last supper. Supper has ended. The Savior knows His time with Peter and the other disciples is coming to an end. If you want to read along with me, I will be in John 13, starting at verse 4,
4. He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.
5 After that he poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.
6 Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet?
7 Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.
8 Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet.
I’m going to pause here for a minute because when I read this scripture during our “Come, Follow Me” study earlier this year, it was one of those moments where I could truly liken the scriptures unto myself. I had a visceral reaction when I imagined being Peter. The Savior has shown him how mighty, powerful, compassionate, kind and merciful He is. He has already pulled Peter from the depths of the stormy sea. Now He is kneeling before Peter, at the end of a long day, wanting to wash the filth from his sandal-clad, stinky, feet - pretty much my feet after I went to Carowinds the other day. I can’t speak for Peter and his hesitations, but I can imagine why I would hesitate. I would be embarrassed and uncomfortable letting the master of ocean and earth and skies even get a good look at my feet, let alone touch them, and then to use his own, clean towel to wash them clean? I might feel like, “That’s not how things are done - it’s all mixed up.”
or…
Can’t I do that myself? I mean, give me the supplies and I promise, I’ll do it. I’m good. I might be embarrassed that I let my feet get that dirty to begin with. It’s like the equivalent of letting your clean-freak ministering sister scrub your moldering, overflowing refrigerator. I don’t want you to know that while you are this clean, I am this dirty.
Or
I might have thought, “I’m used to being this way - why bother? I’m just going to walk back out into the streets, and no matter my best efforts, my feet will get dirty again. Please don’t waste your efforts on me….and maybe? Don’t remind me what it feels like to be clean because then feeling filthy again will be a very, very uncomfortable contrast.”
So as I was imagining all of that, in Peter’s stead, the next part of the verse really struck me.
Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
Peter, who has already shown great faith in Jesus, Peter, who has followed the Savior, who the Savior had rescued, would have NO part with the Savior, if He could not allow the Savior to wash him. It was not just an act of service the Savior was offering, it was a necessity.
This is where I think the second part of my topic comes in - Embracing the Priceless Gift of His Infinite Atonement. I could talk for hours about this, and indeed, wrote pages and pages, about how faith leads us to look to the Savior when we have been bitten by fiery serpents or we are drowning. We often have faith that His Atonement is infinite enough to save us from those dramatic situations.
But this kind of faith that the Savior was asking of Peter when He washed His feet is less dramatic, more humbling, and somehow, at least for me, harder to exercise on a regular basis. This kind of faith may be acknowledging that the word “infinite" here might mean over and over and over again. This kind of faith is also essential if I want to face God, “clean every whit.”
This is what President Nelson has said about this:
“Nothing is more liberating, more ennobling, or more crucial to our individual progression than is a regular, daily focus on repentance. Repentance is not an event; it is a process. When coupled with faith, repentance opens our access to the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.7
Whether you are diligently moving along the covenant path, have slipped or stepped from the covenant path, or can’t even see the path from where you are now, I plead with you to repent. Experience the strengthening power of daily repentance—of doing and being a little better each day.”
I propose to you this evening that this kind of faith - the faith to bring our dirty feet to the Savior, daily, to humbly let Him wash them, is what moves us from accepting the Priceless Gift of His Infinite Atonement to Embracing the Priceless Gift of His Infinite Atonement.
It can be uncomfortable for you, maybe for the same reasons I proposed earlier - maybe you feel unworthy. Maybe it’s embarrassing. Maybe you just don’t feel like thinking about it. Maybe it’s discouraging. Maybe you feel like you should be past this. Maybe you’ve created your own assumptions about what a disciple of Christ should be, how strong you are, how you are going to deal with these problems yourself. Maybe you are ashamed that, as someone who has experienced great miracles in your life, you still need help with your little weaknesses. Maybe as you’ve studied the prodigal son, you’ve always been considered the son who stayed home and worked on his father’s farm faithfully, watching as the prodigal son blew his inheritance, and you’ve thought of repentance as being for those big sins that you haven’t even committed.
Daily repentance requires us to admit to ourselves that we need daily repentance. It sometimes forces us to stop assuming that we know what God wants from us, and instead ask Him. It requires us to stop focusing on our strengths, imagining all the good that we can do for God because of those strengths, and asks us to focus on our weaknesses…… letting Him do what He wants to do with us, working on what He wants us to, and letting Him guide our lives. It wasn’t completely unrighteous for me to want to mold my future by having a well-written talk way ahead of time, just as it isn’t unrighteousness to want to shape your future in such a way that you don’t have to repent as often. But what is even more righteous is to acknowledge that despite your best efforts, you need help - to acknowledge that Christ has overcome all of this already, to acknowledge that no matter how much you try to keep your feet dirty, or how good you might have gotten at cleaning them yourself, He still wants to do it for you. To acknowledge, in fact, that it is still essential to have him do it for you!
In our leadership meeting today, we read two contrasting scriptures. In Mosiah 5:15, in talked about how if we are doing good works, we are sealed to the Savior. In contrast, in Alma 34:35, it says that by procrastinating repentance, we are sealed to Satan. It’s surprising, I think. It’s not sin that seals us to Satan, but procrastinating repentance of that sin. Or, in other words, hesitating, for whatever reason, to let the Savior wash our feet.
I testify that anything that keeps us from that good work - shame, embarrassment, laziness, focus on other things, or even good intentions that have turned into prideful desires - anything that keeps us from daily repentance is a tool of the adversary. Don’t listen to him. He’s a liar. Feel the relief of daily repentance. Feel the joy of yoking yourself to the Savior, feeling your burden lift, and trusting that His way is the way.
I know that our prophet speaks for God when he pleads with us to embrace the gift of our Savior’s infinite atonement by repenting daily. I say this things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
