Steven's Fathers' Day Talk
“Our Father in Heaven”
Talk given in sacrament meeting June 19, 2016 (Father’s Day)
What will you be when you grow up?
There once was a family that raised some chickens. One day the father came home and his children were really excited because several eggs had hatched and they wanted to show their father the new baby chicks that had just been born. As they gathered together to admire the new chicks the little four year old daughter picked one up and held it in her hand. The father, somewhat teasingly, said to her, “That will certainly make a nice watchdog when it grows up, won’t it?”
The girl looked at her father puzzled.
“No, he won’t grow up to be a dog will he?” the father corrected. “He’ll grow up to be a horse, and we’ll ride him, and gallop around. Won’t that be fun?”
The little girl understood an important doctrinal principle. A principle that is absolute, eternal and comprehensive, and yet so simple that even a four year old child understands this principle completely.
The principle is this: everything grows up according to its parentage.
She knew that a chick would not grow into a dog. Nor would it become a horse. Nor would it be a cat or a frog or even a polliwog. She knew that a chick would only grow to become a chicken.
This principle applies not only to the animal kingdom but also among plants. For example, at home I have a garden. Earlier this season I planted in my garden some tomato seeds. Now there is a reason why I planted tomato seeds in my garden. That reason is this: I wanted to grow tomatoes. I did not plant tomato seeds with the thought that someday I would harvest corn. As much as I love corn on the cob I knew that planting tomato seeds is not the way to get them. Nor did I plant my tomato seeds with the thought that I would one day reap beans or squash or pickles or anything else. I knew that if I planted tomato seeds the only thing that would grow would be a tomato plant.
This principle was established at the creation of the world. On the first days of creation, when God created all the plants, the grasses, the herbs, and the trees, He made them to produce seeds ‘each after its kind’.2 Then he created the animals, the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of all kinds in the waters, and He commanded each of them to multiply, ‘each after its own kind’.3 Everything will reproduce and follow the pattern of its parentage.
I Am a Child of God
Which leads us to an important question: Who are you?
Who are you?
It seems like such a simple question that you may be tempted to answer it by just stating your name: “I am Steven Hiatt.”
But who are you?
I could go on and tell about my parents. “I am the son of William and Kathleen Hiatt.” I could tell you my age, my occupation, my hobbies and all these other things that make up parts of who I am, but does it really answer the question?
To really answer the question “who are you” we would need to turn to the experts. And by experts, I mean the Primary children.
Primary children, when I ask the question “who are you” how many of you would respond by singing, “I am a Child of God”? That’s right, you are a child of God.
In the Family Proclamation we learn some important things about this. “All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny.” You have a divine nature and a divine destiny. Think about what that means. Think about that in the context of what we’ve learned about chickens and tomatoes. When we say you are a child of God, that you have a divine destiny, it means that you will become just like your Heavenly Father..
‘Now hold on a second’, you may be thinking. ‘No one can become God. This is blasphemy. Let’s stone this heathen.’ Hold on a second, put your rocks down. Let me put this in context.
When a child is born here on earth, that child begins life without many of the abilities and attributes of his parents. A newborn cannot move around in the same way as his parents - he can’t walk or run or even crawl at that stage. An infant does not have the same communication skills as his parents - he can’t talk or sing or even text. And a baby does not yet have the power to reproduce - he can’t have children. But when that little baby boy grows into full maturity he will have inherited all these attributes of his parents. Not only will he be able to walk and talk like his parents, he will be able to have children of his own. He will also likely share many of the same physical characteristics of his father, and probably many personality traits as well. How often have you heard someone say, “you look just like your father,” or “you remind me of your dad when he was your age”?
But here is the point. No matter how old that boy grows, no matter how like his father he becomes, the boy and his father will always be two separate and distinct individuals, and the father will always have stewardship authority over his son.
So it is with us. God is our Father in Heaven. He is the one who created us, he is the one whom we worship. Nothing will ever change that. No matter how old we get, no matter how exalted we become, God will still be the God we worship.
And He Has Sent Me Here
Now, let us return to the song. How does it go? I am a child of God, and He has sent me here. Well if He sent me here, then where was I before? And if He sent me here, why did he want me here instead of leaving me there? More commonly we hear these questions phrased, “Where did I come from?” and “Why am I here?”
Well, for answers, let’s return to the Family Proclamation. “In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshipped God as their Eternal Father.” Before we came to earth, we lived with our Father in Heaven. We knew Him. We loved him. But we were just spirits. Your spirit looks just like your physical body but lacks the flesh and bones and tangible parts that we have now. But our Father we know “has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.”4 Not only is His body tangible, but it is perfect, glorified and immortal. We wanted to be just like Him, and God wanted us to be just like Him as well. So he created a Plan whereby we could achieve this. While we were still in this premortal state we “accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny as heirs of eternal life.”
Has Given Me an Earthly Home
And so we left our heavenly parents and came here to earth where we gained mortal parents. How does the song go? “Has given me an earthly home with parents kind of weird.” At least it seems that way sometimes. Some of us have “parents kind and dear.” I’ll leave it to you to determine what type you have.
Our mortal parents have been given the responsibility to “love and care for … their children” and children have been given a commandment to “Honor thy father and thy mother.”5 But since we now have a relationship with earthly parents does that mean that somehow our relationship with our heavenly parents goes away? Do we no longer need to be concerned with them? No.
When Christ was asked what was the greatest commandment he responded, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”6 Not only are we to love God but we also have been taught to communicate with Him. Jesus gave us the pattern of prayer and directed that our prayers should be addressed to “Our Father which art in heaven.”7
Teach Me All That I Must Do
So we are here on earth, we have earthly parents, and we still have a relationship with our heavenly parents, but we come back to the question, “Why am I here?” Well, how does the song end? “Teach me all that I must do to live with Him someday.”
This is our goal in life: to live with God someday. We want to return to Him. And you know, he wants us to return. This, He has said, is his work, “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”8 Now immortality is a free gift to all through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”9 So we don’t have to worry much about that part. But achieving eternal life does require effort on our part.
What is eternal life? Perhaps the best description is what Christ himself gave during his great intercessory prayer. He said, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”10 Eternal life is to know God.
How do we come to know God? How do we come to know anything? Well, often here on earth we will turn to scientific methods to discover truth. We learn through experimentation and observation and in this way we can know of things that are true. Sometimes we take a scholarly route, we have discussion and debate, we use reason and logic to try to learn truth. While these methods have their time and place and can help us learn many things, they can only help us know about God. In order to truly know God, we must follow a different course.
Here the scriptures teach us the right way. In 1 John 2:3 we read “And hereby we do know that we know him” - let me stop there for a moment. If you ever want to know if you know that you know, here’s how you know. - “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.”
So the way we come to know God is by keeping His commandments. Why does God give us commandments? Because by keeping the commandments we become more like God, and when we become more like God we come to know God. For example, He has given us a commandment that we should love our neighbor - because God also loves that person. As we love those we meet, we feel how God feels for them and thus come to know God. We have a commandment to be honest, to “not bear false witness.”11 As we become more honest in our lives we come to know God, and we know that God cannot lie.
Brothers and sisters, I know that God lives. I know that He is our Father in Heaven, the father of our spirits. I know that He loves us and wants us to return to live with Him. I know that as we keep the commandments we can better come to know Him, and be worthy one day to live with Him again.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
2See Genesis 1:12
3See Genesis 1:24
4D&C 130:22
5Exodus 20:12
6Matt 22:37
7 Matt 6:9
8Moses 1:3991 Cor 15:22
10John 17:3
11Exodus 20:16
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