It's okay not to love it, just love Him.

 

Sometimes when I learn something that changes my life, brings relief, and speaks volumes that I could never really describe well, I want to shout it from the rooftops in case it could help someone else.  To me this kind of learning and change comes directly from God through the Spirit.  A few days ago, I had this kind of experience.

We are all different and learning in different ways and I think it's okay to be who we really are and say what are true experience is.  So here it is:

I haven’t loved a lot of things I used to love for a while.   I don’t really love church.  I wish I did, I want to wake up on Sundays and love to go.  But I don’t. I’m not sure why, it may be physically I feel tired a lot, mentally I’m quite tired too, I do what I must to prepare to teach class on Tues and Thurs, weekly keep up with Come Follow Him, work at the temple on Wed.  But really, I am just not sure what has happened about the going to church part that I would rather stay home. I think it may have something to do with Covid or some depression. What helps is focusing on the things I do love, what I love is feeling the spirit and when I go there, sometimes I feel the spirit.  But I wish I loved church all the time, like I used to, and I have been praying to get back to that.

I don’t really love General Conference.  I like it, I love some talks, but I don’t really feel the intense love that I hear some people describe about General Conference.  When I relax about it and feel like, “I am just here to hang out with God and see if there is one thing for me.” I feel like it’s easier to like General Conference.  And when I hear a talk I love, I love it, but mostly I just like General Conference.  I heard a friend say, “I was so sad when it was over.”  I felt so bad because I felt relief when it was over.   I hope I am not a bad person, but I feel bad that everyone loves it and I just kind of like it.

I serve at the Orem Temple on Wednesday’s.  I don’t really love it.  I want to love it!  I pray to love it.  I ask God to change me, so I love it, but I don’t.  My feet hurt, my back hurts and my hips hurt and when I stand in one place for four hours at the temple my body hates it.  I pretty much get a low-grade migraine almost every time also.  It’s so weird.  But it’s not just physical issues; my personality loves things when I am in the new, learning stage, but when I am in the not new stage, I don’t love it.  The temple to me can feel repetitive and my personality doesn’t love that.

Like I said, I want to love these things.  I have felt something is wrong with me, “Do I not want to live with God again?”  I have heard that going to the temple on earth is like wanting to live with God in heaven.  The temple is the closest thing we have to heaven on earth.  Do I not want to be in heaven? 

I have asked myself, “What is wrong with me?” over and over again.  I have asked God to change me over and over.  It hasn’t worked, it all still feels like work and a sacrifice.

I went to my shift praying and asking for God to change me again this week.  I had a conversation with another shift worker who said, “I love the temple, it’s the best thing I do all week.”  Because of the circumstances we were in I felt it was okay to be honest, so I quietly said, “I don’t really love it, I am trying to love it.”  He said the best thing to me, I felt like God himself was speaking through him, here is what he said, and what the Spirit maybe spoke too; not really sure who said what, but here is what pierced my heart so completely and profoundly:

“It is okay for you not to love it!  It’s okay for you to feel like this is work and a sacrifice.  You love the Lord and it’s okay for you to go to church, listen to General Conference, and work at the temple just because you love Him and want to worship and serve.  You don’t have to love it to be a good person and to be the kind of person who wants to live with God!”  It makes me cry to write this.  It makes me cry to think it.  It is healing, love, relief, peace, comfort, delicious to my entire soul…I just want to say it again, “It is okay for you not to love it!  It’s okay for you to feel like this is work and a sacrifice.  You love the Lord and it’s okay for you to go to church, listen to General Conference, and go to the temple just because you love Him and want to worship and serve Him.  You don’t have to love it to be a good person and to be the kind of person who wants to live with God!”

These are probably just words to you.  But the Spirit carried this into my heart and pierced my very soul.  It’s so simple.  So compassionate.  So merciful.  So kind.  “It’s okay not to love it, it’s okay for this work to be a job and a sacrifice that I do because I love the Lord.”  It’s something I had never thought of before.  I have felt so much pressure to have to love all of it.  I know these words are from God because I am so filled with God’s love at the very thought of them. 

It just makes me know one more time that for whatever we need God to speak to us about He can.  Whatever we are individually going through he has the truth that will help us. I want everyone to be filled with God’s truth that will help you individually because it is so good.  God can speak truth that sets us free, peace that passeth all understanding, knowledge that enlightens and enlarges our souls and it is so delicious.

This is what brings me to God, Christ and the Holy Spirit over and over again.  What they have to offer is so much better than what the world offers. 

I love that he can help me. I love the Lord so much.  I love Christ so much.  I love feeling the Spirit, it’s the best thing in the world.  I think they all speak the truth that pierce us to the very heart.  I had never considered that God’s truth to me would be so tender and compassionate.  In my circumstance I think it’s amazing that God doesn’t change me to love it, he changes me to know it’s okay not to love it, that my heart is still good if I just love Him.