The Father

“Instead of feeling judged, I feel supported.” I wish that Laura could feel that.

“Heavenly Father focuses on helping us to progress, not on judging us.”

For her entire life, my wife, Melinda, has tried with all her heart to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. Yet, beginning in her youth, she felt unworthy of Heavenly Father’s love and blessings because she misunderstood His nature. Fortunately, Melinda continued to keep the commandments in spite of the sadness she felt. A few years ago, she had a series of experiences that helped her better understand God’s nature, including His love for His children and His gratitude for our even-imperfect efforts to do His work.

She explains how this has influenced her: “I now feel sure that the Father’s plan works, that He is personally invested in our success, and that He provides us with the lessons and experiences we need to return to His presence. I see myself and others more as God sees us. I am able to parent, teach, and serve with more love and less fear. I feel peace and confidence rather than anxiety and insecurity. Instead of feeling judged, I feel supported. My faith is more certain. I feel my Father’s love more often and more deeply.”

Having “a correct idea of [Heavenly Father’s] character, perfections, and attributes” is essential to exercising faith sufficient to obtain exaltation. A correct understanding of Heavenly Father’s character can change how we see ourselves and others and help us to understand God’s tremendous love for His children and His great desire to help us become like Him. An incorrect view of His nature can leave us feeling as if we are incapable of ever making it back to His presence.

Aside from the series of experiences that changed her perspective that first paragraph sounds just like Laura.

During mortality, Heavenly Father provides us with the conditions we need to progress within His plan. The Father begot Jesus Christ in the flesh and provided Him with divine help to fulfill His mortal mission. Heavenly Father will likewise help each of us if we will strive to keep His commandments. The Father gives us agency. Our lives are in His hands, and our “days are known” and “shall not be numbered less.” And He ensures that eventually all things work for the good of those who love Him.

Heavenly Father guides us and gives us the experiences we need based on our strengths, weaknesses, and choices so that we might bear good fruit. The Father chastens us when necessary because He loves us. He is a “Man of Counsel,” who will counsel with us if we ask.

To become like the Father, we must develop His character traits. Heavenly Father’s perfections and attributes include the following:

• The Father is “Endless and Eternal.”
• He is perfectly just, merciful, kind, long-suffering, and wants only what is best for us.
• Heavenly Father is love.
• He keeps His covenants.
• He does not change.
• He cannot lie.
• The Father is no respecter of persons.
• He knows all things—past, present, and future—from the beginning.
• Heavenly Father is more intelligent than us all.
• The Father has all power and does all that He takes into His heart to do.

Brothers and sisters, we can trust in and rely upon the Father. And He “would not require [us] to experience a moment more of difficulty than is absolutely needed for [our] benefit or for that of those [we] love.” As a result, He focuses on helping us to progress, not on judging and condemning us.

Given the distance between what we are as mortals and what Heavenly Father has become, it is not surprising that some feel that becoming like the Father is unattainable. Nevertheless, the scriptures are clear. If we will cleave in faith to Christ, repent, and seek God’s grace through obedience, eventually we will become like the Father. I take great comfort in the fact that those who strive to be obedient will “receive grace for grace” and ultimately “receive of his fulness.” In other words, we won’t become like the Father on our own. Rather, it will come through gifts of grace, some big but mostly small, that build upon one another until we have a fulness. But, brothers and sisters, it will come!