Step By Step to God

"Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God;" (D&C 109:8). This verse gives us a clear, step-by-step guide to becoming more like God. If we want to change and improve and transform our lives and become perfected through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we first have to organize ourselves. We have to know what we want and then aim at it with our whole being, getting every part of ourselves organized around that goal. Then we need to prepare every needful thing. Not every thing, every needful thing. We should not go off unprepared, but if we keep preparing and preparing every single thing for every possible contingency, then we're never going to go anywhere. Next comes prayer. Despite organizing ourselves and preparing every needful thing, the world is a big place and we are so very small and fragile and weak. We can't do it without God, and God cannot help us if we don't ask Him. After prayer comes fasting. We typically think of fasting in terms of food, but at its core is the idea that we have to sacrifice our own comfort, our own appetites and desires and passions, our notion that we know best what we need. If we can give this up, then we can let the power of God into our lives. After we have prayed and fasted, we must then go forth with faith. God respects Newton's First Law of Motion both in the wider universe of inanimate objects and in our own lives. An object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external force. God will not force us into moving, but His power does kick in when we ourselves start to move, and as long as we keep going forth with faith, then God will be with us. Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things. When we exercise our faith, we go out into the unknown. Sometimes we take the wrong path. We make mistakes. This is where the next step comes in. After we have organized ourselves and prepared every needful thing and prayed and fasted and exercised our faith, sometimes we still fail. We have two options. We can become once more an object at rest and curse the universe for being unfair and God for being cruel. Or we can learn. We can go back to the drawing board. We can organize ourselves a little differently. We can prepare new things that we weren't aware were needful. We can pray with a little more sincerity, fast with a little more humility, go forth with faith a little more courageously. The more we fail and learn and reorganize and fail again and learn again, the more we will grow from grace to grace and knowledge to wisdom. We have arrived at the next step - glory. We do not glory or boast in our own strength or our own wisdom, but rather we glory in this whole process of becoming more like God by each time organizing ourselves a little better and preparing a little wiser and fasting and praying and exercising faith and learning. It is a glorious process, learning to give more of ourselves to God so that He can help us become more and more we we were always meant to be. And as our confidence begins to wax strong in the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, we will look beyond ourselves and begin to establish order and peace and harmony in the world around us. We start first with our own home, and then our neighborhood, always expanding the light and order of our beloved Savior. I know that as we organize and prepare every needful thing and fast and pray and have faith and learn and glory and order our lives and the world around us, then we will become more and more like our Heavenly Father.