The Great I Am

“Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58). As disciples of Jesus Christ, we must strive to become like He is. One of Jesus Christ’s titles is the Great I Am. He is not known as the I Was, or the I Will Be, but the I Am. If we are wasting our time and our energy and our peace and our happiness worrying over who we were or stressing about who we may become, then we are not devoting our time into becoming more like the Great I Am. To dwell in the past is to deny the power of the Great I Am. If yesterday I sinned then I was a sinner but if I have since repented, then today I Am. Christ doesn’t want us chasing after what if’s and should’ve’s. He wants us to Be, now, just like He Is. If we fell down, then let’s pick ourselves up. If we sinned, then let’s go, and sin no more. Thanks to the miracle of Christ’s Atonement, we can become new creatures, completely separate from the old person that we used to be. We don’t have to lug around our pasts as long as we choose to be part of the Great I Am, to stay in the present moment, to take no thought for the morrow but consider today’s evil sufficient for us to deal with. The better we become at letting go of our past and our future and being part of the I Am, the greater will be our strength and our patience and our faith to confront the present challenge. When we refuse to let yesterday or tomorrow siphon off our energy we need for today, then we have a much more unfiltered access to the Great I Am’s power and grace. I know that all of us have the capacity to become more and more like the Great I Am, and to leave all of the was-es in the past, and save all of the will-be’s for tomorrow and for today we can just be “I Am.”