Exponential Slope

In the last General Conference, Elder Clark G Gilbert talks about "The Parable of the Slope." He points out that it matters less what your starting point is and instead we should focus on whether our path through life is sloping upwards or downwards. He also tells a story of how he struggled academically all his life until he got to his mission and systematically included the Lord in his studies and finally saw some real upward slope in the effectiveness of his studies. I want to talk about slopes for a second. For the line y=x, the slope is 1. You move forward one step, you move up one step. You move forward three steps, you move up three steps. However, if you take that same line and you add some power to it, like y=x², suddenly instead of taking three steps forward and three steps up, you take three steps forward and nine steps up. On our own we can do everything we can to improve ourselves and ensure that our trajectory is sloping upwards, but if we include the Lord and His power, our slope accelerates at an exponential rate. We can always advance if our slope is pointed to the right direction, but when we raise our slope to the power of Christ's Atonement, we will advance so much faster than we ever could on our own.