Elder Renlund, "That I Might Draw All Men unto Me"

In April 2016, Elder Dale Renlund gave a talk entitled, "That I Might Draw All Men unto Me".  He starts by talking on entitlement, teaching that the farther apart we are from the source that provides a gift, the more entitled we feel and the less appreciative we are.  This lesson is quickly focused on God:

"Our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, are the ultimate Givers.  The more we distance ourselves from Them, the more entitled we feel.  We begin to think that we deserve grace and are owed blessings....When we are distant from God, even small inequities loom large.  We feel that God has an obligation to fix things--and fix them right now!"

Elder Renlund uses the term, "The ultimate Givers" to describe Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in this context.

Perhaps sometimes we do not see God in that way.  We may see God primarily as one demanding or requiring, or perhaps, watching our stumblings with some sort of an amused aloofness, chuckling softly at himself as we bumble our way through life but taking no active role in it.

But Elder Renlund cuts right across this false doctrine that some may believe by calling Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ "The ultimate Givers".  The implication is that is there are none that give as generously or richly as God.  That God's giving is, by it's nature, a whole other category of giving, or perhaps the type of giving by which all other gifts are compared.

Prayer can serve to help us see how God is the ultimate Giver; it can help us brush away the cobwebs to better see how much we receive from divine hands.

Prayer also helps us grow closer to God, improving not just clarity of vision but proximity both to the light source by which we see and the ultimate end of all seeing.

Elder Renlund sees in this closeness an increasing willingness to embrace a countercultural idea:

"The closer we are to Jesus Christ in the thoughts and intents of our hearts, the more we appreciate His innocent suffering, the more grateful we are for grace and forgiveness, and the more we want to repent and become like Him."

The countercultural idea is that by increasing our closeness to God, rather than an increase in appreciation for strength or courage or power or wealth, we become more appreciative of weakness, of sorrow, of grace, of mercy.  At the same time we cultivate our desire for these attributes. God can then work with us through our weakness and His grace and mercy.