For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.I still have this one memorized; it's so nice and short. It's fairly easy to see why it's a scripture mastery: it tells us, straight from His mouth, what God is for, what He does, what He loves. It also lets us see what our purpose in life is: to gain immortality and eternal life. The basic doctrine this illustrates is "Plan of Salvation".
I can't remember what we discussed in Gospel Doctrine about this verse (except that there was quite a bit of discussion that I thought, "Oh I should probably keep this in mind for when I start that SM series," about). Then that week, or the next, I was reading the April 2013 General Conference and came across a talk by Elder M. Russell Ballard that is actually titled "This Is My Work and Glory." A couple of thoughts from that presentation struck a chord with what I need to learn from this verse, even though I couldn't remember which talk it had been when I finally sat down to write this post (you'd be surprised how many people mention 'glory' in General Conference).
Elder Ballard quoted D&C 81:4
And in doing [righteous service-y] things thou wilt do the greatest good unto thy fellow beings, and wilt promote the glory of him who is your Lord. (emphasis and brackets mine)I have an unfortunate tendency to want to take credit for, well, everything. If I ever had missionary or shepherding experiences I would be tempted to see primarily my hand in the effort, but that is wrong. Every good thing I do is for the glory of God. In return He gives me the greatest gift (not to mention all my other blessings)--so why should I not sing His praises all the day long?
Because it is His glory.
(There is so much in this verse I could talk about for so long, but at least for today, I'll keep it short.)
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