Knowing Christ as My King

This week I learned a lot about what kind of person Christ really is. In the readings, there was a lot about who Christ is and what he does for us. He can help us to conquer our fears like we learned in Matthew 14. His purpose is to heal (Mark 6:5). He is the bread of life (John 6:32-35, 47). Overall, Christ is here to redeem and “save that which was lost” (Matthew 18:11). I love the kind of person that Christ is. He is truly here for us. He is here for no other reason.

My life has already started changing with this knowledge of who Christ is and what his purpose is here on Earth. I started out this week worrying about everything that I would need to do. I have several exams to study for, and an extra heavy workload in all of my studies and at the work place. Once I learned what Christ was here to do, I was able to gather all the zeal necessary to push forward and try my best. I’ve almost completely finished everything that’s due for this week, and I’m only halfway through it. I’m grateful that I can be prepared to listen to general conference rather than worrying about all of my studies.

The biggest principle that stood out to me this week was the importance of believing in Christ. He can help us as long as we believe. One of my favorite stories in the New Testament is when Christ is walking on the water and he invites Peter to come unto Him. Peter was doing great, but the moment he took his eyes off of Christ, he starts to sink. The same happens for us. When we take our focus off of Christ, we start to sink and everything in our lives start to fall apart. At first, it may seem easy to keep our focus on other things because we think we could get so much more done. However, when we do that we sink and lose our focus on the rest of the areas of our lives. I have a strong testimony of Jesus Christ and the kinds of things that he can help us do just while we're keeping our focus on Him.

My favorite instances of believing in Christ within the reading include: Matthew 14:26-31, 17:18-20; Mark 9:23

I decided to practice skills on another piece of symbolism.A passage that I found confusing and arbitrary was about a woman, her daughter, and the dogs. This passage is found in Mark 7:25-30. According to the story, the woman came to Jesus looking to “cast forth the devil out of her daughter” (verse 26). It almost seems as if Jesus doesn’t even give a call to action. He tells her to “Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it unto the dogs” (verse 27). The woman seems to understand what Christ is saying here. According to the footnotes, he means to say that the children of God’s kingdom must be “filled” first. She replies, “Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs” (verse 28). These crumbs might represent the gospel. It went through the children of God’s kingdom before it went through anyone else. Overall, I guess that Christ is teaching that in order to help others, we ourselves, need to have our own testimonies. The crumbs, which may or may not be intentional, could be the learning of others based on our example as we learn the gospel.

This passage was an interesting thing to study. On one hand, we’re taught that we must teach the gospel. This almost makes the gospel seem more selfish, but it’s important that we have a solid testimony of our own. Christ uses a lot of symbolism in his teaching. It is an important skill to learn to decipher the different symbols to understand his teachings.