No Merit

The following scripture made me think of some things lately:

Aaron is teaching the King about God. The record is summed up like so...

Alma 22: 14 - And since man had fallen he could not merit anything of himself; but the sufferings and death of Christ atone for their sins, through faith and repentance, and so forth; and that he breaketh the bands of death, that the grave shall have no victory, and that the sting of death should be swallowed up in the hopes of glory; and Aaron did expound all these things unto the king.

So... then my wife went to a women's conference and someone there related a piece of advice given to newly serving LDS missionaries, that was something to the effect, "No matter what you do on your mission, you cannot make God love you more than he already loves you now."

I thought of the first sentence of the above scripture in context of that quote. Since man had fallen he could not merit anything of himself...

God does love us. Sometimes when we seek a blessing we think perhaps we need to earn God's favor. But it's not about favor, but blessings come of obedience and, I suppose, grace, not because we earned it out of some greater quantity of God's love. God already loves us more than we can understand. He gives us all that we can handle, and prepares us that we may be able to handle more.

Further God loves all his children. He wants all of them to be given a chance. Because we are fallen, we can merit nothing of ourselves, thus we must turn to God.

Anyhow I am still learning. Most of this requires a lot more patience than I currently have. I can feel God's love reaching to me, and so often I bat it away in bitterness, saying, "I need more time to merit it..." I hope I have the courage to put that foolish tendency to rest.

--Ray