"The sacrament prayers have to be given word-perfect. Everyone knows that. But when the priest flubs it, what happens? Even though the expectation of perfection cannot be lowered, the person giving the prayer gets a second chance, and a third, and a fourth, if he needs them. No matter how many mistakes he makes along the way, when he does finally get it right, the outcome is counted as perfect and acceptable.
"God, like the bishop, cannot lower the standard that we ultimately become perfect," writes Brad Wilcox, "but He can give us many opportunities to start again. . . . Perfection is our long-term goal, but for now our goal is progress in that direction - continues progress that is possible only through the continuous Atonement."
Brad has a loving way to present each of our longings and fears along with his own through experiences of his own and people he knows as well as quotes from General Authorities of the Church.
Lately there has been a lot of discussion about what a bully is and how to deal with them. One of the very important lessons I learned from this uplifting book is that Satan is a bully! By undermining our self-confidence and telling us that we are never going to be good enough to return to live with Heavenly Father, so why try, he thinks to drag us down to his level. He knows that he has failed and therefor wants to have us fail. He can't stand to have us be loving, forgiving, obedient, and kind. He thinks that those attributes are signs of weakness, but what he doesn't understand is that they are signs of strength of self control, which he will never be able to break.
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