Comfortable Gods

I had to look up this quote again, because parts of it were playing in my mind today.  I needed to be reminded of this, and it has given me peace today.

"Sadly enough, my young friends, it is a characteristic of our age that if people want any gods at all, they want them to be gods who do not demand much, comfortable gods, smooth gods who not only don’t rock the boat but don’t even row it, gods who pat us on the head, make us giggle, then tell us to run along and pick marigolds.¹¹

Talk about man creating God in his own image! Sometimes—and this seems the greatest irony of all—these folks invoke the name of Jesus as one who was this kind of “comfortable” God. Really? He who said not only should we not break commandments, but we should not even think about breaking them. And if we do think about breaking them, we have already broken them in our heart. Does that sound like “comfortable” doctrine, easy on the ear and popular down at the village love-in?"

-The Cost - and Blessings of Discipleship - Jeffrey R Holland - April 2014 Conference

I'm thankful that I have a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm thankful that instead of being comfortable with the weaknesses I've been born with, I search for, pray for, and in return am given strength to overcome them.  Only a "comfortable God" would allow you to remain a "natural man."


D&C 67:12
Neither can any natural man abide the presence of God, neither after the carnal mind.

1 Corinthians 2:14
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Mosiah 3:19
For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.