Christus Consolator

Notice how the people in this picture are all clinging to Christ--even the man in chains is longing to believe that he too can be free.  The widow, the child, the rich and the poor--all that are heavy laden can come unto Christ and He will give us rest.

As the class for Session 5 speaks of change and addictive behaviors, this picture seems appropriate because all can come unto Christ.

Probably, in one way or another, all of us have addictions.  Addictions can be emotional as well as physical.   We might be addicted to control in our relationships. It may be we are addicted to narcotics or to caffeine. It may be an addiction to the Internet or to sugar or to distorted thinking or to sleeping. All of us have something we need to change.  Change is called repentance. 

As Dr. Nedley often states, the most essential part of changing or repenting or becoming whole and healed is the spiritual.  It is coming unto Christ through prayer, scriptures, gratitude, and worship in the temples and the Stakes and using the Holy Ghost.

Our Heavenly Father and his Son Jesus Christ have given to us a marvelous gift called the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost can help us to heal, to become whole or in other words to find the faith and courage to repent--to change. Read the wonderful blessings the Holy Ghost brings.

“The gift of the Holy Ghost adapts itself to all these organs or attributes. It quickens all the intellectual faculties, increases, enlarges, expands and purifies all the natural passions and affections; and adapts them, by the gift of wisdom, to their lawful use.  It inspires, develops, cultivates and matures all the fine-toned   sympathies, joys, tastes, kindred feelings and affections of our nature.  It inspires virtue, kindness, goodness, tenderness, gentleness and charity.  It develops beauty of person, form and features.  It tends to health, vigor, animation and social feeling.  It invigorates all the faculties of the physical and intellectual man.  It strengthens and gives tone to the nerves.  In short, it is, as it were, marrow to the bone, joy to the heart, light to the eyes, music to the ears, and life to the whole being.

“In the presence of such persons, one feels to enjoy the light of their countenances, as the genial rays of a sunbeam.  Their very atmosphere diffuses a thrill, a warm glow of pure gladness and sympathy, to the heart and nerves of others who have kindred feelings, or sympathy of spirit.”  (Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology, p.101.)