Chapter 11: Align With God by Living Up To How He Sees You

How would you change if you saw yourself as God sees you?

How would you feel if you knew what God knew about you, reality, and your choices? Whether you come to see who you really are during this life or not, there will come a time after death when you will stand before God, and you will see more of what he sees in you.¹ In that day, you will have a complete awareness of your life: everything you did and didn’t do, freed from all the excuses and delusion you used to hide from the truth during your life. In that day, you will be stripped naked of your excuses, and you will see yourself as you are seen by God: in truth. You will lack the ability to cover your failings, fears, unbelief, and selfishness with lies.²

Many rightly fear direct confrontation with God,³ but it is unwise to react to that fear by embracing the illusion that you can hide from him. It is in your best interest to find out how God sees you while you still have time to improve. For those who wait until after death to find out how God sees them, it will be too late to change how they are:⁴

32 For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.
33 And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.
34 Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world. 35 For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his; therefore, the Spirit of the Lord hath withdrawn from you, and hath no place in you, and the devil hath all power over you; and this is the final state of the wicked. (Alma 34)

To prepare for that day, you ought to do all things that lie in your power to:

• See yourself as he does.
• Value what he values.
• See your potential as he does.
• Attain your potential.

These actions, diligently performed, will make it so that when you see more of what God sees, it will increase your joy instead of filling you with horrible regret.

Your self-appraisal will only become more correct as you come to see what God sees and value what God values

One of the barriers to seeing yourself as God sees you is the inaccuracy of what you see as valuable. God does not value things the same way as you do.⁵

God knows everything.⁶ Among his knowledge is the true worth of everything. What the world treasures is abominable to God,⁷ and what the world despises is a treasure to God.⁸

What God values is what is truly valuable, but your valuation will be contrary to his until and unless you learn and subject yourself to what he values. As you increase in knowledge about and appreciation for God, you will begin to notice that what you value will change, as will how much you value it.

As you learn of and adopt God’s valuation, you will find that your idea of virtues and vices will change. Some virtues will seem more rare or valuable than before and some vices will seem more common or harmful than before. You will even come to see that some prior virtues are actually vices, and some vices are actually virtues. Accordingly, you will see some of your qualities as less impressive than you thought,⁹ and may see some of your qualities as more impressive than you thought.¹⁰

God sees you differently than you see yourself

Another reason your self-appraisal differs from God’s is that he sees what you do not see. You can guarantee that God sees you differently than you see yourself. God knows how you really are:

Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. (Hebrews 4:13)

God sees qualities you have but aren’t aware of¹¹ and qualities you think you have but don’t.¹² He knows which of your qualities are more or less intense or important than you think they are.

You can’t become who you have the potential to be until and unless you allow God to help you make the changes necessary to do so,¹³ and you won't know what changes to make or have sufficient reasons to make them until you allow him to show you who you really are.¹⁴

As you increase your knowledge about and familiarity with God, how you see yourself will change. As you learn how he sees you, you will be surprised at how different you are from how you think you are. The light of Christ will show you more of your similarities to God and more of your differences from him. The intent of the light of Christ is to make a way for you to improve. As you learn more about how he sees you, you may be less quick to assume positive attributes in yourself,¹⁵ but you will also notice, develop, and have more confidence in your strengths.

Live up to the strength God shows you

Learning more about God can result in boosting the value you appraise in yourself.¹⁶ There are many ways you can hold yourself in lesser esteem than God does. You might have positive qualities you didn’t know you have, or you might exercise them more fully than you think you do, or when it matters the most, or they might be worth more to God than you think they are. You might possess fewer negative qualities than you think you do, or you might possess qualities that are much better in God’s eyes than they are in yours, or you might exercise them less often than you think you do, or abstain from them when it matters most.

It is important to live up to the strengths he shows you, even if doing so means you have to act differently than those around you. The Lord described David as a man after his own heart.¹⁷ This is a compliment that all of us would be honored to receive, but it is easy to forget how being like God caused David to be so badly persecuted by so many people—including his own parents, at least one spouse, and some of his children. What would have happened if he acted more like those around him instead of how he believed God to be?

David was a man who was accustomed to acting in ways that were true to himself even though they diverged from what was expected from him. He was a warrior when his brothers and father thought he should be a shepherd. He was a king when assigned to be a knight. He was valiant when his king wanted him to be subordinate. He was passionate in gratitude to God when his wife expected him to be subdued.

David was able to do what David did precisely because of his unique character. Had he fit his life to the expectations of others, he would have had to forfeit everything he accomplished for all in the kingdom, including those who hated him. What would have happened if David had changed his behavior to be more like his brothers in order to please his father who strongly preferred them? What if he pretended to be as scared of Goliath as the other soldiers? What if he had killed fewer Philistines in battle to avoid the jealousy of Saul? What if he had abstained from dancing to the Lord in order to avoid upsetting his wife, Michal? In every case, his service to God and God’s people would have been reduced. Being true to yourself is necessary to bring about what is best for all—including many of those who hate you.

David found the strength to live true to himself in spite of opposition from others because he was emulating the virtues he saw in God. In order to find this same strength, you will need to correctly identify and increase the parts of your personality that are like God. The more you get to know God, and the more like him you become, the easier it will be to stand for what is right, even if you stand alone.

The more of God’s goodness you see, the more faults you will see in yourself

In order to more clearly see the greatness of God, you will first have to see less of your own. There are many ways you can hold yourself in greater esteem than God does. You might not have the positive qualities you think you do, you might not exercise them as consistently as you think you do, or when it matters the most, or they might not be worth as much to God as you think they are. You might possess more negative qualities than you think you do, you might lack qualities that you do not yet understand to be positive, you might possess qualities that are much worse in God’s eyes than they are in yours, or you might exercise them more often than you think you do, or when it matters most.

You offend God when you present yourself as better than you actually are.¹⁸ Jesus taught that you should assume that you have low standing with God until and unless he tells you otherwise.¹⁹ To the extent that you think of yourself more highly than God sees you, you will be “abased,” or be given experiences that will reveal to you that you are less than you thought.²⁰

Believe that God knows much more about being a good person than you do.²¹ As you increase in your recognition of and appreciation for the attributes of God, you will decrease in what you perceive as good in yourself.²² Job, who was held up by God as an exemplary righteous person, thought highly of himself until he saw God, at which point he said he abhorred himself.²³ Daniel, another man declared righteous by God, was physically overcome as everything he found good about himself was shown to be dross compared to the glory of the mighty angel that appeared to him.²⁴ As you come to see yourself as worse than you did before, you make room to see God as better than you did before.²⁵

To increase in knowledge about Jesus requires you to receive criticism from him. This criticism is not some side-effect of the love of God, but the love of God itself. Obtaining more of God’s goodness requires that you become better than you are. God knows that how you are determines the joy you experience, and that only through becoming more like him can you experience more of the joy he does.²⁶ As a necessary part of this, you must come to see more of your present limitations.

It is impossible to align more closely with God without coming to see new or greater faults in yourself as a result. The differences between you and God will become more apparent as you more accurately see your faults and more accurately see his virtues. As you come to God, he will show you your weakness:

And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them. (Ether 12:27)

No matter how exceptional you already are, the more you learn about God, the more of the gilding he will strip away from your self image.²⁷

Greater light shows new or greater differences, creating greater contrast than previously existed. Just as the blind and the sighted are indistinguishable in a dark room, you can’t see who you are or who you could be any better than you already do until and unless you are shown greater light. When the light shines, it will cause you to see unfavorable parts of yourself in greater breadth and depth than you did previously. Jesus will find fault with you until you are living up to your full idea of how he is, and even then, he will only stop when you are ready to receive more. You should expect to continue to receive criticism from God until and unless you become exactly like him. The only time you don’t have a shadow is when you are directly under the sun. If you find yourself without criticism from God, it means that you are not ready to receive what he wishes he could tell you. Good people will push harder and harder towards him, even if doing so hurts.²⁸

Most people ignore what they lack, whether in character qualities, in wisdom or knowledge, in problems they face, in situations that overcome them, or in emotions they cannot control. All of these things are indications of a need for something better, and all of them make space for greater revelation from God. To get closer to God,²⁹ you must become more humble than you are.³⁰ As God points out your weaknesses, you should adopt the humility of the many people who sought Jesus out to heal them during his mortal ministry. It did no good to pretend that they weren’t sick and afflicted; the solution was to look to him³¹ to know how to be healed.³² Until we see just how filthy we really are, we will never come to truly see God’s goodness, nor fully receive his healing hand, nor come up to anything approaching our divine potential in the full light of God’s love. All people must see themselves as they really are, and all must come to Jesus to be healed in his light: to have their willful darkness cleansed through forgiveness, and to walk in his light by continuing without sin, slaying even the thought of or desire for sin.

When God shows you your weaknesses, realize that he is also expressing his confidence that you can overcome them. God shows you your weakness to instruct you on how to be better, and he never gives you a commandment that you lack the power to obey.³³

As you recognize your flaws before God, you are not reducing your worth, but rather identifying how you can be better than you are. The difference between you and God reveals exactly how you need to improve to become more like him. Any time you acknowledge a fault you have compared to God, you are also identifying how to change in order to remove it. As you acknowledge your flaws before God, you are making a way for him to bring you up to a place where you no longer have them.

See yourself as God does by acknowledging what he has already shown you

God created this world as a vehicle to reveal more to us about good and evil, providing opportunities for us to choose better outcomes than we would otherwise have.³⁴ Every day of our life provides countless data points to document how we are.

Plotting the points of evidence through your life until now shows a clear trend of your true self. Honestly assess what you have and haven’t accomplished so far in life given the resources you have had access to and the challenges you’ve worked against. Honestly assess your strengths and your weaknesses, and your desires and fears. How diligently do you strive? How much do you trust God? How much are you willing to suffer for what is good? How much are you willing to stand for what is right? How much do you love correction? How much do you hate sin? How reliable are you? How much do you love your neighbor? How much do you love your enemies?

You can only expect God to increase what you see about yourself once you have acknowledged everything you already have the ability to see. If you want to see how God sees you, begin by daring to look at who you really are.

See yourself as God does by asking him what he sees about you

It is possible to ask God to reveal to you any difference in how he sees you compared to how you see yourself:

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139)

When you ask him to show you how and why he sees you differently than you see yourself, he will.³⁵ Few are ready to ask him in earnest for fear of what he might say, and even fewer are ready to hear what he has to say, whether they think they are or not. Remember, he sees you differently than you see yourself, and what he tells you is likely to strip away your fantasies and delusions, cutting you to the core:

When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. Selah. (Psalm 39:11)

For the many who are not yet prepared³⁶ to hear God’s perspective directly,³⁷ he mercifully provides many experiences and interactions here to help us receive what we are willing to hear.³⁸

The best way to prepare to receive more from God is to faithfully live up to your idea of how God is. Those who are fully faithful to God receive from him whatever they ask, including God’s opinion of how they are.³⁹

God responds to the degree of our effort to seek him. The more you ask him, the more you think about it, the more you pay attention to indications of how you really are in life, and the more you study the scriptures with this in mind, the more he will show you about how he sees you.

See yourself by searching your heart

Many people respond to criticism by saying something like: “God knows my heart,” ostensibly referring to the fact that God takes our motives into account when judging us.⁴⁰ The problem is that the motives of those who say this are just as bad as the outward acts they attempt to excuse by saying it. The next time someone says, “God knows my heart,” you should reply: “He does...but do you?”⁴¹

It is easy to presume that your heart is good, even when your outward acts are not.⁴² It is easy to come up with explanations that are sufficient to fool yourself or others into believing that you have good motives,⁴³ but God can’t be fooled.⁴⁴ What do you desire? By how much do you desire it? Why do you desire it?

Should you be so anxious to be judged by God for the intents of your heart? Can you boldly say, as David did:

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139)

The hearts of all people desire evil by default: “...for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth....” (Genesis 8:21) It is not just possible, but common, for people to desire differently than what they believe is right. It is only through active and continual submission to improvement that man’s heart bends to desire what is right:

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. (Mosiah 3:19)

Too many Christians erroneously believe that God automatically forgives the faults of those who say that they like him. Forgiveness doesn’t come through liking Jesus, but through being like him. Liking Jesus is not the same as loving him. You can say you like Jesus and still not obey him, but only those who obey him can claim to love him:

If ye love me, keep my commandments. (John 14:15)

Those who do not obey Jesus love whatever they do instead more than they love him.⁴⁵ Those who actually love God desire to please him more than anything else.⁴⁶

See yourself as God by comparing yourself to him

If you ever wonder what God thinks about you, rephrase the question into its more measurable form: list out how he is and compare yourself to each attribute. For example:

• God is aligned with reality.⁴⁷ How aligned are you with reality as you know it?
• God only walks in truth. Do you ever depart from the path of truth, even just a little, even sometimes?⁴⁸
• God knows what he wants⁴⁹ and why he wants it.⁵⁰ Do you know what you want and why you want it?
• God only wants what is best.⁵¹ Do you ever desire anything less than what is best?
• God only does what effectively results in his will.⁵² Do you always act honestly so as to obtain what you most desire?

By comparing yourself to how God is, you can gain an accurate appraisal of your value in his eyes. It is by his goodness that you will know what goodness is.⁵³ If you want a more accurate appraisal of how you really are, you will have to learn more about how God actually is. Only through knowing God more can you truly know yourself more.