For the past 14 months, my wife, Melinda, and I have been given a front-row seat to something sacred: we have watched Jesus Christ rebuild lives. We serve in a transition branch composed largely of men who have been convicted of felonies and served time in jail or prison.
Through this calling, we have come to love people who have made serious mistakes and suffered serious consequences. But we have also witnessed something remarkable: no mistake, addiction, prison sentence, or painful past places a person beyond the Savior’s reach.
The experiences of 3 friends from our branch can teach us the different ways the Savior can restore lives. The first is my friend Kevin.
For more than 50 years, Kevin struggled with addictions to alcohol and tobacco. He eventually lost hope and made choices that resulted in him serving ten years in prison. He described himself using Lehi’s words as being bound by “awful chains” and carried into a “gulf of misery and woe.”
While in prison, Kevin made the decision to turn to God. He said that through Church volunteers, weekly worship services, scripture study, and the Healing through the Savior addiction recovery program, he came to know Jesus Christ. He discovered that forgiveness and redemption were still available—even to him.
Through the Savior’s grace, Kevin became free from the addictions that had held him captive for so many years. He has been sober now for 13months. Even more miraculously, he witnessed the Savior help heal the family members he had hurt and enable them to forgive him. Kevin’s testimony is that Christ did not merely forgive his past. The Savior freed him from captivity, healed relationships, restored hope, and gave him a new life.
Step 2 in the Healing through the Savior program is, “come to believe the power of God can restore us to complete spiritual health.” I love the word restore. It means to repair, reclaim, renew, and return something to usefulness and beauty. The central message of step 2 is hope. My friend Brad in the branch says Hope stands for "Heaven on planet earth" and that he found it in the Ogden Transition Branch.
For someone trapped in addiction, burdened by sin, or carrying shame, hope begins with the belief that change and forgiveness are possible—and that the past does not have to define the future, Kevin’s experience is a modern witness of the mission Jesus Christ announced at the beginning of His earthly ministry when He said:
He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted [and] to preach deliverance to the captives” (Luke 4:18). Jesus came to forgive sinners, liberate captives, heal wounded hearts, strengthen the weak, and restore what had been lost.
That restoring power comes through His infinite Atonement. Alma taught that Christ would take upon Himself our “pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind,” together with our sicknesses and infirmities, so that He would know “how to succor his people. (Alma 7:11–12).
President Boyd K. Packer taught, “Restoring what you cannot restore, healing the wound you cannot heal … is the very purpose of the Atonement of Christ.”
Repentance does not necessarily remove every earthly consequence. Kevin still had to face the consequences of his choices. The Savior can also restore us by giving purpose to our suffering and allowing us to bless others.
My friend John, another member of our branch, entered prison at age 63 believing he might never come out alive. Because of the serious mistakes he had made, he also thought there was no way God could still love him. When first incarcerated, several inmates warned John to stay away from a man named Frank, a feared cartel enforcer. But one day Frank approached him. John braced himself for a confrontation. Frank said, “I have been watching you. You pray before every meal. Could you teach me how to pray?”
John and Frank began meeting each evening to read scriptures and pray together. Frank later confided that he had planned to take his own life, but their scripture study had opened a window of hope he had never imagined. After his release, Frank and his wife left their former lives behind and were eventually baptized.
In John’s story, the Savior was restoring two lives. As John helped Frank discover God, John began to rediscover his own worth as a son of God. Serving Frank helped lift John from the depression and shame that had convinced him he had lost the Savior’s love.
That is what Jesus Christ does. He meets us in our prisons—whether those prisons have walls or are made of sin, addiction, despair, or shame. Through His Atonement, He restores hope, identity, purpose, and the possibility of a different future.
Not every broken heart, however, is the result of sin. Some hearts are broken by grief, betrayal, physical or emotional illness, or prayers that appear to remain unanswered.
The Book of Mormon gives us a beautiful picture of the Savior’s desire to heal every kind of affliction. When the resurrected Christ appeared to the people at Bountiful, He said: “Have ye any that are sick among you? Bring them hither. Have ye any that are lame, or blind, or halt, or maimed, or leprous, or that are withered, or that are deaf, or that are afflicted in any manner? Bring them hither and I will heal them… We later read, “And he did heal them every one” (3 Nephi 17:7, 9).
If the Savior were standing among us today, perhaps we would hear His invitation in language such as this: Have ye any who are discouraged? Have ye any who are worried about their children or grandchildren? Have ye any who are grieving, lonely, anxious, or depressed? Have ye any whose marriages are strained, whose prayers seem unanswered, or who have questions about their testimonies?Bring them hither.
Or perhaps His invitation would be even more personal: Are you discouraged? Are you afraid? Are you burdened by guilt? Do you have questions? Then come unto Me, and I will heal you.
His healing may come immediately, as it did for the people at Bountiful, or it may come gradually.
Another member of our branch, my friend Luke, has helped me understand that restoration does not always feel dramatic. Luke committed serious sins. His choices nearly ended his marriage. His Church membership was withdrawn, and he was incarcerated for several years. Luke once expected the Atonement to produce a momentous spiritual experience. When he read Alma’s question, ‘Have you experienced this mighty change in your hearts?’ he wondered why he had not felt some overwhelming transformation (Alma 5:14).
But a mighty change does not always arrive in a single mighty moment.
From the first day of Luke’s confession, small evidences of the Savior’s grace began to appear: a message arriving when he desperately needed it, a telephone call timed almost impossibly to answer a need, and people placed in his path at the right moment. Luke was re-baptized last Sunday. Luke still says he has not received the dramatic spiritual manifestation he once thought he was supposed to have. But he can see what the Savior has done in his life.
Sometimes we do not recognize the Savior’s hand because we are waiting for thunder while He is sending daily bread.
The parable of the good Samaritan teaches us something more about this healing. We all know the story: a wounded man was passed by several individuals, but a Samaritan stopped to help. When we are wounded, that Samaritan is Jesus Christ. He comes to where we are, has compassion on us, binds our wounds, carries us, and pays the price for our healing. When others are wounded, the Savior gives us the opportunity to follow His example—to become a good Samaritan ourselves. We stop, show compassion, help bind their wounds, and point them to the Savior, who is the true Healer.
That is something Melinda and I have learned in our service in the transition branch: we are not the healers. Jesus Christ is. Our privilege is to help bring people to Him—and then witness what His grace can do. No life is beyond the reach of Jesus Christ.
We may see ruins; He sees something worth rebuilding.
We may see failure; He sees a disciple who can still become holy.
We may see weakness; He sees an opportunity for His grace to become manifest.
Brothers and sisters, let’s take Step 2. Come to believe that the power of God can restore us. Turn toward Jesus Christ. Repent of what needs to be changed. Seek priesthood and professional help when needed. And then allow the Savior time to perform His work in us.
His invitation is both tender and direct: “Will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you?” ... Behold, mine arm of mercy is extended towards you” (3 Nephi 9:13–14).
I testify that His arm of mercy is extended toward each of us. Jesus Christ lives. Because He rose from the tomb, death will not have the final word. Because He carried our sins, repentance is real. Because He experienced our pains, we never suffer alone. And because of His grace, broken lives can be forgiven, healed, restored, and ultimately made whole, leading us into a future filled with hope. Heaven on planet earth.
