On Becoming One with God

In my readings this morning of Catherine Thomas's book, Light in the Wilderness, I rediscovered a favorite passage defining in a beautiful way what it means to become one with God, as we all are striving to do.  She first talks about the Savior and his relationship with the Father to illustrate what she means:

"Here we confront the mystery of identity.  Jesus is reffered to in scritpure as both Father and Son.  What is the nature of Jesus's identity if he is both Son and Father?  The annalogy of the water vessel helps.  As the vessel with water, the Lord's body contains His spirit.  The "vessel" itself has its own physical DNA, and the spirit its own eternally personal components.  That is, there are fundamental principles or parts in His soul that will endure in Him in their unique form forever, as there are in each of us.  But it appears that as He allows His own spirit to be mixed with an additional spirit, His spirit takes on the attributes, the consciousness, and the identity of that spirit being added to His.  In the scriptures, then, "Son" identifies the physical part of Him, the vessel part, with its unique components, personal history, and ministry; and "Father" identifies the predominant spirit that fills Him, making Him both the Father and the Son."

     I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one-- [I am] the Father because he gave me of his fullness. (D&C 93:3)

"In the tabernacle of his body the Son voluntarily gave the predominance to His Fahter's spirit... This is not only the pattern for the Gods, but also for each person, as modeled by our Savior.  So we might say, as the Natural must yield to the Spiritual, so the Son yields his will to the Father's, so also must the Seeker put off his natural man and yield to the Son, ultimately giving the Lord the predominance in his soul (Mosiah 3:19).  As we see, this relationship of oneness between the Father and Son is not an anomaly, but a model for Man.  Here we behold a great chain of linked beings, reaching into eternity. 

Therefore, following this model, as a person fully yields his will to God's, he retains not only his own identity, but also takes on the identity of that Eternal Being that fills him.  This person comes alive in Christ (see 2 N 25:25), is empowered by Him to speak and to act in the living stream of godliness, of revelation, and heavenly empowerment, this loving current of highter Life.  Elder F. Enzio Busche describes this relationship with the Savior:

     With this fulfillment of love [of our Heavenly Father] in our hearts, we will never be happy anymore just by being ourselves or living our own lives.  We will not be satisfied until we have surrendered our lives into the arms of the loving Christ, and until He has become the doer of all our deeds and He has become the speaker of all our words"  (Truth Is the Issue, Ensign, Novemember 1993, 25).