Visiting Teaching Message

Created in the Image of God

Prayerfully study this material and seek to know what to share. How will understanding “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” increase your faith in God and bless those you watch over through visiting teaching? For more information, go to reliefsociety.lds.org.

Faith, Family, Relief

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. …

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:26–27).

God is our Heavenly Father, and He created us in His image. Of this truth, President Thomas S. Monson said: “God our Father has ears with which to hear our prayers. He has eyes with which to see our actions. He has a mouth with which to speak to us. He has a heart with which to feel compassion and love. He is real. He is living. We are his children made in his image. We look like him and he looks like us.”¹

“Latter-day Saints see all people as children of God in a full and complete sense; they consider every person divine in origin, nature, and potential.”² Each is “a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents.”³

“[The Prophet] Joseph Smith also learned that God desires that His children receive the same kind of exalted existence of which He partakes.”⁴ As God said, “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39).

Additional Scriptures

Genesis 1:26–27; 1 Corinthians 3:17; Doctrine and Covenants 130:1

From the Scriptures

The brother of Jared in the Book of Mormon sought for a way to light the eight barges designed to carry the Jaredites across the waters to the promised land. He “did molten out of a rock sixteen small stones” and prayed that God would “touch these stones” with His finger “that they may shine forth in darkness.” And God “stretched forth his hand and touched the stones one by one.” The veil was taken from the eyes of the brother of Jared, and “he saw the finger of the Lord; and it was as the finger of a man. …

“And the Lord said unto him: Believest thou the words which I shall speak?

“And he answered: Yea, Lord.”

And “the Lord showed himself unto [the brother of Jared]” and said, “Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning after mine own image.” (See Ether 3:1–17.)