Setting Goals

Russel M. Ballard a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stated, "I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don't set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential." Each day of our lives we have the capacity to do so much. However, if we don't have a goal for what we want to accomplish that day we can go to bed while having done nothing significant. When we have goals, we are conscious of what exactly we are doing with our time and we will be happier.

Daily goals are important because they are a building block for our life. In order for them to be more effective, we must shape our daily goals so that they build us into a long term goal for ourselves. Just like it was easy in former times to get lost at sea if you didn't focus on the north start, it is easy for us to get lost if we don't remain focused on our goals. If everyday we have daily goals that lead towards our long term goals, we will be able to look back at our lives and realize how much we grew in our lives.

God's scriptures

In the Helaman chapter 3 of the of The Book of Mormon, the people are beginning to repent and turn to God. A key reason for this is in verse 29. "Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the man of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked." This a powerful scripture with lots of great things to learn. The part I want to focus on is the word quick. The scriptures can immediately affect our lives as soon as we begin to study them with humble hearts.

Earlier in the Book of Mormon, Ammon, a great missionary who helped convert thousands of non believers to believe in God, admitted that he would not have had success without the scriptures which are the word of God. For those of you reading this that are unsure if their is a loving Father in Heaven, I invite you to pick up the scriptures and to read them. Ponder the messages that it contains. Remember the scriptures are QUICK and powerful. As soon as you turn to them with questions, you will feel the influence of God in your life. For those who haven't read from the Book of Mormon I invite you to try that out. See if it adds anything to the things that you already believe. I know that the scriptures are true. The Book of Mormon and the Bible are the word of God. I can turn to them anytime and their quick and powerful influence blesses my life. 

Don't lose focus

The scriptures talk a lot about the last days. In fact, they were written for the last days. The Isaiah prophesied "Wo unto them that call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" Paul later wrote "For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good."

I think we can all see the effects of this in our life. The world is losing many of the values that it once had. These values have not only been lost, but they are under attack. With the tide of the world pushing heavily in the wrong direction, it is important for us to hold our heads high and be an example of the believers. We are here on earth to experience joy. This is done when we live a Christ centered life. The world around us will push us and pull us to draw our hearts away from what matters most. It will tempt us with whatever it can. As we recognize these temptations and continually refocus on what matters most, we will find true happiness amidst the tumult that we are engulfed in.

Writing things down

As we live worthy and are striving to be disciples of Jesus Christ, we want to receive guidance and direction from him. This is hard and difficult. We so often feel like we are on our own. There are many ways to be better in tune and receive guidance from God. The one that I would like to focus on today is writing down the impressions that we receive. 

Richard G. Scott has some great insights on writing down impressions. In one story he shared, during church he felt personal and specific guidance through the Spirit. He quickly wrote it down. Later that night he said, "I thanked Him for the guidance given. I was then impressed to ask, 'Was there yet more to be given?' I received further impressions, and the process of writing down the impressions, pondering, and praying for confirmation was repeated... I had received some of the most precious, specific, personal direction one could obtain in this life. Had I not responded to the first impressions and recorded them, I would not have received the last, most precious guidance."

This story is strong, powerful, and real. God is much closer than we think. If we are listening, he find out that he is communicating with us all of the time. Writing down the inspiration we receive and than acting on it, leads us to receive more precious guidance. The more we listen to what God is telling us, the more he will guide us to be able to better serve those around us.

Believe Him

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." This scripture is arguably the most famous scripture in the whole Bible. It has a huge emphasis on believing. David A. Bednar, in a recent talk, gave some great insights on the word believe. He asks, "Is it possible to exercise faith in Him, follow Him, serve Him, but not believe Him? He then states, "I am acquainted with Church members who accept as true the doctrines and principles contained in the scriptures... And yet they have a hard time believing those gospel truths apply specifically in their lives and to their circumstances."

This is a common thing, and is something that I have bee thinking about a lot lately. Why is it so hard to apply the Gospel to ourselves? When others have different problems and they come to us for help, it is easy for us to know what they need to do. But it is easy to doubt that it will actually work for ourselves. I believe that a big reason for this is because it requires humility to believe Him. The things that God asks us to do are hard and  they often require us to swallow our pride. As long as we believe that we can do everything or almost everything ourselves, we won't rely on God and we won't truly believe Him and his promises. I hope that he can all humble ourselves and believe Him.

Can You Hear the Music?

In one of my favorite talks, Wilford W. Andersen gives a wonderful analogy. Two men are talking and one of them asks "Do you Dance?" The man replies, "I do not. Can you teach me?" The other man says "I can teach you to dance, but you have to hear the music." This is a profound analogy to our worship. It is not enough just to perform the right steps in the right order, or just go through the motions of church attendance. We have to hear the music, or in other words we have to feel the joyful spiritual feeling that comes with living the gospel.

Dancing without music is awkward and uncomfortable and if we do it long enough we may stop or we may continue just to please others. The same goes for living the gospel. If we do the right things but do not feel the joy that comes from following Christ we may stop following Christ or we may continue just to please others. This is against God's wishes for us. He wants us to find joy in living the gospel. He is not trying to pound us, like a blacksmith, into something we are not. He is purifying us, like a diamond, so that we can become our best self. Honestly, it is extremely hard to find joy in living the gospel all of the time. None of us always want to choose the right, and when we do it doesn't always fill us with joy. The motto for us can be "keep practicing".

We are not going to be perfect dancers right when we start. We are not going to always hear the music. But if we strive to do our best, dancing will be beautiful to us and the music will fill our souls. So for everyone that feels like sometimes they don't feel the music of the gospel (that should be all of us), please remember to keep practicing. Pray for that love. Keep choosing the right. Count your blessing. The love and joy of the gospel of Jesus Christ will fill your souls. It won't come in one giant flash but step by step you will feel it more and more in your life.

Why have laws and commandments?

My last two posts I have tried my best to explain two things. One is that there is a moral law that each and every one of us has. We may not always follow it but it is there. In my second post I used the fall of Adam and Eve to try to explain that we chose to have this moral law. We chose to know good and evil and accept all of the consequences that come with that. My post today I want to talk about why we made this choice and why we have the law. If you are like most Christians and you don't believe in a pre-existence it is at least worth it to consider why Adam and Eve chose enter into mortality and learn the knowledge of good and evil. 

So why did we/Adam and Eve make that choice to know good and evil (or impose the moral law upon ourselves)? It is literally impossible for us to always choose the right. We are all going to fall short of what we know is right. The laws are going to restrict our freedoms. It seems to me that I would like to live forever in a garden of eden where I am oblivious and everything is given to me and I never disappoint God. These ideas sure sound appealing but without the law we cannot be truly happy. It is important to think about God and his example. God has laws too that he follows. Whether he created them or whether he is just following them is irrelevant. What matters is that he is perfectly following these laws. Learning what God gains from obeying these laws will help us to know what we gain from following the commandments.

God is a perfect being. He has perfect love. He is perfectly good. He is perfectly happy. He is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. He is our Creator and Father. I can go on and on. But why does he follow laws? It is evident that the laws that God follows do not restrict him. But instead they enable him. In fact the Book of Mormon states that if he did not follow his laws "God would cease to be God" Alma 42:22. Thus when we keep God's commandments we are not restricting ourselves but we are becoming better. We are becoming more Christlike and God will give us strength beyond what we have. That is why we chose this mortality. We wanted to be tested. We wanted to learn and grow and become more like our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ.

It is important for me to mention too wrong ideas that are polar opposites and yet seem to confuse a lot of people. The first is a belief that a lot of very good Christians believe. They believe that there are laws and commandments but that they are not necessary. They believe that all we have to do is accept Christ as our Savior and we will be saved. What they are missing is the point of Jesus's sacrifice. Why did Jesus die for us? It was not to merely save us so we could go right back to where we started in God's presence. It was so that we could learn and grow and be more like him. It was so we could repent when we mess up and receive the strength we need to truly change our natures. That can only be done by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel. Those who argue that all we need to do is to accept Jesus as our Savior are twisting Paul's words and using them over Jesus Christ's own words. Indeed Christ consistently talked about obedience. That includes how important it was for him to be obedient and how important it is for us to be obedient. 

The second idea is an idea that we need to work super hard to keep the law and whatever we can't accomplish Christ will make up the rest. But this too misses the purpose of the Atonement. 2 Nephi 2:5 says "And by the law no flesh is justified; or, by the law men are cut off." We don't receive praise from police officers for stopping at red lights. Keeping the law doesn't mean we get a reward. In fact all of us have broken the law several times a day for our whole lives. We are toast. But why do we even bother then? The answer is the same as before. Because of Christ's Atonement we can be forgiven and change our natures. The law is not justifying us. It is only Christ's grace and Atonement. But the only way we can truly be using Christ's Atonement the way he intended it to be used is if we keep his commandments. That is what he asked of us. As we keep his commandments we are allowing the Atonement to change our hearts and natures and we become more like God who always keeps his commandments. 

The Fall of Adam and Eve

The fall of Adam and Eve is an extremely important and fundamental topic to Christianity. Literally everyone that has walked the earth has had to live with the effects of the fall. Yet, it is often misunderstood and I have personally had many questions about it. Today I want to discuss what significance the events of the fall have. These events are important because it is literally impossible to fully understand the Atonement without understanding the fall. And without fully understanding the Atonement... Well we are going to be missing an extremely large amount of blessings.

An important scripture that provides a lot of insight to the fall is Genesis 3:22 "And he Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil:" Last week I talked a lot about how every one on earth has a sense of good and evil. Adam and Eve partaking of the fruit is the reason why.

But this scripture is insightful in other ways. It says that us knowing good and evil makes us like God. This makes since. We are children of God, shouldn't we be like him automatically? However the story of Adam and Eve suggests differently. Knowing good and evil and subsequently being like God was a choice. Adam and Eve made that choice by partaking of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. This means that the fall of Adam and Eve was not a terrible mistake that needs to be regretted. Instead it was an opportunity that God gave us to be like him. But we don't have to think that this choice was forced upon us by Adam and Eve. We each in turn made this choice. In the premortal life 1/3 of the hosts of heaven did not make this choice and missed this opportunity.

Adam and Eve choosing to partake of the fruit and us choosing to come here to earth was a significant choice. However there are still thousands of choices that we make each day. Each of these choices varies in significance but each can do the same thing that happened with that initial choice.  God saying "Behold the man is become as one of us" is not limited to one point in time. With each choice we make we are choosing to be more like God or we are falling away from that. With our choices we are not earning our way to heaven and neither are we expecting it to be given to us. We are changing so that we can be ready for heaven. Brad Wilcox said "Scriptures make it clear that no unclean thing can dwell with God, but no unchanged thing will even want to." I am thankful for the fall. It has given me a chance to learn and grow and become more like God. I hope that all of us can recognize that event for the wonderful opportunity that it gave us and that we can take advantage of it while we are here in this mortal life.

Do Morals Exist?

Thank you for checking out my new blog. My purpose for this blog is to flood the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The internet is a tool that God gave us. It is a huge part of the Lord hastening his work in these latter days. Hopefully my messages here can inspire those who read it to follow our Savior Jesus Christ. Whether you believe in Jesus Christ already or not. Whether you are a Mormon or not. Hopefully you will enjoy and act on them.

This week I read a scripture, "All men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil." 2 Nephi 2:5. But is this really true? It seems like a lot of people in the world seem to have a different senses of good and evil. I mean think about all the terrorism in the world. Or the huge debates about abortion and gay rights that are sweeping our country. Are we all really instructed sufficiently in good and evil. Why is the argument of good versus evil so prevalent today?

I want to tell you that we have been instructed sufficiently. God is not a liar and this scripture is true. A big argument an atheist will claim is that if God is so good why does he let so many bad things happen in the world. Automatically this argument contradicts itself. Obviously this person, because he makes this statement, feels that is there is injustice. That there is a standard for what is right and that it is being broken. He feels that the world is not as it should be. But how can this be if there is no God. Where does this atheists feelings of injustice come from? 

Many people will argue that what this person is feeling is an instinct, but that is only partly true. It is true all of us have instincts everyday. Suppose you hear someone in distress and danger call for help. Two instincts will immediately come upon you. The first is to go and to help that person. The second is to keep preserve yourself and stay out of danger. But then a third idea comes to your head. It is to follow the first instinct to help rather than the second. What is this third voice that judges between the two options we have? It is the light of Christ.

Everybody has the light of Christ. Nobody makes an argument about what is right or wrong without appealing to or mentioning this standard that is somehow built in us. "Hey why did you drink that milk? It was mine." "Tell me the truth. It will be better for you."  This escalates to all debates, including the biggest ones in our society now. Even the very argument of whether or not God exists makes reference to this moral code that we all have.

"Wherefore I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil;" Moroni 7:18. We all have the light of Christ in us. What we can tell from observing the world and from scriptures is that we do not always obey. The more we do listen though the easier it becomes and the happier we become. I like Moroni invite everyone to listen to that light so that we can "be a child of Christ." Moroni 7:18