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.