I just wanted to do a general post about how I am feeling at the moment. I'm sure you don't need anyone to tell you this, but life is really hard. But don't worry. Calm down. It's not something to freak out about. It's hard for everyone. This is an acknowledgement I have learned is okay to make. Yes. Life is hard. But that doesn't mean it's bad. After all, aren't the challenging games the most exciting ones to play? I think so. And we have help.
Today, I was given a very very very large challenge. To be honest, I have yet to fully face it. But one thing I know is that God will help me. This morning I was studying in Mosiah 14. Abinadai is teaching the Priests of Noah about the atonement of Jesus Christ and it is one of the most touching and personal chapters in my opinion. Here are some of the things I learned.
First: There are people out there that I am sure you can relate to. They feel like God has abandoned them. You've felt that way before I am sure. It's a common tool that the adversary will use. But you can be the tool of helping others know God loves them. You can be a tool for God! I have been doing all I can to get in the habit of helping and complimenting others so that way others can feel loved and often time, I catch them on hard days and bless them! I find especially when I have a hard day, there are others with a hard day too
I really know God does love everyone, all the time. He will help us with our challenges. He really, really will. I have seen him help me before, and I will again today.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Faith means Action
Today while at Sunday School I was thinking a lot about that actions that have led me here. I remember that I felt the plan I had was the one that needed to happen. I would go to SLCC and work on getting married, an education, a job, a future really. And I remember as soon as I got to Utah, it was like I hit a wall. Everything was going wrong and for some time I remember the question, that dark question came to mind: Should I just go home to Nauvoo. It was a hard thought to face. And I remember that immediately I had to choose. Many times I felt the voice of the spirit asking me: "Where is your faith?" and so I made the choice. I will stay here and make something. I will have faith and so it shall be.
Since that decision I have had more walls and I have had great blessings. I will never fall, I will overcome. I will feel God's love and trust him.
I feel great opposition to getting married which means that for sure that is what I need to do. I will have faith. I can do this and I will be full of charity. It's my choice is it not? I am choosing right now. Charity. Love. Christ. Faith.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
The Decay of Virtue
Frankly, I am horribly horribly offended by the things I have witnessed. How many times I have sat down and watched a TV Show or listened to a song, or read a book and have been interrupted by disturbing images of darkness, either in the form of terrible sexual misconduct or the form of inappropriate violence. It it sickening. Several times while I was on my mission, this thought came across me as I watched investigators that were ravished with pornography, or suffering from the guilt of sexual misconduct and really, it is very sad. We live in a day and age where the common hero of the show is someone who is praised for their obscene love of blood and killing, who say horribly vulgar things and who participate in unchaste and provocative things on a daily basis.
Why?
Because that is what the mind of the natural man wants.
There is nothing more tragic than to see a perfectly beautiful story, told with talent and with poise be terribly mangled and hacked at by the ax of transgression and immorality. I can give you a very long list, but lets just mention a few.
Revolution: Fantastic story, realistic and genius, spoiled by loads and loads of mangled, hacked up, or shot bodies with literally over twenty people dropping dead in the first episode only to have more including slit throats, shooting and torture by knives in the second episode.
Lost: A wonderfully told story spoiled by buckets of blood splashed on things, drugs used often and more mangled bodies up in trees and that's just the beginning. Deaths include buried alive as well.
Supernatural: A very intriguing and fun scary show, unfortunately butchered with gore and violence and disturbing satanic images.
And recently the most tragic: Sherlock: My favorite show. I finally found a show that I can love. Intense. A little dark, but totally clean. Right? WRONG. Season two begins with a new reveal of tons and tons of swearing and completely nude women with more references to gay things than the first season.
Do I have a delicate mind. Likely. Does that change something wrong to right? No. I am saddened beyond belief and that is exactly why I decided long ago that I was going to be the one to make all of the stories that are good from Zombie apocalypse stories to detective stories and do it right! Do it morally right. And so that is exactly what I am going to do and I pray to my Father in Heaven that he will forgive me for the shows I have tried to justify even more a second and to give me the strength to write the stories that people need to hear. Things that are safe.
Here is a quote of what I feel worded by Jeffery R. Holland: "Most days we all find ourselves assaulted by immoral messages of some kind flooding in on us from every angle. The darker sides of the movie, television, and music industry step further and further into offensive language and sexual misconduct."
What we need is morality. What we need is the old moral play. We need pure love. Real love. The love between God and Man and between Man and Woman that is real. That is pure. That is clean. That is chaste and selfless. Not this false, putrid lust that throws up all over my favorite shows. I won't stand for it for another second. I won't do it. I believe in Christ. I believe he has power to overcome all these things and that he will help me. He will help anyone who comes unto him and believes.
And I commit that I will never flinch in the face of sacrifice. Not even for a second. As for TV shows, I guess I can never find one that is for me. So, with Gods power and with the atonement to help, I will make one.
Why?
Because that is what the mind of the natural man wants.
There is nothing more tragic than to see a perfectly beautiful story, told with talent and with poise be terribly mangled and hacked at by the ax of transgression and immorality. I can give you a very long list, but lets just mention a few.
Revolution: Fantastic story, realistic and genius, spoiled by loads and loads of mangled, hacked up, or shot bodies with literally over twenty people dropping dead in the first episode only to have more including slit throats, shooting and torture by knives in the second episode.
Lost: A wonderfully told story spoiled by buckets of blood splashed on things, drugs used often and more mangled bodies up in trees and that's just the beginning. Deaths include buried alive as well.
Supernatural: A very intriguing and fun scary show, unfortunately butchered with gore and violence and disturbing satanic images.
And recently the most tragic: Sherlock: My favorite show. I finally found a show that I can love. Intense. A little dark, but totally clean. Right? WRONG. Season two begins with a new reveal of tons and tons of swearing and completely nude women with more references to gay things than the first season.
Do I have a delicate mind. Likely. Does that change something wrong to right? No. I am saddened beyond belief and that is exactly why I decided long ago that I was going to be the one to make all of the stories that are good from Zombie apocalypse stories to detective stories and do it right! Do it morally right. And so that is exactly what I am going to do and I pray to my Father in Heaven that he will forgive me for the shows I have tried to justify even more a second and to give me the strength to write the stories that people need to hear. Things that are safe.
Here is a quote of what I feel worded by Jeffery R. Holland: "Most days we all find ourselves assaulted by immoral messages of some kind flooding in on us from every angle. The darker sides of the movie, television, and music industry step further and further into offensive language and sexual misconduct."
What we need is morality. What we need is the old moral play. We need pure love. Real love. The love between God and Man and between Man and Woman that is real. That is pure. That is clean. That is chaste and selfless. Not this false, putrid lust that throws up all over my favorite shows. I won't stand for it for another second. I won't do it. I believe in Christ. I believe he has power to overcome all these things and that he will help me. He will help anyone who comes unto him and believes.
And I commit that I will never flinch in the face of sacrifice. Not even for a second. As for TV shows, I guess I can never find one that is for me. So, with Gods power and with the atonement to help, I will make one.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Individualized
I am not totally sure if anyone read this blog anymore. I highly doubt that they do, so this as become almost a personal journal site for me. Hahah! I don't mind. Anyway, today I went out for a walk. It was one of my goals to spend more time meditating and reading scriptures and such in order to understand some spiritual truths and to come closer to Jesus Christ. As I walked out in the warm sun, (thank goodness its warm in Utah.) I came across very randomly an idea.
I was taking in the general beauty of the neighborhood and thinking to myself of the fondness that I had for this place. And that was when a thought came to me that went something like this: God the Father knew that one day there would be a little boy who would be born in Price, and grow up in Heber, become very fond on of the place and so he wanted to make everything surrounding him beautiful because he likes to see this little boy happy. And that's me! And I thought, that can't be right. Why would God make Heber just for me? I don't own it. And that is when the other thought came, he did it for everyone. But he did it for me.
Here's a good analogy to this idea. A parent loves their child. So they surround that child with good things. Nice clothes, colorful room, fun toys and shows to watch and good food to eat. Good surroundings, or in other words, a good home to live in. Now, when a second child is born to that same parent they do the same thing for that child, right? of course! But they do it for both of them. But they do it for their child. Not just children. He does it for both children. So, for the same reason, PART of the reason God made Heber was for me. Just like how part of him making Heber was for my siblings and for my friends, each one of them that lived there.
How grateful I am that we have an Individualized God. Not a collective God. Does it not make sense, that a perfect, omniscient God would want EACH child to have something good around them? Would it not make sense that wherever YOU are, he made, partially for you.
And so that leads to the final part. How often do we take the nature around us lightly. We are too busy with our phones or our ipads or our computers, or our thoughts (I'm guilty, I admit it.) but today, I noticed. I noticed that the things I was looking at, the trees, the clouds, the grass, the warmth of the sun, it was placed there, partially because God loves me. And the other parts of why he did it is because he loves everyone else experiencing it. He loves the human race. I know and testify that he is an individualized God. Meaning that we, each of us, are like only children to him. I really believe that. That doesn't mean we ARE only children. It means he gives the same undivided attention to us. And because he is God he has the capacity to do that for each of us.
I love him.
Those are my thoughts today. Now go outside and drink it in! :D
I was taking in the general beauty of the neighborhood and thinking to myself of the fondness that I had for this place. And that was when a thought came to me that went something like this: God the Father knew that one day there would be a little boy who would be born in Price, and grow up in Heber, become very fond on of the place and so he wanted to make everything surrounding him beautiful because he likes to see this little boy happy. And that's me! And I thought, that can't be right. Why would God make Heber just for me? I don't own it. And that is when the other thought came, he did it for everyone. But he did it for me.
Here's a good analogy to this idea. A parent loves their child. So they surround that child with good things. Nice clothes, colorful room, fun toys and shows to watch and good food to eat. Good surroundings, or in other words, a good home to live in. Now, when a second child is born to that same parent they do the same thing for that child, right? of course! But they do it for both of them. But they do it for their child. Not just children. He does it for both children. So, for the same reason, PART of the reason God made Heber was for me. Just like how part of him making Heber was for my siblings and for my friends, each one of them that lived there.
How grateful I am that we have an Individualized God. Not a collective God. Does it not make sense, that a perfect, omniscient God would want EACH child to have something good around them? Would it not make sense that wherever YOU are, he made, partially for you.
And so that leads to the final part. How often do we take the nature around us lightly. We are too busy with our phones or our ipads or our computers, or our thoughts (I'm guilty, I admit it.) but today, I noticed. I noticed that the things I was looking at, the trees, the clouds, the grass, the warmth of the sun, it was placed there, partially because God loves me. And the other parts of why he did it is because he loves everyone else experiencing it. He loves the human race. I know and testify that he is an individualized God. Meaning that we, each of us, are like only children to him. I really believe that. That doesn't mean we ARE only children. It means he gives the same undivided attention to us. And because he is God he has the capacity to do that for each of us.
I love him.
Those are my thoughts today. Now go outside and drink it in! :D
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)