To Know Thee

"And if now thou sayest there is a God, behold I will believe... when Aaron heard this... he said: Behold, assuredly as thou livest, O king, there is a God. And it came to pass that when Aaron had said these words, the king did bow down before the Lord, upon his knees... and cried mightily, saying: O God... if there is a God, and if thou art God, wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee." Alma 22:7-18. What a powerful statement. I will give away all my sins to know thee. This isn't a single jingle like "what would you do for a Klondike bar?" This is what would you do to know god? What of everything you have and do would you be willing to give up to bring god into your life? Would you give up one day out of each weekend to keep the sabbath day? Easily. Would you give 10% of all you earn to help build god's church? A bit harder and manageable. Will you dedicate two whole years of your life to spreading his gospel? Happily. Would you give up all your sins? Can you give up all your sins? I can try.

If You Desire

"First seek to obtain my word ... then, if you desire, you shall have my spirit and my word, yea, the power of God..." D&C 11:21. In church it is often stated that the first principle and ordinance of the gospel is faith. But the first step in the gospel is not, in my opinion faith but instead a desire to believe. In fact everything you do in the gospel should begin with a desire. Before you believe you must want to believe. Even given all the signs and miracles god to give, unless you wanted to believe them for what they are, they would be nothing to you. Faith is hard. It takes years for it to grow and develope. And to some it will always be hard. To some it is given to know, to some it is given to believe, and to some is given the desire. If you desire to belive, you are in a far different place then you were before. Keep going.

Take Another Step - Endure

Endurance is an interesting word. What do you picture? Maybe the word endurance calls up in your head someone puffing through a marathon, or a frazzled mother dealing with unruly kids, or maybe you imagine a stack of homework. Whatever image you have called up in your head, the task seems daunting. In fact the images the word endure calls up often will seem likd an almost insurmountable task. It makes you want to give up just thinking about it. Then what is the Lord doing asking us to endure to the end? How can a task that requires endurance be endured? What we have to do is shift our perspective. When running a marathon, you can think constantly about how little you've gone and how much effort that little distance took or you can think about the goal and how each step brings you one step closer to it. So it is with enduring in your faith. In both cases, sometimes will be harder than others. You'll see all these other competitors who are running or jogging past you and you feel more dejected and your steps slow. But you can't give up. If you stop moving forward then you've stopped moving forward. That statement seems like a "duh" but if you're no longer moving forward then you've stopped progressing and the goal seems farther and more impossible to reach. Once you've stopped it's harder to start moving again. So here's what enduring means: take another step. At times it will be incredibly difficult and painful but even if it's just one step or a couple inches at a time you need to do your best to keep moving forward. And don't forget: the lord isn't waiting at the finish line; he's helping you get there.

Faith Begins - You Can Believe

The other day I was thinking about the universe. How incrediblt vast it is and how infinite it is, and it made me think about faith. So, I'd like to relate faith to the concept of infinity. Infinity as a theory is almost universally accepted; we accept that, once we've reached the highest number we can count, there will always be one more number after. The closest we can come to illustrating this is n+1. There's no way to really prove this; somewhere beyond the highest number that you or I have ever counted, numbers could end. But you don't believe that. Instead you choose to believe in that "+1" that we have the ability to ALWAYS make one more step into the unknown. That step you make beyond where science and math can prove is very important. It is something you need to remember that you are capable of. You need to remember that where understanding ends, faith begins. And you have the capacity to believe.