the ultimate guide

This week in New Testament, we took one scripture out of the Bible and broke it down into the different greek words and their original meanings. I think it is interesting to see and just goes to show not only how many different interpretations there are, but also how easy it is to apply the Bible to any situation in life. And if we really dig deep to study it out, we can learn so much! The scripture that I would like to break down is Ephesians 2: 5 which states that “even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace we are saved;)” There is so many good things in this simple verse! Let’s start at the beginning, a very good place to start. So I love the analogy between death and sins and life and Christ in the beginning. Quickened means to make alive or revive. So the beautiful imagery is that in our sins we are dead but through Christ we are made alive again. I also like the connotation of quickened meaning to revive as well because even when we have become completely dead through out sins, when there seems like there is no hope at all for us, Christ is the one that can bring us back again. Next I want to talk about the phrase “by grace we are saved.” As Latter-Day Saints, we believe that we are saved through the grace of Christ after all that we can do. After we have completed as many righteous works in this life as possible, then Christ comes in to make up the difference. The original greek work for grace has a root in the word Charisma which means the ability to guide or direct. The greek translation for the word saved means to deliver, protect, heal, or make whole. So if we put those two together, the verse is saying that through Christ’s ability to guide us, we are able to be healed. Christ is going to be there to guide us through our life and our trials, but he isn’t going to complete them for us. And if at anytime, we step away from our guide and need to be revived, He is always going to be there with a defibrillator in hand to keep up going. Christ is always going to be there to keep us alive or to revive us whatever it may be. He will guide us in every aspect of our lives if we let Him, but we are the ones who have to take the steps in the right direction. He can’t take them for us, He can only show us what is right.  

anchor in Christ

Deciding what to write about this week was pretty difficult. Normally there are many different comments throughout the week in class that particularly stand out that I can take what the Professor and run with it, finding other quotes from people or adding my own personal insights. There were many like that this week but for some reason I don’t really feel like running… I think I feel more like diving. Hopefully taking some scripture that we didn't really talk about and deciding what I think it means and could be applied to. We’ll have to see how this goes. In Acts 27 we learn about a story in which Paul is traveling on a ship as a prisoner to be brought to Caesar for trial. As the ship comes upon land Acts 27:28 states that the men in the ship “sounded, and found it twenty fathoms: and when they had gone a little further, they sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms.” Sounding means that the sailors would drop a rope into the water to see how deep it was so that their ship wouldn’t either hit the sand or get stuck. The men in the ship sounded to the point that they were just barely far enough from the shore that the bottom of their boat wouldn't become stuck. But when they dropped their anchor, a storm from behind pushed the boat against the land and it was easily and quickly destroyed. This story is extremely applicable to us in that we can be the giant ship, the anchor is can be our friends, Christ, and the standard Mormon answers with the shore and sand in the ocean can be seen as giving into temptation. We can check to see how close we are to the shore or temptation but if we get as close as the sailors in the Bible did we would not be prepared for the trials or storms in our life that tend to come our way. If anything out of the blue was to happen, we would crash up the land and be destroyed. We can’t get right up against our temptations and trials, technically staying away while still being as close as possible. The sailors also didn't have firm enough planted anchors so when the storm, trial or temptation came, their ship was easily ripped away from where they were. In this case, the storm was strong enough that four anchors was not enough to hold the ship down from falling into temptation. Four may seem like a lot but why only four when we can use so much more so that there is no fear that we will be destroyed by temptation. But we have to rely on Christ in order to be our anchor and to save us from temptation. 

life is hard

Life is hard. Many who know me know that I frequently quote the phrase, “life sucks and then you die.” As uplifting as that isn’t, there is some truth behind. Life is hard. Life is really hard. Life is super ultra-mega hard. But it doesn’t mean that it has to be super ultra-mega depressing or infinite. God gave us life so that we could learn to become better people and as we read in the scriptures we find that the best way for us to do that is to experience trials and tribulations. In Romans 5:3-5 Paul states that “…we glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope” I don’t know about ya’ll but when I’m going through tribulations, I’m hardly every glorifying in the opportunity that I have to endure something difficult in order to learn and grow. But maybe I should. We all go through rough times so maybe we all should. Because of tribulations, we have the opportunity to learn patience. And when we are patient through our trials, we gain experience from what we have just endured. We can learn and grow from the times that are exceptionally hard in our lives. And because we have gained experience, we can only have hope and confidence for the future and things to come. And even though life is hard, we will have hope that when we have more hard times, we will be patient through them so in the end, all we ever gain is more hope and happiness. I use the word “can” in explaining all of the outcomes of tribulation because there is also another option when enduring tribulations. When enduring a trial, instead of learning patience we can turn away from God and become impatient, only waiting for the miserable experience to end so that we can learn to have fun again and move on just the same as before. Only God doesn’t want us to stay stagnant, He wants us to become more than we are. But if we are only looking towards the finish instead of being patient in the journey, we can become very ignorant by refusing to learn anything or gain any experience from what we have endured. And because of this all we can see in the future is fear and despair. We have fear that something hard and impossible is going to come at us again but we will think there is no way out. God gave us a “way out”. The way out is the Savior, Jesus Christ. He endured all and He is the one we need to go to in order to receive patience for our trials and to come out a better person. Life is hard. Life is ridiculously hard. And yet, we can always learn and grow from the hard experiences that are placed in our lives. But it is our choice as to how we are going to handle the experiences that are given to us and if we are going to turn to Christ for help. To quote a good friend: “So do all who live to see such [hard] times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”-Gandalf the Grey 

hakuna matata

Just like how we have a loving father on this earth, we also have a Father in Heaven who loves us very dearly. He is fully aware of our thoughts, feelings, and desires, which is why He gave us scriptures to lead us and direct us in our lives. Any questions, thoughts, or concerns can be answered in the scriptures that He has given us from His mouth through his prophets, latter-day and ancient. I know that the prophets in the Bible are divinely called of God to receive His word and record it for us in this time now. A saying that would really sum up this concept would be that “we talk to God through prayer, and He talks to us through the scriptures.” In my religion class, my Professor told us to come to class with a question or concern that had been troubling us; something that when we allow our mind to wonder, it always seems to end up on that idea. And from there, with that concern in mind, we were to focus into the lesson and the scriptures for help us with our struggles. There was a room full of students and plenty of desires for answers from the Lord but I know that He answered each one of them through the scriptures, because he gave me comfort for mine. In 1 Corinthians 6:11 it reads “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” with the “some of you” referring to those who had sinned. Paul is explaining to the people of Corinth that they need to leave all of their sins behind them and move on. If they have repented, the Lord has forgiven them and they are clean of those sins and they need to continue forward with faith and not dwell on those past sins. I read somewhere that regret is hardest emotion to death with, it eats up your life with the questions of “what if,"“why didn’t I," “I should have,” etc. Heavenly Father loves us and he does not want us to ever feel that regret of things past done. I have been struggling with the emotion of regret and questioning how to move on when sometimes it's hard to forgive and repent. Forgiveness and repentance can be very hard at times, but we need to leave things OF the past IN the past. We can’t dwell on our mistakes and feel regret for everything. It would take over our lives and destroy it. The Lord wants us to trust in Him and use Christ’s saving Atonement to no longer remember the pains of our past sins. God knows each and everyone of us, he speaks to us through the scriptures and he loves us. He loves us enough to “remember our sins no more.” We just have to remember to move on past our sins as well, which can sometimes be harder. When we don’t know what to do, when life gets harder than we can imagine or bear, we need to not only turn to God in prayer but to the scriptures as well. He has already given us guidance and comfort for our needs in there. We just have to trust our loving Heavenly Father and have faith in Him and He will always open our minds and hearts to the things that we need. 

will you let him in?

We believe that the Atonement was a necessary sacrifice performed by Jesus Christ. During the Atonement, Christ took upon himself all of our sins so that we could return to our loving Heavenly Father one day, because none of us are perfect. In the New Testament, Acts 13:39 it reads “And by him all that believe are justified from all things...” This scripture can more easily pertain to us if we compare the Atonement that Christ suffered to any type of trial. The defendant’s attorney walks up to the jury, audience, witnesses, plaintiff, and judge and claims that the crime in which the defendant is being found guilty of has already been justified, meaning that the law has already been satisfied. The penalty for the crime has already been paid, by the attorney, so the defendant no longer has to pay the price for their own crime or crimes. In this analogy, we are the defendant. We are the ones being accused of sinning while Satan is the Plaintiff who is bringing all of us to trail against all of the sins we have committed. Christ plays the role of not only our attorney and mediator, but the witnesses, the judge, the jury, etc. Through the Atonement Christ paid for all of our sins and although we are guilty of committing many sins, he has already served our sentence for us so we don’t have to go through that pain. We just have to be willing to come unto Christ and believe. Let him be our lawyer because we can’t defend ourselves  against the law on our own. We need Christ and we need his Atonement. I believe in the Atonement of Christ, it is real and he personally paid for the price of my sins as well as everyone's inhabiting the earth. He is begging all of us to let him defend us against the forces of evil. 

my decision to serve a full-time mission

I have been called to serve in the California Anaheim mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I am to report to the Missionary Training Center on April 10th, exactly 2 weeks before the end of the Winter Semester at BYU. On Monday my Bishop approached me about my decision to try and finish the semester early and informed me that I could extend my call six weeks to finish out the semester and spend some time with my family before leaving. It surprised me how much I felt that he was implying that maybe that was something I should do. I called my dad and told him how conflicted I was because I still didn’t know if most of my professors would even let me take the finals early, one had already said no, and I was trying to decide if it was worth it to move my report date back although I felt really confident in finishing out a semester before my mission. I was pretty discouraged. My dad simply told me that moving my date back was something to seriously consider and look into. Honestly, I couldn’t understand why I would feel so good about putting my availability dade to lave on my mission earlier when submitting my papers to later feel so confused and stressed-out about it now. It didn’t even hit me until after I had received my call that maybe my professors wouldn’t let me take my finals early. Why would the leaders of the church feel inspired to put my mission date on April 10th while at the same time so many people were informing me about pushing my date back. I knew that God had a plan and that everything was going to somehow work out but it currently wasn’t when I had felt so good about my decision. Then in my New Testament class we read Acts 1:7 which explains that it is not for us to know the timing of things, God knows the reason and timing behind all things. My professor explained that this scripture was an answer from the Lord about questions of timing.  I had literally been sitting though that whole lecture worrying about my other professors and what I was going to do. That scripture brought me so much peace knowing that right now, I don’t understand why I am supposed to go to California on April 10th, but I was called to serve a mission on April 10th so I am going to work as hard as I possibly can to get to the MTC on that date. Maybe it won’t make much of a difference if I postpone my mission for six weeks, I would have more time to prepare and could spend more time with the people I love before I left but the time that I am called to go is in April. I am excited to serve and although I won’t be able to go home again before my mission, I feel SO MUCH peace about that date to report. I know that is when I am supposed to go. I don’t have to question the timing of my mission call, the Lord and the Lord’s servants know that my date to report is April 10th. I don’t know why, but the Lord does and that is good enough for me.