Just As James Promised.

When Christ was on the earth He did a lot of things we should be taking note of.  In truth, His life is the very example we should be patterning our own after in every way.  One of the things He did was set up His church, complete with the priesthood and a quorum of apostles and the whole she-bang.

When Christ left the earth, He left the church established in His apostles.  But the world wasn't quite ready for what they had to say.  One by one they were killed off form the earth, taking the priesthood authority with them.

But the Old Testament was still around, and the writings and teachings of Peter and Paul and all the other apostles where still circulating and eventually they were compiled into what we now know as the Holy Bible.  And men interpreted it the best they could, and some just flat out changed the meanings to fit how they wanted it to.

Different churches arose for various reasons but the priesthood and the truths of the gospel were lost and muddied.

Enter Joseph Smith Jr.

As a 14 year old boy, listening to the great preachings of so many churches and wondering at them as so many do, even today, he felt directionless and confused and was asking questions but not finding any real answers.  Or, perhaps, finding answers but how can every church be true, as they claim, when they're all different?

One night as he was looking in the Bible he found the verse, James 1:5, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him."

He did just that saying, "At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to 'ask of God,' concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture." (JSH 1:13)

One day he ventured out into the woods to find a solitary place.  "After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.

"But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.

 "It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" (JSH 1:15-17)

Christ created the world, under the direction of His Father.  And under the direction of our Father in Heaven, he created all things that are on the earth.  (Moses 2:1).  No unclean thing can be in the presence of God the Father.  It's through His son, Jesus Christ, that we can become clean again.  In, or through, Christ's name we pray to the Father.  And through Christ we receive direction and blessings. Christ is our intermediary.

He is our Savior.  Through Christ we can return to our Father in Heaven.  He made this possible for us.  And in return for that, He simply asks that we live His gospel. "...He has appointed the law of the gospel as the medium which must be complied with in this world or the next, as He complied with His Father's law... Hence being the mediator between God and man, He becomes by right the dictator and director on earth and in heaven for the living and for the dead, for the past, the present, and the future..." (John Taylor, Mediation and Atonement, p. 171).

Joseph Smith Jr. received a clear answer that day.  None of the churches were the true church of Christ.  But through Joseph Smith Jr., the true church was again established on this earth.  Like the apostles of old Joseph Smith learned a lot of things from Christ in a very short amount of time.  And like the apostles of old, he eventually gave his life as a sealing testimony.

In Jeffrey R. Holland's book, Broken Things To Mend, he gives a talk where he speaks of all the dispensations of time, and through all the efforts by righteous prophets to establish the gospel on the earth, it never fully took.  Prophets were killed.  Teachings were rejected.  Apostasy ensued.

Until today.

Elder Holland points out that in all of those times, those prophets who taught with their lives weren't doing it for their time.  They weren't doing it for their people at that moment.

They were doing it for us.  They were doing it for our time.  Our time, the last dispensation when the fullness of the gospel would be restored and not only stick, but spread throughout the entire world. We are the fruits of their labor.  We are who they have taught.

I hope that we can take to heart the words of President Uchtdorf, "please, first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith." (here)  If there are questions or things that don't make sense, it's simply that we need to do as Joseph Smith did.  Study.  Pray.  I have learned in my life that when I don't understand something, the problem has been with me, and I've simply needed to learn more about it.  Always, the answers, the wisdom, comes.  Just as James promised it would.

{pic source}

Come Unto Christ. My Thoughts On The Youth Theme for 2014.

"I do not know who in this vast audience today may need to hear the message of forgiveness inherent in this parable [see Matthew 20:1–15], but however late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or distance from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.

"Whether you are not yet of our faith or were once with us and have not remained, there is nothing in either case you have done that cannot be undone. There is no problem which you cannot overcome. There is no dream that in the unfolding of time and eternity cannot yet be realized. Even if you feel you are the lost and last laborer of the eleventh hour, the Lord of the vineyard still stands beckoning. “Come boldly [to] the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16), and fall at the feet of the Holy One of Israel. Come and feast “without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1) at the table of the Lord. . . .

"My beloved brothers and sisters, to those of you who have been blessed by the gospel for many years because you were fortunate enough to find it early, and to those of you who have come to the gospel by stages and phases later, and finally to those of you—member or not yet member—who may still be hanging back, to each of you, one and all, I testify of the renewing power of God’s love and the miracle of His grace. His concern is for the faith at which you finally arrive, not the hour of the day in which you got there.

"So if you have made covenants, keep them. If you haven’t made them, make them. If you have made them and broken them, repent and repair them. It is never too late so long as the Master of the vineyard says there is time. Please listen to the prompting of the Holy Spirit telling you right now, this very moment, that you should accept the atoning gift of the Lord Jesus Christ and enjoy the fellowship of His labor. Don’t delay. It’s getting late."

This year's theme for the youth of our church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) is Moroni 10:32.  "Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness."

There is so much that I hope my girls will take from this theme.  First, the words of Elder Holland above.  I feel one of the biggest pit falls of being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ is that we get it into our heads that we have expectations to live up to (which, of course we do).  And when we continually struggle to live up to those expectations, and when we continually seem to fail, we feel discouraged and feel we are simply not good enough.

That is simply not true.

To put it in another light let me bring to you, again, the words of Brad Wilcox.



And if you have a half hour to watch that video, it is completely worth it.  It changed my understanding of the gospel.  Of the Atonement.

Of my relationship with my savior, Jesus Christ.

I stuggled like the girl that Brother Wilcox speaks about in the beginning, wondering if I was meeting the level that I needed to be able to call on my savior for the rest.

But the thing is, there is no level that I have to meet.  My savior paid for it all.

All of it.

"But don’t you realize how hard it is to practice? I’m just not very good at the piano. I hit a lot of wrong notes. It takes me forever to get it right.” Now wait. Isn’t that all part of the learning process? When a young pianist hits a wrong note, we don’t say he is not worthy to keep practicing. We don’t expect him to be flawless. We just expect him to keep trying. Perfection may be his ultimate goal, but for now we can be content with progress in the right direction. Why is this perspective so easy to see in the context of learning piano but so hard to see in the context of learning heaven?

"Too many are giving up on the Church because they are tired of constantly feeling like they are falling short. They have tried in the past, but they continually feel like they are just not good enough. They don’t understand grace.

"There should never be just two options: perfection or giving up. When learning the piano, are the only options performing at Carnegie Hall or quitting? No. Growth and development take time. Learning takes time. When we understand grace, we understand that God is long-suffering, that change is a process, and that repentance is a pattern in our lives. When we understand grace, we understand that the blessings of Christ’s Atonement are continuous and His strength is perfect in our weakness (see 2 Corinthians 12:9). When we understand grace, we can, as it says in the Doctrine and Covenants, “continue in patience until [we] are perfected” (D&C 67:13).

"Grace is not a booster engine that kicks in once our fuel supply is exhausted. Rather, it is our constant energy source. It is not the light at the end of the tunnel but the light that moves us through the tunnel. Grace is not achieved somewhere down the road. It is received right here and right now."

I will never be able to make up for what my savior did for me in that garden.  And I will never be perfect in this life.  Far from it.

But what I can do is allow change in myself.  To be a better person with every lesson life gives me, whether it's thrown at me the way life has a tenancy to do, or whether I create it myself with poor or weak actions.  I can allow change for the better be the outcome, and I can keep going.

Especially in those times when I don't feel like I should.

Especially in those times.

Because the only time I've failed, is when I quit.

I can't do that.

You are not alone.

You are not doing this alone.

He loves you more than you realize.

"Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead—a lot of it... Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come. It will be alright in the end. Trust God, and believe in good things to come."