The Spirit of Christ

So, this week I reflected on geology.  I was recently able to go and visit Seven Sisters, which in basic terms is a big cliff made out of chalk that is on the southern side on England, right on the coast.  It has some pretty breathtaking views and was a good day.  I got chalk all over my shoes, trousers, and hands.  It took a while to clean myself all up afterwards.
     Something that I saw that I thought was really cool was that when the tide is down you can walk along the coast at the bottom of the cliffs, all the rocks there are made of chalk and have a green slippery moss on them that isn't the most attractive but this area creates a nice place for a bunch of small sea creatures to live. I was hopping from rock to rock when I saw one of the rocks had split down the middle.  This is a picture of it:

     As you can see the outside is pretty gross while the inside is bright and shinning white. This rock is equally as white on the inside as the rocks that are still up on the top of the cliff side. A popular scripture comes to mind from the Book of Mormon which says:
     "For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.
     But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him."
     I was honestly a little bit surprised to see how white and clean looking the rock was on the inside despite the circumstances it was in.  That even though it was in conditions that would easily lead to becoming covered in grime and moss, it was still shockingly white.
     There is a way that we can keep ourselves pure despite bad circumstances.  This is to follow "the spirit of Christ"  and to follow what we know to be right.  When we do this, we can find stability and blessings.  The quality of our lives will improve here and now.  These blessings are immediate as well as long lasting.  They increase as time goes on and help confirm to us that what we are doing is right.

Repentance

     Some time ago, I remember buying a little bit of furniture for a new flat I was moving into, and a friend gave us a sofa as a gift because she knew we didn't have enough furniture.  Upon delivering all the furniture we ran into an interesting situation w here everything went in except the sofa.  The problem being that the front door was unusually narrow.  The other problem was that the flat was not on the ground floor, it was 1 floor up.  After a few awkward situations with storing it, a few weeks later we finally organized for a friend to come with a ladder.  He pushed the couch up the ladder with his head (no small feat) and we stood at the top and pulled it in through the window.

     Then, a few weeks later, there were university students we knew fairly well that offered us another couch.  We foolishly accepted, forgetting all the problems we had the last time we tried to get a couch into our flat.  But notwithstanding this we took a look at it and it was quite a bit smaller than the last couch and we assumed it would fit this time.  But after dragging it about a mile and a half over to our flat and trying about 20 times to fit it through the doorway, it felt a lot like fitting a square peg into a circular hole.  We sat for a few minutes out on the sidewalk with the couch in silence.  Then I slowly sat down on the couch and placed my back carefully against one armrest and my feet on the other laying down.  Then I kicked as hard as I could and snapped the arm right off.  After that the couch fit right through the doorway and we later had to fix the couch ourselves.  

     All this drama of getting these 2 couches into our flat makes me think sometimes.  I ponder somewhat regularly on repentance.  To repent to me means to change in a way that puts my will more in line with God's will.  Repentance is more than saying sorry, it is showing that you are sorry, by doing all you can to not be a repeat offender any longer! I am far from perfect, but I try my best to repent when I do fall short of what God asks me to do.  Often I make a resolution, never again will I do that again!  NEVER AGAIN will I accept a couch as a gift!  Only to realize in the moment just a small while later that I am making the same mistakes that I thought I had left in the dust.  Often they are even things that I had thought I overcome, only to see myself doing the same thing.
    When these things happen I find it is important to not get discouraged.  I was very frustrated when the second couch didn't fit through the doorway.  I started to have flashbacks and fears emerge from the memory of the first couch.  Just know when faced in these situations, that this happens to everyone.  Everyone at some point doesn't quite measure up, and they do it more than once.  They commit to being better and they do not reach that commitment.  The key is to not give up or allow discouragement to slow your progress.  God does not demand instant perfection, but rather he pleads for constant progression.  As you repent regularly you will come to see that it is always worth it.
     Remember also, how much easier prevention is than repentance.  Don't be the person who says they will sin now and repent later.  The Book of Mormon teaches that "this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God".   No matter how good it sounds at first, sin always results in a decrease in happiness for someone. It would have been so much easier to just not accept the second couch, rather than have to break it and then do all I can to fix it.

Commitment

     When I was about 17 years old I decided I wanted to learn how to dive off a diving board.  I had no more experience than the ability to swim as well as having gone through the typical lightweight cannon ball escapades.  I told my parents, and they signed me up for some diving lessons.  I was embarrassingly caught on the first day, in a class of six with five 13-14 year old girls.   But I decided I would endure and continue on.  My desire to learn how to dive drove me forward.
     First the teacher walked us through the basics, and then we did some diving off the ground by the side of the pool, then slowly we moved up, to diving without jumping from the lowest diving board.  Then eventually we were ready to attempt a full on jumping swan dive.  I was very excited for this, a few of my friends had self taught themselves how to do it and now I would be able to show off the next time we went swimming!
     When my turn came, a few of the girls had gone before me, and 2-3 had been successful in pulling off the maneuver.  I got up there and did the carefully measured out steps and footwork the teacher had taught me.  But as I cam to the edge of the board, I chickened out, and I buckled my knees instead of jumping off the edge.  After teetering for a moment on the edge of the board, I awkwardly slipped off the board and dropped the 3 or 4 feet down into the water.  As I came out of the water I heard the subsiding laughs of the girls in my class.  My pride wounded, I waited for my next attempt.
     When my turn came I went for it again, but this time I jumped off the board with a bit too much enthusiasm.  As I turned to go headfirst into the water, again I was not 100% committed to the maneuver, I didn't fully trust the proven technique to stay committed to the dive and tried to pull out.  The result was devastating as I slammed belly down on the water which subsequently knocked the breath right out of me. After coming to terms with the pain, I slowly got out of the pool again.  
    Commitment is a huge part of our faith.  What we get out of the gospel comes from how committed we are to it.  Now I'm not saying necessarily that if you are a little less to the gospel, that the result will be as painful as a belly flop.  But the difference to holding back on just a few things in the gospel makes a huge difference.  Also in order to commit ourselves we must know what we are committed to.  Just like me learning to dive, where I had to understand the theory and the technique of it all, we also need to learn all we can from the scriptures, revelation, and church leaders in order to know how we can be firmly committed to the church.
    For myself the blessings I have seen most readily when being as committed as I can have been that I feel the spirit so much stronger and more readily, I understand the gospel much better, and I see God's promised blessings fulfilled all the more periodically.

General Conference is Here!!!

     So taking a side step for a week I wanted to talk about general conference.
This week on Saturday and Sunday the 5 and 6 of April at 10 am and at 2 pm MDT, a living prophet will speak.  That is either true or it is not, but either way it is a bold and very interesting claim.  For myself, I know it's true because I have heard the prophet speak and I have felt the spirit bear witness to me that he is a true prophet.  My invitation is to watch conference!  It is always so uplifting and I always learn so much.   here is a link you can watch it live: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch?lang=eng or watch it after the live showing by following links to general conference through lds.org.
   When I was about 8 years old I had a problem.  I had no idea as to whether I liked carrots or not.  I decided though that because they were a vegetable I didn't want to try them.  I had eaten them about 2 years before and I thought I could remember what they tasted like.  I could think of nothing so disgusting as eating a carrot.
     After going through life this way for a long time, every time I was offered a carrot I would deny it, all based on 1 experience that was only a shady memory.  Eventually I tried a carrot again and today I know that they are actually ok tasting, especially if they are prepared well.  I learned this through personal experience.  If you have negative experiences with faith in the past I would invite you to give it another try.  While painful those experiences may be, you really have very little to risk by dipping your toe in and trying to have a small spiritual experience.  General conference is a great way to do this.  From the comfort of your own home you can learn and grow and feel the spirit.  If this happens then take a further step of faith and see if the trend continues, try attending a local sacrament meeting.  I can promise that is a step you will never regret. It wont necessarily be easy, but it will be the first small step in the right direction.  

The LDS Conference Center

Pull Over

     I had a fairly typical experience with learning to drive.  I was very easily excited and I was also very impatient in wanting to give it a try.  For my first driving experience, my wise and battle hardened mother who has already taught my older brother how to drive, drove me over to a local parking lot to practice in a low stress area.  After gaining enough confidence in the parking lot and driving around for about an hour, she also let me drive around my neighborhood for about half an hour.
     The next weekend I was given an unusual opportunity.  We needed to go to downtown Denver and I asked if I could drive.  My mother said that would be ok.  I was so elated!  The problem came when we actually got downtown though, the suburban our family owned, seated 8 people and seemed to me to be wider than the lanes I was supposed to be driving in.  After a couple of close calls, I heard the sirens of an ambulance coming up behind me.  I panicked and attempted to pull the car over to the side of the road, out of the way.  I over-steered and curb checked at a little higher speed than I meant to come in at and the car jostled violently as 2 of the wheels went up onto the sidewalk.  I looked up and saw 2 pedestrians right in the path of my travel who looked like deer caught in my headlights.  After a second they seemed to laugh it off after having seen my pathetic driving prowess.
     The point of this story is to illustrate that there is life after death.  When an ambulance is pulling up behind you, all cars eventually get out of the ambulance's way.  Likewise we all will one day die.  When we die, our spirits go to a place called the spirit world where, if we are righteous, we will be in a state of rest and of happiness.  While if we are not righteous then we will be in a state of unhappiness.  When it was my time to pull over, I found myself unprepared and feeling unready.  The result was quite the stressful situation, I was not happy that I had to pull over. In fact, the ambulance's sudden appearance scared me to half to death! It can be the same with death in this life, if we find ourselves unprepared for that day then we will find ourselves in a state of unhappiness.   While if we prepare ourselves, "pulling over" will not be nearly so traumatic an experience.  

How Firm a Foundation

     The London Temple is an incredible building, but it is one with a history as well.  In 1952, president David O. Mckay travelled to several European countries selecting and acquiring sites for future temples.   In this process he felt very inspired in his work.  One of the sites he chose was in England, but after reviewing the land, engineers were hesitant to go forward with it because it was very swampy.  They wanted to be sure that such an important building was built with a strong foundation.  They felt this location would not be capable offering the temple such a foundation.  
     However, after taking a closer look, they found bedrock at the correct depth to support the foundation of the temple.  Temple construction went forward and today we have this; 


     One of my favourite scriptures is in the Book of Mormon in Heleman 5:12.  It says;  "And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall." 
     This is meaningful to me because Christ is the foundation of my life.  Just like the engineers, there will always be sceptics about that, but if you honestly seek for it, you can find that foundation in your life.  Christ died for each of us so that we can return to live with our Heavenly Father one day and so that we can be with our families and those we love forever.  Temples play an important role in this, to find out more about why temples are important take a look here.

Learning to Swim

     If you knew me as a kid, I hope that one thing you would know is that I hated swimming lessons.  I slowly got into the pool but held on to the edge with a viselike grip, even though they had put a large table in the bottom of the pool for us all to stand on.  I wasn't falling for the false sense of security.  The teacher continued in her deceitful ways and told all 6 of the kids there that we needed to bob our heads completely under water and try to blow bubbles.  I saw straight through her scam and I wasn't about to fall for it.  I knew she would just keep asking more and more of us until eventually she would ask us to leave the safety of the table and attempt to swim.

     The good news was I had a plan, as she turned her head and faced away from me for a second or two, I initiated it.  I quickly splashed a bit of water on my hair and wiped my wet hands on my face to make it look like I had gone under water.  As she turned and looked at the rest of the class she congratulated us all for doing such a good job.  In my mind I was gloating, Success!  I had pulled off the biggest coup ever!!! She would never find out that I hadn't actually gone under water!  Unfortunately I was very wrong, my mother had been watching from the side of the pool and was not very impressed.  She updated my swimming teacher after the lesson and plans were set in place to make sure I didn't get away with anything in the future. As a result of this, it took me far longer to learn how to swim than it should have.

     This story is connected to the story of the garden of eden.  Adam and Eve were the first man and woman and were placed in the garden of eden which was a state of paradise where they lived with God.  Here they couldn't fully appreciate joy because they could not feel pain, they were in a state of immortality.  They were given the commandment not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  The did this and because of this they became mortal and they as well as us are now able to have this mortal experience and gain a body and grow and learn from making mistakes.  

     Agency is a powerful thing, just like adam and eve had the choice weather to eat of the fruit or not, I had the choice to be obedient to the teacher or not.  By not doing what I was supposed to, I experienced shame and sadness.  This is likewise with Adam and Eve, they also experienced shame and sadness.  But from that mistake we are able to learn and all of us were enabled with the chance to come here and have this mortal experience.  Also interestingly in this mortal life, we can try and short change the experience and get away with things in life.  But if we do that we are getting rid of our purpose in being here.  What is the point of taking swimming lessons if you aren't going to try and learn how to swim?  Life is very much like this, we all make mistakes, but what is the point of coming to earth and gaining a body, if we aren't going to try and do everything we can to learn and grow from it and fulfill the purpose of coming here by trying to become more like our father in heaven throughout our lives?