Has our agency gotten in the way of principles?

I have thought much about the question that is presented here. I think that when we chose to follow Christ in the grand council before the world was and accepted our agency as a part of our lives instead of the slavery term based return policy that Satan had in mind, we took upon ourselves a responsibility to be steadfast in the work of God. If we allow ourselves to use the excuse that we have agency that allows us to not visit the sick or the needy , or if we simply don't feel like going to a meeting or attending an important church function , such as any of the conferences or leadership meetings that have come and are coming to pass , we simply are not following the idea of the agency that was truly given to us. I believe that the agency that our Father in Heaven had in mind for us when we excepted the plan was not to do wrong but to do right ! He never intended to have us say that we don't need to learn from his appointed teachers , He never said you already know enough , or would He ever say don't feed my hungry. Unfortunately we are all guilty of this , we often get so caught up in our own lives and the responsibilities that we feel are important to us that we forget that we hold a greater responsibility to those around us, that when the Savior gave a new commandment to the 12 He said " This new commandment I give unto you ,that ye Love one another as I have loved you ,then ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." John 13:34-35 Our agency was intended for this kind of grand design that we may choose to love each other and that we may choose to do good and be true and just with all men. That we would choose to full fill our duty to God.

This topic can be one of a touchy nature , and to those that don't feel that it is relevant to our salvation , I would challenge you to look deep into your own life and question yourself as to this important fact ...do I love my fellow man? Have I put things off because I found a greater excuse that justifies what I chose to do over what I should do ?I know I have in the past ! I think we need to go to great lengths to be strong at everything that is asked of us and that we should continue to strive to be like Christ in all things especially our agency...........yes I said like Christ , He too had agency , didn't He. He could have chose not to go through with it , The Atonement. When He cried out in the Garden, He was second guessing His decision , Satan was there he said to Jesus " you don't have to do it" He could have backed out at anytime but through that same agency that our Father in Heaven gave us, He gave to Christ as part of the plan of returning to Him!

We must use our agency for the just cause and not for the excuse, else we shall have efforts in vain.

Stand

You see all the time on TV these days and hear about it on the radio , these kids that make a stand for what they believe! Whether it is about tobacco use or drugs or alcohol these kids stand for what they believe in not doing , ( I think its fantastic that we have youth that strong in this day and age) . Today I heard on a local radio station I listen to called K-love ( Christian Rock ), there were these kids who were going to meet all over the world tomorrow to stand for what they believe in, Jesus ! They are going to meet at flag poles for prayer at 7:00am and show there faith by joining this cause.

When is the last time we stood for what we believe in . I bare the name Mormon proudly on the back of my truck with its .org behind it hoping that those behind me in traffic just might be brave enough to find out that the thing there so quick to persecute is the very thing they base there faith on ! Jesus the Christ! I have thought often on this subject sometimes even voiced my opinion a time or two, the thing is its kind of a touchy subject for people so I'll say it like I do most things ....the way they are.

Peter the first disciple of Christ and the leader and Prophet of Christ's true Church after the ascension to Heaven occurred for Christ, even faced this problem. When asked on 3 different account , He , Peter denied the Christ , he could not bare the thought of persecution at the hands of the Romans. Peter walked with The Son of God , he talked with Him, he ate with Him , slept next to Him and knew with his whole soul that Jesus was the Christ and still He denied Jesus! That is powerful to me , it shows the true strength that Satan has over us, that fear and doubt is not of God!

We as Mormons , Christians , Jews , Gentile, Muslim , Ect. why do we not stand for what we believe? Is it not our job to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Doesn't our Scriptures teach us that God is no respecter of person's and that we are all His children? Didn't we all choose to be here on this planet at this time ? We sided with Christ in the Grand Council before the World was, and we fought at that time for what we believed in ! That Jesus would be our Savior and that we would fight against Satan at all cost and would try our best to return home to our Father in Heaven that waits there for us . My point is if we cant stand now ....we wont stand later ! We must be diligent in our efforts to spread the Gospel , not for gain ( to those who pay there preachers) not for body's in the seats , but so that those that don't remember Christ may have a chance at redemption.

God loves us all! He wants each of us to Love one another, unconditionally. We don't have time to bicker about religious preferences , we are at the sifting of the wheat . Those who are strong in faith will be strong when they need to be , those who are luke warm or riding the fence .... you will fail!

I put the name Mormon on my truck because I hope it will help someone .......It has if nothing else helped me , when I am about to get angry with someone because the way they are driving and I go to pass , I think about that sticker and think to myself , That's not very Christ-like behavior, I probably should be a lot more reverent than this! If we all had a sticker on us what would yours say?

Distance

Tonight I said goodbye to one of the greatest people I've every known, He and his family are moving so far away.I touched on the subject not long ago but felt inspired to write something again. My friend said to me as we broke from a hug " Keep building up the Elders Quorum and don't stop blogging" , Matt you're the best!!

A million times in my life it seems as though things are lost , friends, loved ones , tools , and toys, they aren't all the same but it feels the same when things you love come up missing, I can't express the feelings of joy that Ive had since being a member of this church . I lost a lot entering those waters of baptism ! Not the same kind of loss as my friend and his family moving away because this loss was terrific. I lost a part of my life becoming a member of the Christ's Church and for the better. Many times throughout my new found life in Christ I have wanted or have been able to relate to problems that members have been struggling with, because I've been there .There is not to much before baptism that I had not done , Ive been on both sides of the tracks and have seen and experienced things I pray someday I will forget. That kind of loss I embrace . You see I always knew deep down that God loved me , and that He had something special for me , As we have , but I wasn't willing to accept that . As I grew older in my age I began to forget that God loved me ( I lost my desire to do good ) I began to feel as though He couldn't love me and surly I wasn't worthy of anything He had to offer. I found myself listing to the Adversary and He spoke smoother than that of those trying to help me. I found that the less I thought of God the less guilty I felt about the decisions I was making , you want to talk about losing...... I just about lost everything, including my life!

Our Father in Heaven has this great plan laid out for each of us , things he would like us to aspire to complete , choices He would like us to make (correctly) ,But most importantly He wants us to lose something.........US ! It is important that we lose the mortal capacity of what we should do or be like. He wants us to " Put off the things of this world and take upon us the righteousness of Christ" , to lose can be looked at many different ways. I lost everything that I thought was good and found everything that was really important in life. We as a couple , faced some of the hardest times in our married life just in the past year and a half , But it was by His grace that we managed to survive it . We didn't do it on our own , there is no way we could have , logically and financially there is no way without His mercy could we have survived the challenges we faced .

Some loss is good , Some loss is bad, some is just plain Hard. He has given me and all of us the strength we need to endure to the end. The loss isn't anything if you look at the glass as half full. I found that in every opposition I have had to bear , God has presented a reason or solution , it just needs to be recognized. Old habits , Bad habits ........good loss ! Losing faith.........very bad loss.

Do you have the Faith to look at the glass Half full?

I love you Matt & Ann , Thanks for all you've done , all your help, all your love,and most of all your friendship!

Still Searching

After the last entry on the Atonement and a promise of more I thought about the nature of the topic I had chose to discuss.I realize that for anyone reading this you may ask yourself , why does this person write these topics as if someone had asked to know or was inquiring to a specific question. Truth be told , I write them for myself ! I love to sit and ponder on the deep waters of doctrine and as to why such things are as they are. My Savior gave me a chance by becoming the Christ as He gave up his Ghost that great day on the cross , on that hill . You see He was born a child just like you and I and had the same Vail drawn over his eyes as we have upon our eyes, our amnesia doesn't allow us to remember the grand counsel before the world was , and at the time when Jesus was a boy He didn't know any different than us . It wasn't until a visit from a heavenly messenger that He came to know who He was, He wasn't the Christ until He had went that extra mile of suffering for us that misery we can't fathom . It was in the garden of Gestamine that He plead a prayer with His Father the Great Elohim , Our Father , Please Father He begged let this cup pass from me, How He must have been afraid......Sound silly doesn't it? To think that Jesus was afraid. He was still a man was He not? Perfect in every effect, there's no doubt of that , but never the less still a man , who had feelings and was suffering even then by great drops of blood from his pours . He suffered when he was taken from Pilate to be Chastised and think of the pain..Lacerations over your hole body from cataninetails ( whips made of leather usually containing pieces of metal, and bone, sharp enough to rip flesh from bone ) . I can't even imagine. But I'm thankful......So greatly appreciative of the strife that He endured so you and I could live as free men , children of our Father in Heaven. I wonder if I can ever aspire enough to be good enough as a person to be worthy of the debt that was paid that I might breath! I think not , so I say that I must strive to be the most effective in all that I do in the name of Jehovah, I must be diligent in my scripture studies and pray with the most sincere heart , and not forget to count my blessings in doing so. There will never be enough time in this dispensation to make up for what the Son did for us. I will pray that all that think on this subject will begin to ask the question of themselves......Do I strive to do the best I can at being thankful for the breath I take ? Am I willing to lay down my life for His cause? Would I go to the end of the atmosphere to prove to Him that I love him with my whole Soul? Brothers and Sisters out there I would. He is my Savior , My God, My King, I would tell Him over and over if He were here on the earth still today, I love you Jesus and Thank you , My spirit thanks you , my soul thanks you .

Search for the Truth

I never in my life had thought about the Atonement of Christ as much as I have been here in the past few weeks. The word Atonement, for those of you that are not members of my Church, is the word that tells of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, that in its self made Him the Christ , the Savior of the Universe. For those of you wondering it is a Christian term and does come out of the Bible as well as the rest of the Canonical books of scripture , it is more comely used by people that read from a more traditional set of scriptures rather than those that are re-translated like so many are these days. In any case the point I make is that if we as humans were to dig deep within the scriptures and search diligently with an open heart we may be able for a small instance to begin to understand what it is that Jesus the Christ suffered so greatly for us for. Not throwing any stones to those out there that don't follow my faith , but simply being " Saved" isn't enough , and frankly I don't believe a person can say a repetitious prayer that was said the week before in Sunday service and be truly saved , such as the ones I was raised saying growing up in the Pentecostal church. I'm not trying to hurt feelings , its just I can say that I KNOW by the still small voice of the Holy Spirit that struggles I make in effort to please my Heavenly Father are fare greater recognized today than that of the feelings I had back when I followed a different faith. I believe that God does recognize those prayers of others as commitment, just as those who get baptized without proper Priesthood authority , I believe that He smiles upon those people and accepts there prayers and their honest intent for whats its worth , but I also know that there is an order to the plan of Salvation and to simply say I 've been saved and to do nothing more is really not aspiring to follow the commandments of God. He is a mercifully God and His Son Jesus is very mercifully to us all , He , Jesus , said there is only one name by which ye can come unto the Father that name is Jesus Christ. A friend of mine and I were talking on the subject of how it feels to truly know the amount of suffering that Christ had to endure, I related to the movie " The Passion of the Christ" , if you haven't seen it you should , you can get an enormous amount of understanding from watching that movie , we discussed how it wasn't really relevant to have to watch a movie like that to understand, and I feel that if you have the spiritual capacity to comprehend the scriptures enough then you can fully understand the suffering . I did some digging and reading from the different "Gospels"of the Bible and looked through the epistles of Paul and there is more underlying there than what one truly knows. Then the funny thing was that on this past Sunday a Friend of mine came up to me at Church and gave me a CD to listen to titled " The importance of the Atonement"I could go on and on for hours to get all the point across that I would like , but honestly I don't have the time . I will save more for another day.Next time you read your scripture , Take time to pray first and if you have the Spirit with you.......Who knows you might find something you never seen before.

Friends

Holiday weekends sometimes make for the most long drawn out weekends ever. With the visiting of friends and family it can be some what burdensome from time to time. I had the opportunity to spend one of these days off with one of my best friends and his family, it was a great time to be able to have that time for memory sake. I ,unfortunately will be loosing this friend of mine and his family , due to a move that will benefit his family greatly, I must say that I am rather depressed about the whole thing, I know that that is selfish , but I hate to see them go. I know that I won't really be loosing them , but they will not be so easy to visit nor will be as convenient to talk with them . I will pray that they may always be safe and that when they get established in the new home that awaits them that it too, will bring such marvelous joy to them , I will also pray that the Lord will continue to bless them with good kind people and friends that can be there for them when they need it . I know that the Lord has magnificent plans for this man and his family and I believe that he is following the promptings of the Holy Spirit, that guides all that live righteously , and because of that , he and his family will be blessed again and again for his obedience to the word of God. You know who you are if you read this , and I want you to know that I love you and your family ! I will never forget the kindness that was shown to me and my family by you and yours. I will always remember the love that has been shown towards my children in primary, and your patience when I was new to the Gospel. Not very often in someones lives do you encounter people with such pure hearts as the ones these friends of mine have . Like friends of mine that not long ago moved away as well , they have blessed my life with great joy that can never be repaid. I will aspire to be as they were for I know that through them I became a better person . Thank you.