Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
grobert93 wrote:
The church isn’t for everyone. The church Jesus established is not equal to the LDS church today. It may have the priesthood and teach the gospel and perform the ordinances, but as former President Utchdorf himself said in conference, the restoration of the gospel is still happening. We cannot expect the church to satisfy our needs. We cannot expect the church to “feed us until we are full”.
Is there any man or women alive that wouldn’t benefit from repentance? Or having the Holy Ghost as a constant companion?grobert93 wrote:It’s the act of a thin and not-well designed under garment brushing against her skin that is the problem.
There seems to be a tendancy to treat every problem as if it is insurmountable. I don’t believe in that philosophy. Certainly there is a cost to faith. If your faith were free, it would be of little value to you. It is all too easy to come up with excuses. Laban can kill a hundred men; he can certainly kill us. Instead of dwelling on the negative, shouldn’t we encourage people? Literally give them the courage to act in faith?Speaking as a programmer, I have always admired the church’s world class website, although some things are hard to find. I really don’t know of another website with that amount of content. The front page is deceptively simple; you would never guess the ocean of data it represents. And not all data is available to everyone; leaders see more than the average member. Some things though just do not seem to fit in any of the five or six categories displayed on the front page. Fortunately, the search command usually can find something buried inside. My wife was struggling to find old conferences in ASL, but she eventually discovered where they were hiding. Most large websites suffer from a plague of dead links, but the LDS website rarely has a dead link. I was watching Green Acres the other day. It is about a NYC lawyer that leaves the rat race to become a farmer. The trouble is that he knows very little about farming, and doesn’t bother talking to actual farmers with successful farms before jumping in with both feet, so to speak. His wife hates living on a farm and seems to sabotage her husband at every step, occasionally doing something nice out of her love for him. Although it is true that a farmer can do everything right and still have drought, pestilence, jealous neighbors, and other problems, it is also true that he can avoid many problems by talking to successful farmers. Job was successful before his series of unfortunate events, and he was successful afterward, because he knew how to cultivate fields and raise sheep.
Satan tells us anything he can to discourage us from trusting God and make us into victims. The victim mentality is one of constantly blaming others for everything that happens. Don’t even try, it isn’t worth it, Satan whispers into their ears. It’s not your fault, you were born that way. God didn’t answer your prayers and that proves that there aren’t any gods. Nobody is perfect; don’t even try. Do you think you are special? Everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t you?
The opposite of the gospel of victims, is the gospel of repentance. Don’t focus on the wrongs that you perceive have been committed against you. Forgive others their trespasses. Rather focus on your own actions and attitudes, continually repenting of those actions and attitudes which can not lead to success. This is the leap of faith that one makes out of hope for a better day. We focus on what we can control, and not on anything else. Bad things can still happen, but overall we will be probably be better off.
Nephi is the man to emulate, not Laman and Lemuel. After his father dies, he is very sorrowful, and remembers all the bad things that happened to him throughout his life. Despite living a life of faith, Nephi is in great pain. But then he remembers all the good things that have happened and his grief is assuaded. He recommits to a life of faith. He takes all those who will follow him, and leaves his black hearted brethren behind.
It seems to me that people get stuck, finding some comfortable place between no relationship with God and being in his presence, saying here but no further. They resist the Holy Ghost. grobert93 wrote:
The garments are not comfortable for everyone. I know someone who has a medical condition where she sweats with physical contact due to certain materials. She tried several garment types and each one creates a reaction to her skin. She found it better to avoid garments unless she has something underneath them, etc. IMO (and having read opinions on this forum too), garments are a symbolic representation of covenants we’ve made in the temple, other than that they are just uncomfortable underwear.
Did you know that you can have them custom made? I have a couple of pair that they custom made for me.dande48 wrote:What if the “gospel” still leaves you feeling hungry?
Does the gift of God seem too meager for you?
“From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” – John 6:66-70
May I point out that technically, “fullness” just means satisfyingly full? When one is full, they are no longer hungry, but they could still eat more. HSAB wrote:
I put on the shorts and I feel disgusting, fat and ugly. I also feel like a boy.
It’s probably already been mentioned, but the original garment was more like a dress. Yet I don’t believe Adam felt like a girl. It just depends on one’s cultural programming.Ultimately, you are a Latter Day Saint, and your garments identify you as such. You should not be ashamed. The garments are a gift from God. Wear then with grattitude.
Arrakeen wrote:
My faith crisis started because no matter how bad things got on my mission, it seemed like there were never any answers to prayers, and no matter how obedient I was, there were never any promised blessings. I have a lot of difficulty now believing in promised blessings, because I never received any of the great blessings that were supposed to come from serving a mission, and instead came home very, very broken. The only way I can reconcile this is to tell myself that God never actually personally promised me those blessings–people did, and they were wrong.
We often treat everyone the same in the church, and make broad statements based on our own experiences, but people are different, and suffer from a variety of spiritual diseases. There is often overlap between mental health issues and spiritual issues, but I couldn’t tell you where one ends and the other starts.Jesus explained that one could keep the commandments and still not receive the promised blessings because of ones attitudes. A bad attitude was the same as commiting the sin. Attitudes definately influence and are influenced by mental health. So it can be a murky area. I have seen people overcome their mental health issues, with a lot of help, but it is more common for people to suffer from the same issues throughout their lives.
Daughter1 wrote:
After my realization that I wasn’t going to receive the promised witness of the BoM, I felt a bit betrayed.
My wife feels the same way. It saddens me deeply. She has only felt the spirit a handful of times, and feels like God doesn’t want her. In all fairness, she hasn’t really made much of an effort to receive these spiritual witnesses, and was once ashamed to be LDS, rebelling against her mother and her mother’s religion. Now she is active and works in the Temple, and strives to live worthy, but cries when I talk about anything religious. It breaks my heart.I wonder if some descisions, made early in life, are very hard to undo, leaving a lasting spiritual damage. Certainly that is the case with sexual abuse, even though it is the decision of the perpetrator, it leaves a wake of spiritual damage in the many victims. Our society is poisoned by the actions of a few men. Women who as children have been sexually abused by men rarely experience the spiritual witness of the Holy Ghost.
Arrakeen wrote:
Personally, one of my biggest concerns about the Book of Mormon is how it deals with parts of the Old Testament that I do not consider to be history, like the Tower of Babel or the Garden of Eden. It seems to me to insist on a literal acceptance of the Old Testament, which I do not like.
If is really odd that someone who lived in Jerusalem in 600 BC would believe in these things? It seems to me that these stories are much older. It would be odd if they didn’t.
One of the things that I find fascinating is the glowing stones in Ether. There is an ancient Jewish tradition that Noah’s ark also was lit with glowing stones. What are the odds? Is that where the Brother of Jared got the idea? Well visiting the Smithsonian, I saw a whole exhibit of glowing stones. I don’t believe these stones glowed without first being subjected to sunlight, but at the time they were being subjected to blacklight to make them glow. I know for myself that it doesn’t take much light to see, albeit in black and white.
One thing that seems to be well established, is that ancient Americans did believe in a flood, and in the tower of Babal. Spanish chroniclers, who made it their mission to learn about local customs and history, were surprised to discover these stories being passed down, and they are represented in the few codexes that have been discovered. The Catholics made a great effort to destroy all the books in the New World because of great similarities between the two religions. They also outlawed the growing of Amaranth, because it was used in some sort of religious ceremony like the Catholic Eucharist. The descendants of the Maya made it into little cakes and used it to remember some ancient event. As far as I have been able to determine, there are old world varieties of Amaranth as well, and it may even have been brought over from the Old World.
There is also an oral tradition, written down by the descendants of the Maya using Spanish letters to represent Uto-Aztecan sounds – that some of their ancestors were Israelites that originally came across the sea. The book was kept by the Catholic church, but not translated into Spanish until 1832. Obviously, Joseph Smith must have got hold of an early copy and translated it!
Uto-Aztecan is still spoken today by about a million Mexicans.
Wonderful topic! From what I understand, there are laws that govern the distribution of blessings. In most cases we don’t know what these laws are, but in some cases we do. I look at blessings as miracles. A miracle is when God interferes in human history. A blessing is a positive miracle (hopefully). Moroni gives us the laws that govern answers to prayers. We must 1) pray to God 2) with a pure heart and 3) real intent in 4) the name of his son after 5) we receive these things. I have had some experience helping people overcome sexual abuse, and there are laws that govern that as well. I didn’t know how to do it at first, so I relied heavily on the Holy Ghost to teach me.
There seems to be laws regarding the winning of contests. Learning to have gratitude is a big part of it. You’d be surprised how many contests I have won.
There are laws governing the reception of revelation. I won’t go over them here, but suffice it to say the Joseph Smith’s first vision is a great example.
Attitudes seem to be connected to every blessing; master the attitude and receive the blessing.
dande48 wrote:Quote:“I regret to report that Stan Johnson does not know Egyptian. Proof of this can be seen in the first two entries in his symbol reference (see p. 70); here the two “Egyptian” signs Johnson examined turn out to be parentheses from the dictionary Johnson was using. “
Oops!😆 I am new, and I really don’t know the difference between vigorous discussion and argumentation. It seems to me that all discussions have people providing different points of view, and giving the reasons for such. What if we were discussing football? Or any other topic? I’m sorry if that sounds argumentative, but I really don’t know the difference. I have no ill will for anyone. I just love the truth and the search for truth.
