So who is Our Father? Part 1: Children of God

     We had a wonderful Stake Conference this past weekend (First Weekend of September) in the Lake City Stake of Zion, and one of the Presidents in the Stake Presidency talked about Prayer, and about knowing our Heavenly Father. So I've decided to write this blog post in that line of thought. Who exactly is Our Heavenly Father?

      If you are not too familiar with Latter-Day Saint religious views, then let me elaborate one of the the very first doctrines the missionaries teach. God is our loving Heavenly Father. We all knew God the Father on a unique, personal, individual basis. We spent a lot of time with Him in the Pre-Mortal existence learning from Him, being educated by Him, and being prepared for our mortal separation. What a wonderfully beautiful thought! That we are actually children of God! Not just some weird creation that He made out of clay one day when He was bored and decided He wanted a large-scale ant farm.
                                       
     So what leads us to believe in this much more personal doctrine of Heavenly Father? Well, there are a few scriptures here and there that allude to such a relationship in the Bible. Let's start with the Old Testament, shall we? I'm glad you agree that that is a good starting point, saying as you don't have much of a choice! The first one I'd like to share is found in Jeremiah, First Chapter, Verse Five and it reads:

 5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations

So Jeremiah records the Lord's words when he was called to be a prophet of the Lord; and the Lord tells him 'Hey, I knew thee before you were ever born! I Ordained thee before you were born!' Now, how could that have happened if there was not a pre-mortal existence? I've heard some people argue that the Lord was merely telling Jeremiah that he was fore-ordained to be a prophet, but when I look at the word knew it makes me think further of an actual relationship with God before this life ever was thought of. Then there is a verse in the Book of Job, chapter thirty-eight, verse seven:

 7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

  Now, this is the Lord speaking and telling Job that Job knows nothing, He is asking Job, 'Where were you when I created the world? Where were you...' and He goes on a little bit. I look at it as the Lord asking Job, 'Did you shout for joy with the rest of my children?'

  Now to fast forward a bit and throw in some New Testament references to keep building my case up! My first one will be from the Epistle to the Romans written by Paul who once was Saul. In chapter eight he throws down on being children of God, saying:

16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:

 17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.  

  So Paul is saying to them; "Look, The Spirit itself tells us! WE ARE CHILDREN OF GOD!" So that is pretty enlightening! Then Paul later throws down on the Hebrews in his epistle to them saying:

 9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?

  Paul clearly seemed to enjoy teaching that God was indeed our Heavenly Father. Which is a rather delightful doctrine. Before I joined the Church, I could care less about God, but as my time in the Church continues to get longer and longer I can see more and more that God is truly our Heavenly Father. He loves us and He cares for us! He truly wants the best for us always because He is our father! So, next time I'm going to talk about what our Father in Heaven is like, as far as my best guesses go! Stay tuned folks!

Isn't there a movie about a princess who doesn't know she's a princess?

                           

Third Year Anniversary.. of drinking the Kool-Aid!!

      Hey Friends, Family and Enemies! This July Second marks the third year of my triumphant entry into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Now; if I were to sate my normal desires for something silly as the beginning photo to this post I would put a picture of me cannon-balling into the baptismal font before my baptism. However, that is impossible due to three reasons: First, no such photo exists. Second, they frown on taking pictures of the ordinance of baptism being done. Third, a baptismal font is nowhere near big enough to cannon-ball into without hurting yourself severally. So instead, I shall share this photo.

You best be learning something here!

     I was blessed with a dear friend, Peter Ferrin, and his family who cared enough for me to introduce me to the missionaries. Now, I shared my conversion story before, and as much as I like talking about myself, I'm not going to share it again simply for lack of time, effort, and yeah. So, instead I'm going to talk about the ordinance of Baptism and why it is so important, along with some other things like confirmation probably. I never know until I'm done typing and assume the blog is ready for publication.

   So, contrary to popular belief, being baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints does not include the following: Being launched off the Salt Lake City Temple into the Salt Lake; drinking special kool-aid; and the one I do wish was true, growing horns. Can you imagine what it'd be like if all the Mormons you knew had horns? It'd be a lot harder to pick on them cause they'd just gore you! Can I get those horns? What does being baptized in the Church include? Well, it includes making a covenant with our Heavenly Father and agreeing to do the following:  

9 Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life—

 10 Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?

  We agree to be CHRISTIANS! Who woulda thunk it? We agree to help one another, to mourn with those who have experienced a great loss, to prepare funeral potatoes whenever someone needs something to eat, and to stand in the witness of Heavenly Father's love at all times; to never deny Him, to never deny His Son!

Believe it or not; being baptized means not choking Elders....

      Having been baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I often compare the decision to signing a contract with Heavenly Father. He has informed you of all of His conditions, what He expects of you, and the blessings that He will pour out upon you in return. When you get baptized, you are signing that contract and telling Him that you now know fully what He expects of you and you agree to follow those conditions and do your best to live up to the knowledge which He has given you. When we follow through on our promise to Him, He is honor-bound to keep His side of the contract, as shown in Doctrine and Covenants section 82:

10 I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.

     How about that? How would you like a business contract with a Partner who would never back out on you? Who would never cancel the contract, or not give you what has been promised? Sounds pretty good, don't it? And it gets even better! Just about every Sunday, minus certain conference days, we get a chance to worthily partake of the Sacrament, the bread and water that represent the Body and Blood of Christ that was shed for us. When we do partake of the Sacrament, it's like getting re-baptized, minus the font part! In essence, it renews your contract with God and tells Him, "Alright, I messed up a bit this week. I did this, I mocked that person, but I'm going to try and be better this week. Will you forgive me and help me?" And of course He will help you out!!

    Now, the ordinance of Baptism is pretty dang important because it is one of the 'keys' that allows us entryway into Heaven. When Nicodemus came to Jesus in the night and asked him some pretty deep stuff, one the things that Jesus Told Nicodemus was that one had to be baptized to get into Heaven as instanced in John 3:5:
 5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

So, clearly it is pretty darn important! One needs to be baptized to enter into the Kingdom of God, and further more one needs to be baptized by the proper authority of God! When Jesus Himself was baptized, He didn't go to any Joe Smhoe baptizing people, He went to John the Baptist. Now, theres a great reason for that! John the Baptist, the son of Zacharias and Elisabeth, which made him one of the few people authorized to perform baptism because he was a descendant of Aaron on both sides of his family line. So Jesus showed us the way, go to someone with the Proper Authority of God and be baptized of him, and in Jesus's Name, along with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and ye shall have one of the keys to the Gates of Heaven.

    My decision to have been baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has been one of the best decisions I have ever made. It has allowed me to change so much, especially in this past year of having served Him as a missionary! Next post I plan to talk about the Gift of the Holy Ghost! So stay tuned and have a blessed day, ya hear?!

My ties are much less skinny now!!

                               

The family that helped me into the Church!

                                    

My Favorite Old Testament Prophet!

     This may seem like a weird topic to blog on; but oh well! I feel like doing something on my favorite prophet from the Old Testament; and that is... Elijah!! 

                            

   Who exactly is Elijah?

   Well, Elijah was a Prophet for the Northern Kingdom, during the time of King Ahab who had started to lead the Israelites into idolatrous worship of the god Baal due to his wife, Jezebel, who seemed to wear the pants in that relationship! Elijah was known as the Tishbite, and I assume grumpy old man. Interesting note: We don't really know what a Tishbite is! The Bible Dictionary states that "the meaning of this is quite uncertain, no place being known from which it could be derived." Oh mysterious! He is quite the man of mystery it seems, especially when you note that he really just came out of no where!! His first recorded 'miracle' is in 1 Kings, chapter 17, in the very first verse.

    1 And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.

    Now, I don't know if you indeed want to call that a miracle but the first thing (that we know of) that Elijah did is seal up the Heavens and cause that there be a massive famine to slowly creep through the land to punish King Ahab (and incidentally every other Israelite) for worshiping Baal instead of Jehovah. So, yup, real good first impression there Elijah! However, The Lord wanted this famine to go through the land to remind the Isrealites of whom their loyalty belongs to; The True and Living God, not some statue. So to me, that's a pretty grand entrance!

    Now lets fast forward to one of my favorite instances of Elijah! The show down against four-hundred and fifty prophets of Baal!

And in this Corner we have the Tishbite weighing in at 150 pounds!

  Queen Jezebel was killing off the Prophets of the Lord, and Elijah was one of the last ones (that we know of) and he wasn't too happy about it! Nor was the Man upstairs! So Elijah comes down and challenges all of the prophets of Baal (along with four hundred prophets of the forest) to a Prophet-Contest! He has the people come together and prepare two identical sacrifices and then he turns to the Baalites and lets them pick their altar and says to them, "Alrighty then, what we got here is an old fashioned prophet show down! You pick your altar, and you pray to your god, and then I'll pray to my God, and which ever sacrifice gets lit up in Heavenly Fire is the true God!" and the prophets of Baal were like, "Yeah, we will do that. There's four hundred and fifty of us, and only one of you, the cat is in the bag bro!" Then Elijah decides to be gentlemanly and lets the Prophets of Baal go first! So here are the Four Hundred and Fifty prophets of Baal and they are screaming and dancing around their altar, and nothing is happening. I can just hear the 'Who wants to be a millionaire' music in the back ground. Then Elijah starts to mock them; he tells them:

 27 And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.

    I love that he does that; it shows that Elijah was the Sass-Master of prophets! So, to do a recap, we have 450 prophets of Baal screaming and shouting for Baal to ignite his sacrifice and Elijah has begun to mock them! They do this till the evening, and the contest started probably around 9 am. And nothing has happened yet! So Elijah scoffs and calls the people together and he repairs the broken altar of the Lord and puts his sacrifice upon it and then he says, 'You know what, this isn't enough of a show-off, I'm going to make it even harder!' and he tells the people to: (1 Kings 18)

 33 And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood.

 34 And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time.

 35 And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.

Yup. He doused it in water! Then he says a simple prayer, boiling down to: 'God, I know You are God, and I am Your servant. Let it be known that You are God so that they will worship You again' and the Altar erupts in fire, consuming all of the bullock, all of the wood and the stones, and the dust, and the water! So now we have it, the Lord God is the God of Isreal! Then Elijah tells them of the stakes of the Prophet-Off; he has the people gather all of the Prophets of Baal and kills them all. Every one of them!!

   But wait! There's more to the awesomeness of Elijah! He has one of the BEST exits I can think of in the Bible. In the second chapter of the second book of Kings, we are told that Elijah had found him a successor, Elisha, and the two fellows were out and about in the desert just chatting it up and their eyes are drawn upwards all of a sudden. A chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire appears racing through the horizon and parts Elijah and Elisha asunder! Elijah gets into the chariot and it takes him up into Heaven, and on the way up his mantle (cloak) falls off of his shoulders and lands upon the probably very confused Elisha. Imagine that, here you are talking with your teacher and all of a sudden you get knocked on your butt by a chariot of fire and then you see your teacher going towards Heaven and his cloak falls unto your shoulders! Talk about an exit!!

You Couldn't have told me to bring sunblock?!

        And then there's one last thing that truly sets Elijah apart!

Can I have my mantle back?!

              He has a sequel!! He is one of the few prophets that we know of that actually has his own sequel! You see; shortly after the Kirtland Temple Dedication in 1836 Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdry were praying in a spot by themselves and the Heavens opened up. Elijah had appeared to them, after  Jesus Christ had already appeared and accepted the Temple as His House, and Moses and Elias had appeared as well to give Joseph Smith the Priesthood Keys that they had held in mortality. Elijah came to do the same thing; he gave Joseph Smith the Priesthood keys of the sealing power and fulfilled the promise in Malachi 4:   






5 ¶Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:

 6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite theearth with a curse.

             Thats why we do so much Family History; the Spirit of Elijah rests upon the Church and urges the children to turn their hearts to their fathers and make sure that they have the same options and knowledge and ordinances available to them that the presently living get to enjoy!

               So there you have it folks! That is why Elijah is one of my favorite prophets from the Old Testament. He came out of nowhere, his opening act was a massive famine, and then he had a big ol' prophet showdown (and won!) and then shortly after that he was carried away in a chariot of fire! Then he wasn't done just yet, because he came back and gave Joseph Smith the Keys of the Sealing Authority!

Mother of a (not so)Stripling Warrior!!

                                           







                                        

Happy Early Mothers Day!

           So with Mother's Day being around the corner; I suppose it's my turn to throw in my Mother's Day Blog Post and talk about a couple of awesome women in my life. The first one I would like to talk about is my Grandmother and what I learned from her. 

                                     

My Grandmother has always been, as far as I remember, one of the sweetest ladies I have ever known. Many a childhood memory is filled with her home; since my mother was hard at work being a single parent of four children, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother growing up and it has influenced me in many ways. I often comment, when talking with people about my musical taste, that my Grandmother is the reason that I enjoy Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Dean Martin, Jerry Lee Lewis, and those types of musicians. 

      I believe the biggest influence that she has had on me was as she tried to instill a Christian belief in me as I was growing up. The first one that comes to mind is shortly after our cousins had left and Grandmother and I were talking in the car on a ride to a store or something. She and I were talking, of course, and she ended up saying: "You either believe in all of the Bible, or you believe in none of the Bible." At the time, I chose to believe in none of the Bible. It just didn't make sense, but my Grandmother will always in my eyes be the stalwart witness of the truth of the Bible. Her words ring in my head when I think about believing this scripture but not that scripture.

     The second one that comes to mind is on a trip to the Family History Center in Mesa Arizona, which as anyone from Mesa knows, is right next to the Mesa Arizona Temple. You know, this one Temple:

What is this? A Temple for ants?! It needs to be at least three times bigger!!

      So we go into the Family History Center and I'm helping her (Being bored out of mind because I was a child) look at microfilm and the such before we went through the Visitor's Center at the Temple (Keep in mind, I was not a member at this point and nor is my Grandmother) and in the Temple's Visitor's Center is a wonderful statue of Jesus the Christ. You know, this one statue:

What is this? A statue for ants?!

  And as we were walking past the statue, my Grandmother said: "That's your Savior." and that comment has been within the far back of my memory and was hidden away until one day when I was investigating the Church, and at this point I had decided to join the Church, so the Ferrins and I, along with my Missionaries, were going through the Visitor's Center and I looked at the Statue and the background behind it and tried to remember why it was so familiar and then my Grandmother's words came ringing in my mind and that just touched my very core!

       My grandmother has always stood out as someone of Steadfast Faith in the Lord. I don't think my grandmother has ever once doubted that there is a God and that Jesus Christ took our sins upon His shoulders and allowed us to repent of our sins and be able to make it back to Heavenly Father!!

Now for my Madre!

                              

What my Mother taught me that will probably stand out in my mind is Patience! Now this won't really involve any memories that fantastically stand out as life long lessons but rather just the overall experience! My Mother had to deal with four rambunctious children by herself and that was not hard! Just think of it like this, her children have become: Two United States Marines, one of them becoming a Lawyer, her daughter (Which is just crazy enough) and then me, the Mormon! Yeah, thank your lucky stars that you weren't in her shoes! I can look back on my younger years, even just a year ago and I can honestly say I was an ungrateful punk! She only had my best interests in mind, and as most Sons, (I hope) Did, did not think she knew what she was talking about and only thought that she was trying to take away my choice and fun. I broke her trust on numerous occasions, and I did not show her the respect that she deserved; but through all of it I learned something. My mother had patience and love; she taught me that in the worst of situations, that you should just forget and move on. She taught me that no matter what I did, I would always be her son and her baby and that she would love me. I think the biggest lesson of this that comes to mind (I lied earlier) is when she dropped me off at the MTC. I can only think of three or four times when I've personally seen my Mother cry; the first couple of times was when we were taking care of our sick animals and had to put a horse down that we had about twenty years. The other time being when she dropped me off at the MTC! It was so touching to me that she started crying as she hugged me for the last times for two years. My mother never deserved the way I treated her, but thanks to her unconditional love, I have always been her son, and hopefully always will be! I love you Madre!

With this time of year, I would encourage all of you to look at what your Mother has taught. Examine what she has done for you, and then thank Heavenly Father for the blessings that she, along with others, has brought into your life. As Helaman said of the stripling warriors: "And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt, our Mothers knew it" (Alma 56:48) Look at what your mother taught you, I bet you they knew it before you did!! I leave you with these inspiring words in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.