A friend of mine asked me about faith. Which gave me an idea for a blog… (Finally.. after weeks of writers block)
Faith, if you look up the definition of Faith it says
“Belief in, devotion to, or trust in somebody or something, especially without logical proof.”
The only thing that bothers me about that definition is the logical proof.. I once read that ALL things testify of god. With that being said just look around, everything around you, including you; testifies of god’s existence. How much more “logical proof” do you need other that EVERYTHING in the world?
With that aside lets get back to the real definition of the word… faith.
The bible describes faith as
“A hope for things which are not seen, but which are true” (Hebrews 11:1)
Truth, wow.. That’s a word that I don’t hear much of, truth. What is truth? Where can you find truth?
What do we mean truth? True what? True God? True church?! Ah, Church! Ok let’s start there. When Jesus Christ was on the earth he taught a lot of things. He didn’t come here, touch a few people to make them healthy and then die. When Jesus came here he came to “do his fathers business” (Luke 2:49)
What was his fathers business? Well, the first thing he did was begin to build a church, “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Til we all come to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God….” (Ephesians 4:11-13)
My favorite line in those verses is “Til we all come to the unity of the faith”
Unity… as in ONE. Meaning that the church all believed in the same thing. They were UNITED under ONE faith… Currently there are over 3,000 churches that are based around the belief in Jesus Christ. That’s not including Allah, Buddha, Zeus, or any other rain god, sun god or war lord you want to throw in there. I’m talking about Jesus Christ’s father, God. Just the belief in Jesus, God and the Holy Ghost have torn us apart in over 3,000 different religions.
You might say WELL WE STILL ALL BELIEVE IN THE SAME GOD BUT WE JUST DO IT IN DIFFERENT WAYS…
UMMMMM wrong!
Sorry.. But if you believe in the bible, you really can’t say that for one huge OBVIOUS reason.
See, Most people don’t understand where their bibles come from. When I was teaching on my mission I taught in the south and came across a lot of people who knew their bible better than their kids names. So needless to say I had to up my background on bible knowledge, if I ever start sounding like I know way too much about the bible, its cause I do.. I hate being cocky, but take my word for it. I know my stuff..
Back to what I was saying, the last half of the New Testament is about churches that went astray after Jesus died. They were letters sent by Paul telling people that they were screwing everything up.
Those people didn’t go totally astray and start worshipping a moon god or anything, they all still taught of Jesus Christ and taught about his ministry while he was here on earth, they taught about baptism and god and prayer.. They were teaching GOOD things, but they weren’t running their church the way Jesus instructed. To me this makes sense.. Cause if something is 99 percent true… it’s false. God is infallible, Jesus is perfect, and so is their church. The people IN the church aren’t perfect, but the church itself is perfect. I truly believe this. So if Jesus took the time to build a church, and Peter, Paul and John took time to go around from city to city making sure it was ran PERFECTLY (for the perfecting of the saints til they all came to a UNITY of faith) if they took so much time for this, and even died for this, then don’t you think that the knowledge of a true church is important?
I know that people find it hard to swallow that there is only one true church, I know not everyone will agree, I mean, not everyone agreed about it while the son of god himself was walking the earth. He healed the sick, made blind men see and even raised the dead in front of thousands of people; they got to see miracles first hand and STILL turned their back on him. His top apostle and best friend even denied knowing him. As much as I can write, talk about or try and prove my many attempts at telling you what I BELIEVE… I know my words are useless. I cannot help you find truth, I can’t explain truth to you and I can’t give you truth, truth is something that you must find.. the only thing I can give you is a story…
In order to TRY and help you out let me dig into my background.
My faith comes from a Mormon background. Now before you exit my page or think I am a big supporter of Mitt Romney, I beg you to hear me out.
My faith came from personal belief, my parents my whole life have told me that “this is the true church” and I believed them. But I do remember getting out of the house, moving to southern California by myself, and soon realizing that I was no longer in Utah and I was the minority when it came to religion.
This was a huge test on my “faith” I had never had my religion questioned before and I soon found out I knew very little about what I was believing. I began to hear many bad things about my church, that we were false, that we were all going to hell, that we weren’t Christian, WAIT A MINUTE… doesn’t the word Christian mean the belief in Jesus Christ? I believe in him.. why am I not a Christian? At the age of 18 I was lonely, confused and angry. I wasn’t sure who I could turn to anymore or better yet who I could trust. So I decided to trust the only person I knew would be honest with me… God. After a long period of time filled with study and prayer… I came to the decision that the true church was The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints (AKA Mormons) Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t fold into this line of thinking just to follow my parents example.. there was actually a period of time in there where I tried to prove the church wrong so I could join my own religion with my own beliefs and get away from parental influence. But the more I studied the bible, it testified to the truthfulness of Mormon beliefs, it even testifies to the truthfulness of the Book Of Mormon.
With that being said I think I’ll stop right there and move on to the message I want to leave you with….
If any of you have comments or questions I’d love to hear them… I know that my words are meaningless.. but just know that my message is to NOT listen to me, a pastor, preacher or anyone, my message is to get into your scriptures, study them think about them, and after much pondering about them, pray about them. Ask god himself… if anyone knows the truth.. wouldn’t it be him?!!!?
I don’t expect you to feed off my faith as I did for so many years to my parents… but I will leave you with my testimony.
This church is true. It is amazing and it was put here by god to know the truth of all things. I KNOW that Jesus Christ died for you and me. I know that his atonement for all sin was the most important thing to ever happen, for without it we would all remain in sin. I know that throughout time god has ALWAYS put a prophet on the earth to lead and guide his children. A prophets job is to give direction, and since god doesn’t want us to be lost on our journey back to him, he had put a prophet on the earth today to lead us; his name is Gordon B. Hinkley. I know the Book Of Mormon is true and I know that it goes hand in hand with the bible as it testifies of the life, death and resurrection of our lord and savior Jesus Christ.
Most importantly I know that we are gods children, god loves us and wants to help us out. He tells us in James chapter one verse 5. That “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of god”
If we ask.. god will answer us… as long as we have what verse six requires.. “but let him ask in faith, nothing wavering,..”
There is that word again, faith. If we get on our knees and KNOW god lives, KNOW that Jesus is the Christ and if we TRULY believe in him and have a soft heart and open mind.. god will make impossible into possible.
This is my testimony, this is what I believe with my whole heart. I don’t ask you to agree with me or take my word for it and follow me blindly, I ask you to study for yourself, and truly pray about it. I know that if we ask god, he will answer… all we have to do is have a little faith…
I leave these things with you now, to ponder for eternity… in the name of Jesus Christ
Amen..
