The new address is jesusisall.wordpress.com…hope to see you there soon!
God bless,
Heather
Author: Heather B
Timing is Everything
They say timing is everything. I am still alive because of timing. I am a better person today than I was yesterday because of timing. God’s timing is perfect, we never have to doubt it or be afraid of it. Two weeks ago He saved my life.
It all started a few months ago when I told the nurse at the allergy clinic I hadn’t been able to smell anything, or breathe through my nose, for months. I saw my ENT doctor and he immediately said “your tonsils are huge and infected, they need to come out”. I was originally scheduled for one surgery date but due to insurance issues it was pushed back another two weeks. By the time my surgery date arrived I was beyond ready to get this over with so I could finally breathe and sleep well. On Friday, September 11th, I had my tonsils removed and also the turbinates in my nose. I was anticipating a rough recovery, tonsil surgery is particularly difficult for adults. I was prepared for all the pain and discomfort, and had taken two weeks off work per my doctor’s advice.
According to the doctor my surgery went well, and I was home the same day with plenty of prescription pain meds and my mom here to take care of me. By all accounts I was supposed to “feel pretty good” the first two days after surgery and then start feeling worse. The first two days I felt awful so I was scared to think how much worse it could get. I was on a diet of baby food and Cream of Wheat with a steady schedule of medication every few hours. I had my follow up doctor appointment on Day 3 and he said I was particularly alert and doing well compared to most patients. Even though I was miserable, had no appetite and was in a lot of pain, I was feeling very optimistic!
Day 4 I started having shortness of breath and incredible heart palpitations if I walked even a few feet. I had asked to have the pain meds changed because they were causing an allergic reaction, I was constantly sweaty and itchy all over. I thought the palpitations were a result of the change in meds so I thought I’d give it some time and hopefully it would go away. I was feeling sicker and more pain than the first three days but I figured that was to be expected. I didn’t tell anyone but when I went to bed that night, as I kneeled in prayer I asked God to spare my life because I felt a strange premonition I could stop breathing and die in my sleep.
Day 5 was the first day I had been without my mom, she had a short trip to Idaho planned with a friend and I had insisted that she go even though she was worried about leaving me. My daughter was at school and I was expecting a furniture delivery so I parked myself in the recliner in my front room to wait for the delivery truck. I sat there for five hours with absolutely no concept of where I was or what time it was. I didn’t eat, drink, use the bathroom, didn’t move. When the doorbell rang I could barely walk the five feet to the door. I think I startled the delivery man because I was extremely pale and probably looked like death warmed over and could barely walk. I told him I was recovering from tonsil surgery and went back to my chair. After they left I couldn’t even enjoy my new special order sectional couch (I picked the fabrics myself!) I was just feeling too delirious so I decided to go lay in my bed. After my daughter came home from school and was doing honework the impression came in my mind to have my daughter call my sister and tell her all the meds I had been taking and when. I thought I might have overdosed even though I was keeping careful notes. My sister tried to talk to me but I couldn’t answer simple questions and we tried texting but I was writing gibberish. I told her I just wanted to sleep it off. She called my daughter and asked her to go do her homework in my bed and then she called my mom and told her to hurry up and get home. I felt I was going to die but my brain really wasn’t functioning correctly so I couldn’t process my thoughts. I just wanted to go to sleep, but I’m fairly certain if I had I wouldn’t be alive right now.
My mom got home and we headed to Urgent Care. It was now 6pm and I had been pretty much delirious all day. I could barely walk into the clinic, the receptionist told me there was an hour and a half wait and she looked at my face and decided to go get the nurse. The nurse came out and took one look at me and said I needed to go straight to the Emergency Room. I didn’t realize it but my face was white as a sheet and my lips were purple. When we got to the ER I could barely walk, I almost passed out at the intake desk. I told them I thought I was having a drug reaction following surgery. When the nurse took me to get vitals they said the oxygen wasn’t reading correctly because of my acrylic nails. My mom said “no that’s not it, she had surgery last week and they got her oxygen just fine with her nails”. They didn’t think the reading could be right…my oxygen saturation was 58…I shouldn’t have even been able to walk at that level. (A quick explanation of oxygen saturation: above 90 is normal, anything below 75 is considered dangerous and fatal if persistent. Organs begin to shut down below 70, below 60 you are typically unconscious/semi-concious and in the beginning stages of paralysis, below 50 you are nearing death.)
After several attempts to get an accurate reading, my mom heard one of the nurses say “let’s try putting her on oxygen” and as soon as they did that my levels started to increase and they realized the reading hadn’t been a mistake. They wheeled me back to the emergency ward. My veins had collapsed so it took three nurses and the phlebotomist quite awhile to get an IV started. I have bruises all over my arms from being poked dozens of times with needles during my hospitalization. The doctor suspected I had a blood clot so I had several heart tests run which came back normal. I had to give them a urine sample when I first got there so they unhooked me from oxygen and a nurse followed me into the restroom. My kidneys had started to shut down and I was severely dehydrated so it took me close to ten minutes to give them anything. By the time I got back to my bed and back on the monitors, my oxygen was in the 40s. I heard one nurse scold the other for taking me off oxygen. I don’t recall exactly when they finally told me I had pneumonia. Not just any case of pneumonia, but in both lungs and it had spread through my blood (septic).
I spent the next two days on the Intermediate Care ward. The first night I was there I was so sweaty I had the nurse turn the thermostat down to 69 degrees and I slept all night with just a sheet on me. I was hooked up to so many wires that I couldn’t really move but that was the first night I had slept more than an hour or two straight in a week. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and not knowing where I was for a minute, I felt like I had been living a bad dream. I distinctly felt someone squeezing my big toe but there was nobody there, and then my eyes immediately locked on the number 98 out of all the vitals on the monitor, which is the year both my paternal grandparents died. I wasn’t sure if that was a sign or not but I really felt someone had been there. I laid there for a few minutes trying to get my bearings and suddenly God was talking to me. I don’t know how it is when God talks to you, if you actually hear His voice, but for me its just a stream of thoughts that I know came from outside my mind like someone else talking to me. He told me He had saved me because I had more to do with my life, that there were more purposes He had for me that I didn’t know about yet. He also said that I needed to love Him only, and that when I could do that and not care about being single anymore, that’s when He would send me the man He’s been preparing for me.
I learned a few lessons in the hospital. First, how to be completely at the mercy of someone else’s care for simple things like a cup of water or a blanket or to reach something out of reach. Before I could be discharged I had to have the awesome male nurse that had been taking care of me give me a suppository. Talk about humbling! I definitely learned humility during my stay, and I know God knew I needed that. I went from being a person who couldn’t go to the grocery store without makeup and hair done, to looking like death warmed over for days and having a nice guy I hardly knew seeing more of me than I cared to expose. During my stay, I spent a lot less time worrying about trivial things like Facebook or what was going on in the outside world. I maintained contact with a few friends which was really vital to me to make me feel like I wasn’t in a parallel universe. I reached out on Facebook a couple of times to ask for prayers and I knew that a lot of people were praying for me which brought me peace. The greatest peace of all came from knowing that no matter what happened, God had my life in His hands and He never makes a mistake. If it was my time to go, that was His call. I wasn’t scared.
A huge blessing and comfort through this whole ordeal was my mom’s constant care. God’s timing was at work here as well…the relationship between her and I had been strained for over thirteen years and my heart had become somewhat indifferent toward it. But God in His wisdom softened my heart and got me to start praying for healing a little while before all of this happened. About a week or so before surgery my mom and I had a breakthrough and I was finally able to let go of my anger and forgive. God knew that I was going to need her more than I ever have as an adult. She was the best nurse I could’ve asked for. We spent quite a bit of time together which would’ve been much more difficult if I had my surgery when it was originally scheduled and we hadn’t made peace yet. Again, God’s timing was perfect.
Lamentations 3:25-26 reads, “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” In our human weakness, waiting is one of the hardest things to do. How difficult is it to wait for a big refund check after you file your taxes? Or to wait for that promotion you’ve been working towards? Even when we’re waiting for something bad to happen, we hate the wait. Think about how agonizing it is to wait for death when the doctor has given someone a certain amount of time to live. With our limited view of what’s ahead, waiting can seem like torture. The thing we’re waiting for often consumes our thoughts and sometimes even our actions. Isn’t it true of pretty much anything in life, we’re constantly waiting for this thing or that thing to happen? When we completely surrender to God’s timing, and trust in His plans for us, waiting is no longer difficult. In fact, over time you come to see how much you missed out on while you were preoccupied with waiting. I can say I’ve been able to surrender a lot of the time, but I’m still working on doing it ALL the time. However, when I have submitted, any anxiety I feel regarding the future is totally gone and I am at peace knowing God is working things out on my behalf. Honestly, it should be easy for us to realize this all the time, but we humans like to perceive we have some control over our lives and surrendering to a higher power sounds like totally giving up control, which is scary. The opposite is true though, it is so much less scary than you think once you try it.
Today is Day 17 after surgery, I received the approval from my doctor today to return to work tomorrow. The x-rays and blood work show no more pneumonia in my blood or my lungs. I came home from the hospital with orders to be on oxygen for a month, and I was on it 24/7 until a couple of days ago. I am positive that the prayers that were said on my behalf, and the goodness and mercy of God, is what has sped my recovery along so quickly. I have thanked God every single night for sparing me, and for all the wonderful family and friends who were there for me and who prayed for me. He told me He was resetting my life, and I am going to make the best of the gift God has given me. Part of that is to continue telling as many people as I can how much He loves them. He loves us individually more than we can imagine. I am falling in love with Him more every single day. God is good, all the time, and His timing is perfect ALL THE TIME.
The One Thing Christians Should Stop Saying
Love this article and have sent it to many friends. Be grateful not blessed.
I was on the phone with a good friend the other day. After covering important topics, like disparaging each other’s mothers and retelling semi-factual tales from our college days, our conversation turned to the mundane.
“So, how’s work going?” he asked.
For those of you who don’t know, I make money by teaching leadership skills and helping people learn to get along in corporate America. My wife says it’s all a clever disguise so I can get up in front of large groups and tell stories.
I plead the fifth.
I answered my buddy’s question with,
“Definitely feeling blessed. Last year was the best year yet for my business. And it looks like this year will be just as busy.”
The words rolled off my tongue without a second thought. Like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or placing my usual lunch order at McDonald’s.
But it was a lie.
Now…
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The Video That Changed My Life
It’s been way too long since I posted. This video has been on my mind lately and I felt impressed to share it. I will preface this by saying that at the time I saw this video, I was already beginning to explore my own beliefs. Not so much questioning the LDS church at that point, but trying to find the foundation for my own beliefs and not lean on the testimony of others and “what the church says”. After my ex-husband moved out in January 2014, my house suddenly went from a busy and often noisy place to being so quiet on the weekends that my daughter was with him that the only sound in the house was the refrigerator ice maker. It was during those quiet weekends that I really had a chance to spend time with my thoughts and get back in touch with myself after years of being in an extremely stressful marriage. I had lost myself taking care of others, and God gave me this quiet time to take care of Heather. It wasn’t easy at first and the loneliness really got to me at first but I learned to accept it as a blessing and take advantage of the time.
I can’t even remember which of my Facebook friends posted this video. In my active LDS days, I never would’ve even clicked the link based on the title alone. However, I have learned that sometimes we judge things before we even know the content…the proverbial “don’t judge a book by its cover”. I was intrigued, so I checked it out. What is said here is not anti-LDS, it is simply pro-Jesus. I used to be of the mindset that if someone outside of the church questions religion they are against God but this video opened my eyes to the fact that is not the case at all. A part of my mind was unlocked that day…and I am forever grateful to whoever shared this. It literally changed my perspective on faith. I’ll try to explain in future posts how exactly this affected my thinking and break down some of the teachings that are in his message, but for now I just hope you’ll take the time to watch this. I am not here to bash on anyone’s beliefs but to help people come closer to God and find their own relationship. I pray that this will be received in that spirit.
Is God Good All the Time?
You all know the saying “God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.” Its a cute saying, but is it true? Human nature leads us to try to make things fit into our human understanding but where God is concerned, His ways surpass simple human understanding. It is natural for some people to feel like God has forgotten about them or that He isn’t listening when they are asking for something and its not coming in the way or at the time they would like. That type of thinking can lead us to wonder if God really is good all the time. The thing we have to be careful about though is putting God on our level, or even lower, by saying “God if you don’t give me what I want, when I want it, then you’re not really that great”. Even thinking that we know what is best for us and when we should have it places God in an inferior position. I personally used to do this without even trying. I trusted God in many ways and I prayed for guidance but if I didn’t hear anything as quickly as I thought I should, I’d go off and do what I thought was the right thing to do. Many times, my decisions led to problems I wouldn’t have had if I had been patient and waited on God to answer me or to show me that what I was asking for really wasn’t what was best for me and that His plans included something even better than my limited imagination could conceive.
Is God really “good” when He allows hard times to come in our lives? My opinion is people who ask this question don’t truly know God. While He is the all-knowing, all-powerful, always present God of the bible, He is also a loving Father who wants desperately to have His children return to Him. It is hard for some to reconcile a God of fury, wrath and judgment with the picture of a loving God who is always trying to give us more than we deserve. First off, we should never attempt to judge God or think we know better than Him unless we want to see the fury, wrath and judgment firsthand. When we come to know Him personally we will see that He prefers to be a loving Father figure and pour His blessings on us. However, God wouldn’t be God if He didn’t exercise judgement as well as mercy. How much would your own kids respect you if you let them get away with breaking a family rule and you stood idly by and did nothing? God can’t let us break rules without consequence, but He does give us a way to return to His favor (repentence) because he loves us, and because He is good.
If God didn’t allow bad things to happen we would have no understanding or appreciation of what is good. He loves us so much He wants us to grow and progress and that means we will have to be tried and tested. Sometimes “bad things” happen so that even better things can be revealed to us. In my limited, humanistic understanding of God, I try to avoid questioning God’s goodness or intentions and just trust that He is working something great that I don’t really need to understand until His work in that particular area is complete. It takes a lot of practice to get better at allowing God to have this type of control in your life. Honestly, we are only fooling ourselves if we don’t acknowledge that He already has all the control…He is God after all! Once we can accept that He really is in control and be grateful that He is in charge instead of us, it becomes easier to be patient and wait for His timing. When I have done this it has never failed to amaze me how much better things turn out then when I went off of my own limited understanding.
God really is good…and He is good all the time, even when He allows bad things to happen. Life can be so much easier and sweeter for you when you realize this fact and surrender to His will, His power, and His love for you.
Baltimore, My Heart is Breaking
I spent the first half of my childhood living in Maryland. I went to my first Baltimore Orioles game as a baby with my parents. I grew up going to the Inner Harbor, Orioles Games, the McCormick spice factory, the Maryland Science Museum. I became a Sociologist because of Baltimore. I began thinking about social issues as a young child riding in the backseat of my dad’s car through some of the roughest neighborhoods in Baltimore. Seeing what was going on in that city in the mid 1980s – the crime, violence and decay, made me wonder as a little girl why and how it got to be like that. It has been a lifelong obsession of mine to study urban issues, Baltimore in particular. I read the Baltimore Sun and various Baltimore blogs daily. I root for the Orioles and the Ravens rabidly. I love that city with all its flaws. It speaks to me and my compassion for people who didn’t have the same chances and opportunities in life that I was born with. You may not agree with what I’m going to say but it needs to be said and I’m never one to shy away from speaking my mind.
America is just as racially segregated now as it ever has been. The only difference now is that racism isn’t overt. There’s not as much of the “I hate you because you’re black” in-your-face type of racial confrontation and “get to the back of the bus” mentality these days. It is much more insipid, undercover and harder to root out. It is what causes a few officers to make a split second decision based on long held stereotypes passed on for generations. For those of you who don’t believe that the police can be prejudice and will pull you over for no reason other than your skin color…I HAVE BEEN THERE WHEN IT HAS HAPPENED BECAUSE OF WHO WAS IN MY CAR. I have been questioned by a well-meaning white officer who figured I must’ve been kidnapped by the black PASSENGER that was in my car because I surely wouldn’t have chosen to be driving around with him. This hasn’t only happened once but several times. My ex-husband, a dark Brazilian, has been pulled over and frisked for NO REASON and when he asked the officer what he was being charged with he was suddenly let go with no further explanation. Do I love the police? Yes I do, they are heroes and grossly underpaid! But do I think that some officers let racial stereotypes color their judgment? Absolutely!
I would like to see the police come up with established standards for use of force. If people who have been marginalized and been raised with a distrust of the police can see that there is a standard in place instead of fearing an officer will use whatever force he feels compelled, it just might lead to a change in perceptions. Would this be the answer to everything? Not at all, but let’s call for police to have a standard that will protect them, and us, from use of excessive force in situations that don’t warrant it. Such as a man with an outstanding child support warrant who ran and was shot in the back eight times. Why did he run? Only he knows, but I’m assuming he’d had previous negative interactions with police. If your dealings with the police have only been positive, be grateful. You really have no room to judge what a person is thinking (or not thinking) when they instinctively run. It is sad to me that we jump to conclusions so quickly and judge people without knowing the whole story. That also goes for those people who judge all police officers as racist. Most police are wonderful people who have taken an oath to serve and protect their community because they genuinely care about the citizens who live there.
There are no easy answers to this particular social issue, but it starts with each individual deciding to try to understand a person before judging them. If this mentality were prevalent there would be a lot less violence on both sides. If the rioters would see the police as members of their community with lives and families, they might be less inclined to throw rocks and taunt and attempt to injure them. If they also felt that the police saw them as humans with value and dignity they might trust a little more. Let’s stop saying “I don’t see color” or “I’m colorblind”…we all know that’s not humanly possible, our eyes see color. Let’s start saying “I don’t judge you based on your color.” I hope the riots in Baltimore lead to greater understanding. I hope that those community groups fighting to restore peace and hope to the community will grow in number and power. My heart is breaking for you Charm City.
Don’t Put God on the Back Burner
OK, I admit it, I have become somewhat complacent about this blog lately. When I first heard the call from God to write a blog I was on fire. But with time and the responsibilities of life, things seem to always end up on the back burner. I would say the same thing has happened with my bible study recently. I have a plan in place to get back on track with that…I ordered a study bible that should be coming today that will help me understand more than the traditional bible I’ve been reading, and also I am going to start reading from front to back again instead of jumping around. It was great when I first started doing what my friend termed “bible roulette”…I would sit down thinking about a problem I was having, wait for God to send a book in the bible to my mind and then wait a minute more and I’d receive a number in my mind. Every single time I did that, the chapter I was lead to was specifically about what I was pondering. It was amazing! However, that kind of reading can make you feel like you have ADHD just jumping around. At one point, I had subscribed in my feed burner to a daily reading plan that was sending me a chapter in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and a chapter in Psalms and Proverbs to read each day. That worked great at first but then like everything else, I got busy and my feed burner (I subscribe to a lot of cooking blogs, sociology stuff, etc.) got up over 300+ posts when I quit checking it for a few days. Needless to say that method didn’t work for me! The point of me telling you all this is to say its ok to try and fail at different approaches…just keep trying until you find the one that works for you. I am still fine tuning my approach.
Likewise, telling myself “I’m going to write a blog post every Sunday” (which is what I thought when I first started) wasn’t working and I started feeling like a slacker. Then I decided ok I’ll just write whenever the spirit strikes. Well, that didn’t work so well either because the spirit usually strikes me around midnight when I have to be up for work in a few hours. So I would put it off then get too busy the next day to get back around to it. Then God would kindly put a thought in my mind that I really need to write something. For example, right now I was on the computer to look at movie times today. I am not even dressed yet, just enjoying a day off with Olivia, and had no intention of writing. But thoughts started circulating around my mind about my recent complacency and I realized, this is God’s way of urging me to write. So write I must. And this topic, again, is not what I was planning to write (I seem to be saying that a lot in my posts). Be open to letting God change your plans, He likes to do that sometimes and its actually a great thing when it happens and you hear it.
The only way to keep from becoming complacent about spending time with God each day through prayer, scripture reading and whatever else He calls you to is to make it a priority. I know that is really cliché and sounds too simple but it is true. The reason I didn’t write a post for over a month is simply because it dropped down on my priority list. If I’m not reading my bible nightly like I used to, its because other things took its place near the top of the my list and bumped it down. I am guilty as charged, but I don’t have to feel bad or beat myself up about it, just need to focus on what I can do now to be recommitted to God as my top priority. If anyone can beat themselves up, it is me, trust me! But I have found that if God isn’t beating me up for something, I shouldn’t be either. I take comfort in knowing that and being aware that He is so forgiving.
I am making a pledge today that I will be better at writing more often and dedicating time daily to my bible study. It might not be that I post every Sunday, and that’s ok. I am having so many amazing spiritual experiences lately that I could probably write almost daily but that also wouldn’t be realistic. I work full-time and am a single mom, those are priorities I can’t shirk. But God needs to be at the center of everything, and every time I have made it a point to keep Him there, my life is better because my perspective is in the right place and my faith grows as a result. I wish so much I could somehow share the feelings I have at those times, like a spiritual transplant, because it feels so great even when things aren’t going well around me. However, the best way I can share that is by sharing what works and hopefully you will find a way to experience that peace yourself.
I have to take a minute to thank God for my Savior and for the atonement on this Good Friday. God, you are amazing beyond description. That you would send your beloved Son to suffer and atone for me and my sins is a testament to how much you love all of your children. Thank you God for knowing me and loving me despite all my flaws. Thank you for your perfect Son who is the only way to find true peace and joy in this life, and to find my way back to You in the next. I commit to put You back on the front burner in my life.
Why I’m Blogging: Because We Are Not Orphans
Last time I wrote about conviction. Simply put, when God speaks, we need to listen and act upon what we are given through the Spirit. I am writing this blog because I acted on an impression I was given by the Spirit. I know this impression didn’t come from me or my own thoughts because I had no desire to write publicly about my personal experiences. However, once I felt convicted that this was what I was being led to do, I had a strong desire to be obedient.
My process of separating myself from the LDS church started about a year ago. It was a slow process at the beginning because it took me awhile to feel sure of what I was doing. Even after I felt sure, there were many times I felt uneasy about living without the security blanket of the church and I struggled with my decision. I never thought it was the wrong decision, I just thought that it was going to be harder than my previous life and it has been. But it has brought me more joy and peace than my previous life did.
I have been single since January 2014 when my ex-husband moved out of the house. He and I are still great friends to this day and will always be because we respect and care for each other. Things were just meant to go in a different direction and we are both sure that is what God wanted for us. He is now married to a wonderful woman that is a great step-mother for Olivia. There are still some rough days when I struggle with being alone. I am a very affectionate and talkative person and the lack of human contact and companionship has been difficult for me to deal with. Sometimes I really enjoy the quiet peacefulness in my life but other times I really miss having a friend who lives there to talk to.
One day last October I was having one of those rough days and was feeling very discouraged and lonely. I was at work and was feeling lost, adrift, a ship without a rudder. I felt positive about the direction my life was taking but was still scared to be traveling in unknown territory. My two greatest supporters throughout this process have been my ex-husband and a dear friend of mine. On this particular day, I had very similar conversations with both of them. I shared my feelings of discouragement and loneliness, which they had heard many times before. They both told me that God needed to be enough for me, that I needed to stop focusing so much on what I didn’t have.
While I was thinking about their advice the thought struck me that I felt like an orphan, like I didn’t belong to anyone and that I didn’t know where my home was. Shortly after this, my ex called me again and said he felt impressed to tell me I was supposed to be searching for God’s purpose for my life. I lamented that my purpose in life was to be a wife. He said you have other purposes besides that. I admitted that I had been pondering about my purpose for several days already.
Immediately following this conversation, a man that I had been communicating with on a dating site was texting me. This man does not live locally and we hadn’t met in person but he was pressuring me to commit to a relationship with him. I had a very uneasy feeling about him and I wasn’t going along with what he wanted so he had gotten very belligerent with me and very demeaning, calling me names. I was feeling sorry for myself, wondering why it seemed a good relationship was so hard to find when the phrase “my peace I leave you, my peace I give unto you” came into my mind.
Often, pieces of scriptures come in my mind and I know it is God urging me to find the source and read more. So I looked in my bible app to find this particular phrase. It happens to be from John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let your hearts not be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” I felt immediate relief from my worries.
I decided to read the entire chapter, where Jesus is saying farewell to his apostles and they are scared that he is leaving them and they don’t think they can survive. With tears streaming down my face I got to verse 18. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” just hit me so hard and I knew that God was speaking directly to me. I shut my office door so nobody would worry about me and I had a good cry. I thought to myself I should start writing down all these spiritual experiences I had been having in a journal so I can remember them when I have a rough day. Then I got a strong impression “No you’re not supposed to keep this to yourself”, that I was supposed to write it for others. I felt immediately convicted that God was directing me to do this for Him, and that this was one of His purposes for me. (Over the next two days, topics and ideas of things to write came flooding into my mind so fast that I started keeping notes in my phone.)
I continued reading John 15, and I was on verse 6, “If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown in the fire, and burned.”, when the guy from the dating site started harassing me again. I replied that I was walking with God, that I only wanted a man that would walk with me on the same path. His demeanor suddenly changed and he wished me luck and said that he wouldn’t stand in the way of one of “God’s children”. Then he said he was trying to do good with everyone so that he would be good with God and I told him “the only one you have to be good with is God, then once you are you will automatically do good for others. That is backwards of what my old church teaches, but they’ve got it wrong”. I felt such a conviction from saying this to him and knew that my calling was to help others who were searching for God as I had been. The whole point of this blog is to tell you that God is all you need; a personal relationship with the Savior and faith in God are all that is required.
It isn’t easy to go out of your comfort zone and stretch yourself but God always prepares a way for you when He asks you to do something. I am absolutely certain of this and I have to keep reminding myself that when I want to be lazy or when I start to feel I’m not up to the task. There is nothing that God can ask us to do for Him that won’t make us better and bring us closer to Him if we are willing to put forth the effort while keeping Him in the lead. I am so grateful for the experiences I’ve been having that keep convicting me of what I’m doing with my life.
Living a Life of Conviction
First off, let me say that I respect and love LDS people, especially my family and friends. They are good people who are following a specific set of guidelines because they believe that it will lead them to eternal life with God. That is the greatest goal we should all be pursuing in this life. I am not writing this blog to try to convince anyone of what is true because only God can do that through the Holy Spirit. This blog is for me to share my own personal experiences as I was instructed by God. I was actually going to write this post about the experience that led me to start blogging but thoughts about conviction kept swimming around in my head this morning and I took that as a sign.
What does it mean to be convicted by the Spirit? Oftentimes we think of conviction as something negative such as being convicted of a crime. The Holy Spirit can certainly confirm to us God’s conviction of our sins to help us turn to repentance (see John 16:8). But I wanted to talk about another way the Spirit convicts us, and that is to follow God. Another word we can substitute for this kind of conviction is “convinced”. One of the Spirit’s duties is to convince us of truth. He acts as a guide to show us what God wants us to do, what our purpose and callings are in this life, what talents God has given us to use for His purposes.
John 16:13-14 (ESV), “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
I used to hear the phrases “convicted by God” or “convicted by the Spirit” frequently from my non-LDS Christian friends. I didn’t really understand what they were talking about at the time but I understand the concept now through many experiences which have led me to a conviction of what I’m doing with my life. My friends would suggest that maybe I wasn’t convicted in my beliefs because I seemed unsure of a few points or even whether I really had a personal relationship with God. I was somewhat offended at the time, but I realize now they were right and their gentle nudging helped motivate me to study and seek spiritual conviction.
When you are convicted by the Spirit, there is no room for doubt that God has spoken to you and that He wants you to act. I have been convicted by Him on several occasions, such as when deciding what church to attend (or not attend), what His purpose is for my life right now, and my decision to move away from the LDS church. Once you feel this type of conviction in your soul you have two choices, ignore it or act upon it. My own experience was that as soon as I was certain of what I had received, I felt a strong desire to act immediately. I felt like I was suddenly on fire with the Spirit. I wanted more than anything to please God and I felt joy knowing that He was giving guidance directly to me.
We need to be sure we are following what God wants instead of putting our own thoughts and desires into action. Deuteronomy 12:32 (ESV) says, “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.” Some of the guidance I’ve received has been a test of my faith but I know that it is what God wants me to do for Him. Writing this blog has been challenging because I don’t share my personal life with many people, and I sometimes get writers block because I am so conscious of being “careful to do” what God wants me to do with my writing. I know that He gave me a gift for writing and helped me develop it at a young age for a purpose and I think this is part of it. There may be more He reveals to me in the future, but for now I am following what I received.
The whole point of living a life of conviction is that you will feel more joy, peace and comfort in your life than by any other way. If you have already accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior and Redeemer, then you have felt this peace before. My challenge to you is to find out what God’s purposes are for you through prayer and listening for the Spirit. Once you hear from Him you will find yourself convicted and re-energized to serve Him. That’s exactly what has been taking place in my life.
No Additives or Preservatives Necessary
Have you ever thought about why John 3:16 shows up so often at sporting events? It is because that one verse contains the ENTIRETY of the gospel. “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” That is IT, the entire gospel in one verse. The gospel is beautiful in its simplicity, believe in and accept Jesus as your Savior and you will naturally desire to live your life in accordance with His teachings.
Any organization, whether it be a church or otherwise, that tries to add to or take away from the gospel is either attempting to mislead people or is itself mislead in its understanding. I saw many red flags during my time as a member of the LDS church, the biggest of all being the temple and the activities that go on there. The pinnacle of the LDS experience is the temple…all roads in the church lead to the temple.
The rituals that take place in the LDS temple can be found NOWHERE in scripture, not even in Mormon scripture. Temple ordinances are very secretive, based on Freemasonry, and the first time I went to the temple the phrase “secret combination” kept coming to mind. Anyone who has read the Book of Mormon will know how much the LDS church teaches against secret combinations. In fact, secret combinations are mentioned negatively in the Book of Mormon 36 times. I wondered when I attended why the church would be promoting secretive rituals. I won’t speculate as to the real motivation but I do know that it is wrong to add steps to salvation that Jesus Christ Himself never mentioned. The fact is, in order to be “saved” you simply need to believe in Jesus, accept Him as your Savior, and build a personal relationship with Him. Any other requirements are man made and not of God, to include temple work and wearing garments. Jesus Christ died and lives for EVERYONE, He did not exclude a single living soul. Temple ordinances by their very nature are exclusionary and are promoted by the church as the ONLY way to receive eternal life with God. I use the temple as an example but there are many examples in many churches of man made practices being offered as keys to salvation.
The most wonderful “good news” about the gospel is that it is for everyone, that it is easily attainable and that you can have peace in your life by following Christ. The gospel is simple, let’s be aware of what it really is and not try to make it what it isn’t. Jesus is all we need, its as easy as that. We need to be praising and worshipping Jesus and remembering His life and sacrifice for us every day. The gospel as taught by Christ Himself lives on forever, no additives or preservatives necessary.
God Is Within Reach 