Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

I spent a lot of time thinking about what I learned yesterday. I have been deceived by Satan into believing that prayer doesn’t matter. I have done it for years out of obedience, but it has always been a chore that I was eager to get through so that I can do what I want to do. That was Satan’s goal the whole time, I suppose, to prevent prayer from building a relationship between myself and Heavenly Father. I thought a lot about “ok if I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time, then how am I supposed to do it? What am I supposed to say or talk about?” I couldn’t come up with a solution so I finally just decided to ask, “Heavenly Father, teach me how to pray.” Even though that sounds much more submissive than I would like, I really had a beautiful experience. I prayed about a lot of stuff, I talked to him about my kids and my hopes for them. I talked to him about my friends and my job and my house and even my dogs. I thanked him for stuff and asked him for stuff. It was really a powerful ...

11:4-5 - It's not just the simplicity of the gospel that can cause problems of acceptance for people, but also because there can be those who teach false doctrine. I just finished reading a book called "Visions of Glory" that was interesting and talked about spirits, both good and evil. One of the things that I've always wondered about temptations from Satan is, would he, say, convince someone to write a book about the glory of Christ, but in it include things that are not of Christ and so those who read it would believe that the whole thing is doctrine because it teaches of Christ, but there's false information in it too. I don't know if that makes sense, but Satan is old, he's been around a long time, he's probably the second greatest psychologist of all time, after Jesus of course. He probably knows that it's difficult to take something that someone believes and try to immediately persuade them to believe the opposite thing. Wouldn't it ...

11:3 - Continuing with the analogy of the Church being a woman, Paul admits that instead of becoming the pure bride of Christ, “I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” When we think about the gospel, we obviously don’t know everything and because of that, it is sometimes tempting to feel like the gospel is complicated. I’ve felt this way before, especially when it comes to the concept of the atonement, forgiveness, priesthood, etc. But really, if we stop and think about it, the principles and ordinances of the gospel are incredibly simple. First, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we believe what he says, second repentance, we change our lives to be obedient to his commandments as best we can. Third, baptism by immersion, being dunked under the water by one who has proper authority, fourth laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, we sit in a chair while someone with aut...

11:1-2 - After responding to personal attacks about his physical appearance, Paul acknowledges that he is not perfect and hopes the Corinthian saints “could bear with me a little in my folly.” None of us are perfect and having to defend yourself against attacks on your physical appearance is pretty brutal, especially considering Paul’s teachings were spiritual in nature, not physical. Verse 2 was pretty difficult for me to understand because after asking the people to “bear with me,” he says, “for I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” There are a lot of words in here that threw me, the first being “jealous.” We know that when God uses the word “jealous” such as “I am a jealous God,” it means that he is heavily invested in the welfare of the people. So maybe Paul is saying here, “please don’t judge me too harshly because despite my imperfections, I am very invested in your success.” The ...

10:14-18 - We’ve learned to not compare ourselves with other, and I think that there are two ways that people can use this in their lives. Those who compare themselves to others and feel unworthy and those who compare themselves to others and feel superior. When someone hears that they shouldn’t compare themselves to others, it’s really difficult to overcome that because they’ve been doing it for so long. But those who feel unworthy compared to others might have an easier time transitioning out of that mindset than those who feel superior. I guess if we think about it, ultimately the reason why people do either one of those things is because they don’t believe that they personally are worth anything of value. If someone can look at the projection someone puts on in public and think, “I’m not good enough,” then the solution is for them to learn self-worth and who they really are to God. If someone can look at another person’s projection and think “I’m better than them,” they are using a...

10:11-12 - The people who criticized Paul for being physically weak, but spiritually strong in the letters that he writes, Paul assures them that just as strong as he is in letters “when we are absent, such will we be also in deed when we are present.” I think he’s saying that the spiritual strength that he shows in his letters, he will also show when he gets there in person, even if he is physically weak. He makes another interesting argument to his critics of his weak physical appearance and that is “compared to what?” He doesn’t say that specifically but he uses words like “commend” and “measuring” to describe the way that these people are making their assessments. I hadn’t considered it from this standpoint, that when I say or think something like, “wow, he’s stupid” or “she’s ugly,” it all comes down to “compared to who?” Jesus doesn’t think that he’s stupid or that she’s ugly because ultimately, there has to be a smart or pretty person that sets the intelligence or beauty standar...

10:7 - I’m not sure if Paul is bringing up “outward appearance” because he wants to demonstrate the difference the spiritual war in which we are engaged or if he’s responding to specific comments from some Corinthians about his physical appearance. If it is the first one, I would understand this to mean that we can’t always figure out by looking at someone their spiritual status. I’m not a cookie cutter Molly Mormon type, I don’t wear makeup, I have tattoos, etc, but I’m still a member of the Church. And it’s interesting seeing the difference between people in Church in Utah vs. outside of Utah. And I guess that has a lot to do with the lack of genetic diversity in the Utah population. I mean, there was a huge immigrant population in the 1850-1880’s but then no one else really moved here to diversify the gene pool. But that’s not the point, the point is that just because someone doesn’t look like the stereotypical “saint” doesn’t mean that they aren’t and surely doesn’t mean that they ...