mormondirection.com

I spoke of self-esteem and a relation with God ( see “Self-Esteem and Faith” ). Now I wish to speak of what self-esteem means to me and what works.

The world provides a lot of advice about boosting self-esteem, but the main problem with worldly advice that it does not work well for the faithful, those who abide with God and want to keep themselves spiritually healthy. When I spoke of self-esteem and a relationship with God, I spoke against worldly opinions, ideas and thoughts because they work contrary to gospel principles and faith. I understood what self-esteem meant in regards to faith and from that I understood what it meant to myself in life, both spiritually and temporally

Not long ago, I thought I had good self-esteem, until the Lord led me to see I did not. When I spoke of self-esteem to another, I was also seeing myself and when the Lord turned the light bulb on, I realized that my self-esteem was not what it should have been. In this I realized that God does care about self-esteem and he does teach that low or lower self-esteem is bad for faith because it hampers the person from actually giving their best to God. Sure, God loves us either way, but God loves to see that we perceive ourselves rightly and his love cannot work for us when we allow ourselves or give excuse to lower our self-esteem. Simply, when we reject ourselves, we reject God also because we are in his image and the rejection is of his own image. It is the same as a loving parent feeling rejected when their son or daughter, who are born in their image, rejects themselves. Thus, God loves us to learn to love ourselves in the right way.

What then can we do to raise self-esteem and include our faith in it?

(more…)

Most of us have seen this literature, where people have claimed Mormonism is false, accusing the Mormon Church of cover-ups, lies, false doctrine, and the sort. They have quoted leaders of this Church and even LDS scholars and from these quotes they made claims and accusations against the Church and its doctrines, sometimes against the membership as a whole. Some members of the Church found themselves swayed by Anti-Mormon literature, where their testimony and belief in the Church has fallen or crumbled, but of course, this is not true for all members.

My testimony was challenged, even degraded by some Anti-Mormons, but in the face of all the Anti’s, I continued steadfast with the Church and relied heavily on the Holy Spirit to offset the Anti deluge. In the past, I wondered why some members quit the Church when the availability of the Holy Spirit was (to me) so easy, but over time I saw that these members did not have any spiritual testimony from the Spirit or they failed to maintain their spiritual testimony and fell to the wilds of the world.

I have also read a book or two from other (Anti-Mormon) Christians, I was not impressed, especially with how they have misrepresented statements from Church leaders, made ludricous claims and misused the Bible, even using the Bible to justify their attacks and false claims, which is why I wrote this article.

It is not the intention of the Church (or myself) to force censor onto fellow members of the Church as many will read Anti-Mormon literature. Some will throw it in the trash bin while others will consider the claims and some will take it as gospel.

(more…)