Mormon Direction

The faith of a Saint, a disciple of God is to live the faith each day. To live this faith means, to be and do what gospel principles teach. A true Saint of God does not compromise these principles because that would be compromising the faith and faith is the single key to open the door to salvation by which all other spiritual works are manifest. Without faith, everything else fails and salvation into the Kingdom of God is lost.

In every aspect of life, a Saint must be a true Saint as best can be, even with all his or her shortcomings. No one is perfect, but the atonement allows us to correct ourselves and take a higher and better direction. That is learning to be godly, which means to live and practice eternal principles of God in our moral and ethical standards of mortal life.

God knows we cannot be perfect in mortal life, at least not perfect in the eternal perfection sense, but in this life, we work toward it. This is the meaning of “working out our salvation”. This is why we must ensure that we think, choose and do the principles of God in our daily lives, be it privately, in a family and in our work place.

Compromising these principles, these values, both ethical and moral is not an option for a Saint. Unfortunately, I have seen too many good hearted Christians do just that, compromise faith sustaining and generating principles. They have succumbed to greed, selfishness, unethical and even immoral behavior. They end up lying, cheating, causing misdirection, undermining, manipulation of others and even compromise their work ethics, all for the benefits of the world. Did not Jesus say if we save ourselves, we loose? (Mark 8:35)

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God directs us to perform good works. He warned us that we should not fool ourselves, that what we sow so shall we reap. We find these teachings in the Bible and Book of Mormon (Alma 5:41 / Alma 7:24, 27 / Titus 2:7 / Titus 3:8 ). Yet, we see so many Christians preach, complain and debate against this Church that salvation is not by works, but only by faith and this Church in turn shows the same Bible others preach from to show that faith is dead without works and so also, works is dead without faith ( James 2: 17, 20, 26 ), both must coexist for salvation.

We know, at least most of us, that God always promotes good things as this is what draws us closer to him and all good things glorifies him. Of course, all good works cannot manifest unless the person performs them with integrity, honesty, sincerity and humbleness. This says, for example, when a person chooses to give money for  a charity only as a tax break, but otherwise does not care for the charity, is not performing good works. There is no sincerity, honesty, integrity or humbleness in his or her act (2 Corinthians 9:7 ).

What God speaks of here in good works is the spirit of it. The sincere and cheerful act of good works promotes a good spirit. Applied generally to all things we do, says that quality work, with honesty, sincerity, diligence, care, produces good results. These good results are usually seen immediately and these good results, that bear the seal of quality good work, which is also the spirit of good work, will continue to reveal itself in value and goodness for sometime after. As a result, many can benefit from this value and goodness long after the work was done. A standard of good works serves all, even to serve as a beacon for those who need guidance and light in their works as well.

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Ponder the account of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, where he spoke the doctrine of the Father and showed by example the principles of the Father to many in the jewish synagogues. Remember how much resistance he received from the Pharisees who disbelieved those doctrines. For example how the Phariee’s delared Jesus a violator of the Sabbath when he healed a person on that day. Jesus spoke to them “words” telling them “wisdom”, that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. How the Pharisee’s refused to listen, how wicked they were.

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Have you experienced at sometime a person does something or says something, that you feel his or her sincerity? From that sincerity is assurance, a sense of stability and from this, a sense of peace, that all is now fine or resolved?

Have you experienced sometime when someone says something whose outward words appear as sincere or his/her actions by appearance are OK or good, but you do not feel the sincerity? Instead you feel instability, a sense of warning or caution and from this, no sense of peace?

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Have you heard this before from ex-members? I have heard this and wondered why they would be happy. I wondered if this is something that I should think about, but whether I ponder this or not, the fact remains that Mormon’s will face this claim from ex-members at least once in their life.

Happiness is a relative term. Simply look at some people in diverse places in life. A labourer, a white collar worker, an athlete and so on. Asking each of them if they would be happy in the life style of others and if things are going well for them, then the usual answer is “No”. Happiness is therefore a relative term that is applied by personal preferences, desires, ideas and state of mind. Still, this does not fully explain the claim by some ex-members that they are “happier” not being a Mormon.

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Prayer does work and when done properly it works very well. The workings of prayer are rather simple, but despite this simplicity, so many fail to understand how prayer works and many find that prayer works only sometimes if at all. The scriptures tell us that we are to pray often and diligently. This is not an idle direction from God neither is it contingent on personal preference. A person who prays rightly and often will find that his/her state of mind and heart will abide in the first commandment. Their faith will receive support and direction.

All faith that is not focused into proper works is a dead faith, but rather than getting into the doctrinal support and reason for proper and frequent prayer, I wish to write here a personal aspect of proper prayer.

Prayer has worked well for me, despite experiences where it appeared at times that what help I had asked for seemed to never come.

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