Final Post About the Guide

I received a very good forwarded email in which the scripture committee explained more about the Guiding Principles. This was my reply to the friend who forwarded it to me: 

I am fully willing to accept the original. I wish we had been told, plainly, from the beginning that it was an assignment from the Lord to the committee.

I am also willing to accept the one that got 91% of the votes.

I have been willing to accept over and over again. Finally, I was prompted to back off and let the others fight it out. God knows my willingness to accept even something I view as imperfect. I think our repentance will not be complete unless we accept the original document, but I do not see that happening unless a major miracle occurs.

I posted my pleas on my blog and now I have stepped back. I am powerless to stop the confusion or to make anyone calm down enough (be fearless enough) to trust God enough to accept what we already have. The mass of confusion seems to be based on, "Me! Me! Choose mine! I will stop the process. I will put a cog in the works and prevent mutual agreement by my interpretation of the term "mutual agreement" and/or by my insistance that if you don't choose ME, I will refuse to cooperate, and thus keep a Guide from happening until we start being raped, murdered, robbed, and destroyed like those in Nauvoo." 

Yet we forget that by the current definition of mutual consent, God failed, for 1/3 of the hosts of heaven did not consent. Yet, the plan was still implemented, by the mutual consent of those who DID consent.

Perfect document - Imperfect document

I think that when dark spirits whisper to us, they are rarely nefarious. Even if all they can do is cause us to spin our wheels until it is too late, that is enough. It is often very difficult to know if we are listening to one of them, to our own pride/fear, or to the Spirit of God. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter as it relates to the mess we are presently creating for ourselves, taken from an email conversation this morning.

It is very frustrating, to be sure. I don't think any document is or will be without defects.

I think Adrian means well.

What I think is happening is that dark spirits (devils) are among us galore, and they are doing everything they can to prevent us from agreeing on this, even using people's good intentions. If they can keep us from coming together on this until it is too late, and God rejects us, they will have won.

The same pattern has played out over and over again in regards to the Governing Principles, Guiding Principles, and now Guide and Standard. Mutual agreement, then someone (or several someones) come along and either says, I didn't really agree, or they say, I never agreed - and they want to do it a different way, then everything is in an uproar again.

I think Jeff is trying to be agreeable, noncontentious, willing to do anything to try to get people to agree on something. I think that is why he has teamed up with Adrian. I think he is willing to do almost anything if it's possible that we will actually agree.

The reason I support going with the 91% vote we had is because we need to have a stopping point, and that 91% is the most agreement we've had. I doubt it will be much better (I could be wrong; I hope I'm wrong).

We also seem to be woefully lacking in trust in God. He can fix it if we ask Him to. In regards to that, though, there are those who don't want to involve Denver at all, not even to ask him to take a finished product to the Lord, thinking that will violate the Lord's commandment to Denver to not participate. They want to have a random generator choose who should take the finished product to the Lord. I can see all hell breaking loose with that if the person is a nobody like Jeff was.

Before I got your email, I was pouring out my soul to God, begging him to step in and do something for the sake of those of us who are willing to be united. No document will be perfect. The test we failed 3 times, in my opinion, is not "not getting the document right," but in rising up to fight and contend in our pride or fear wanting "my" idea put forth.

I get being afraid of potential abuse of a document. I get thinking that our ideas for something "better" will work. I get being afraid to ask Denver to present our finished (91%) document to the Lord for approval, rejection, or correction. But I think, at some point, our time will run out because this cycle we've been going through for 6 months can realistically continue for decades or even centuries, but I don't think God is giving us decades, let alone a century or two. Nauvoo got 3 1/2 years if I'm remembering correctly, to build a temple. I doubt he is giving us that long for the baby step of agreeing on a little document that he can then approve of or correct.

Our Compassionate God

Recently, I was staying in a hotel in Boise, Idaho with a friend. Our room was directly across from the guests' laundry room. On one side of our room were the stairs. On the other was the room of the ladies who had given me a ride to Boise. Sunday morning, my friend left to go home (had pressing business that prevented her from staying the full weekend). That afternoon, the ladies and I were going to meet some people for lunch.

I was in my room, pretty much killing time, when I heard what seemed like a year old baby throwing a fit. I didn't hear adults and supposed they were ignoring the child. A few minutes later, I opened my door to go out and right next to the door, pressed into it, was a two year old toddler, screaming and crying hysterically. I glanced into the laundry room as I picked her up. It was empty. I had felt incredible compassion for the child the moment I'd opened the door, and I told her, "We'll find your mom." She stopped being hysterical, but was still upset. I knocked on the ladies' door, and when I did, the toddler calmed down even more. When the door was opened, I explained what had happened and that I was going to take the child to the office (front desk) to see if they could find her mom. The ladies went with me downstairs and, on the elevator ride, one of them coaxed out of the child that she was two years old (she never spoke the whole time she was with us).

When we got to the front desk, I explained what had happened, and told them it was on the second floor. One of the ladies behind the desk came around and held her arms out to the child. The child hesitated for a nano-second. You could see her deciding if she could trust this person. Then she leaned over and reached out to the lady.

After we got back from lunch, we inquired at the front desk. Was the mom found? The man there had just begun his shift not long before. He said he had not seen the child, but had heard others talking about the incident, and, yes, the mom had been found.

Later that evening, I was talking to God, and he told me, "The child is a sign to you." He told me that the compassion I'd felt for the child was the same compassion he felt for me when I was hysterically scream-crying out to him because of being homeless (or threatened with it), not having enough food to eat, worried about other problems, or just plain having a freak-out attack for no reason that I knew of. He also let me know that just as I had taken immediate steps to solve the toddler's problem when I realized what was happening, so he, also, took steps to alleviate my suffering when I was freaking out.

I am sharing this experience because he told me to. He told me that this compassion he feels toward me is the same compassion he feels toward everyone. Our sincere prayers are always heard, even if we don't see immediate results.

On Serpents and Trust

I've been thinking of the story about the Israelites today. It's the one where many of them got bitten, and God told Moses to make a brazen (is that brass?) serpent. All the people had to do was look at it and they would be healed. Many did not look, and they died.

Dang Israelites didn't have faith. Or was that really it? Was faith the root of the lesson God was trying to teach? What if He was trying to teach them to trust Him? Trust Him for food, for protection, for everything.

For these last 2 1/2 years, God has been in the process of teaching me to trust Him. I thought He was trying to teach me to trust Him for food, shelter, transportation, and so forth. Today, it occurred to me that it was so, so much more. I caught a glimpse. Not enough to really explain well, but enough that I would like to share it.

He wants me (and all of us, I'm sure) to trust Him not only for food, shelter, clothing, transportation, but also for the direction our lives go, as well as salvation. In other words, I screw up. I don't understand. I'm going to continue to screw up. I'm going to continue to not understand what God is doing in my life. I really don't know where I should live, what I should do, how to be "good" (whatever that really is). I don't know enough to be someone worth the time the Lord invests in me. If I can trust Him with everything, trust Him to the point that He wishes I would, then I can rest assured of my salvation because I have turned it over to Him. Submission to Him is trusting Him.

This is in no way "resting on my laurels" (I don't have any, anyway). This is trusting the Lord Jesus Christ for my salvation, for my protection, and that everything is going to work together for my good.

A while back, I had a convo with my good friend, Meili. She has a tendency to charge forward, doing what she thinks she should, with the idea that God will correct her if she's wrong. He has. It may have taken longer than would have suited other people, but her life is between her and God, not between her and onlookers. And, in my view, she has learned wisdom in the process, wisdom she probably could not have learned in any other way. I'm not exactly sure what this has to do with the topic at hand, except-perhaps-that trusting that God will correct us if need be is a part of trusting God as a whole. Perhaps we needn't be so afraid that we'll screw up that we make no decisions at all (that's pretty much where I stand/sit a lot of the time). Perhaps, after we have learned the lessons, God will correct us and set us straight - as long as we remain trusting, humble, and teachable. Rather like that child God keeps telling us to be like to inherit His kingdom.

Vanity and Pride

Vanity, pride, looking beyond the mark, self-will, arrogance, and reckless enthusiasm all proceed from a lack of gratitude to God for what He gives us. Instead of accepting in gratitude and practicing it with patience, we demand more, insist we can improve on His ways, and charge ahead into the pass to be destroyed by the beast.

That was from this post. (Emphasis added.)

Lately, I have felt stuck. Why am I not receiving what was promised?

I was told a few weeks ago by the Spirit that God put me (in July) where I could learn to be more like Christ. The analogy of the young man learning to create a net came to mind. I accepted it then.

But, surely, it is now time to move on - to do something more, to receive angels face to face in waking life.

I prayed, begged, cried for something better. I resisted the idea that I was doing what I should be doing. It was getting old. It was getting boring. (I've done it since the day after the July lecture in St. George.) Many times it is difficult and painful. I had (and have) dreams I would like to accomplish, interests I would love to pursue. I don't want to wait until summer or later to have my life change into what I have wanted it to be for many years.

Serving where I am serving is not really all that fun and pleasant for me. I find myself wishing or daydreaming of having work that pays better by the hour, work that I enjoy immensely, work that allows me to go home after eight or ten hours so I can get a good night's sleep each night.

I sensed that I was not quite doing something right. I begged God to tell me what it was.

Then I read the post I linked to above.

And I read: "Vanity. Pride. Self-will. Arrogance. This shows you are not being grateful to God for what He has given to you."

I read: "You demand more. You insist you can improve on His ways. You are guilty of not practicing patience. And you are guilty of ingratitude."

Now, others may read something else when they read this post. A commenter on In 200 words or less said this about the post I linked to above:

Maybe you should . . . not rely upon hearsay or rely upon the arm of flesh - Denver. This is what concerns me is so many waiting upon every word coming forth from Denver and not waiting upon the Lord. Do you think maybe God is testing us all to see if we just jump from the worship of LDS leadership to the worship of Denver? Maybe those millions of people who really adore Jesus and are of other faiths, go to Jesus directly and not through another arm of flesh. They rely upon Jesus' grace. wherein Denver talks about the works and the law again ... the same old Aaronic order of things. Why in the heck should we preserve the restoration when God has something so much better to give to us if we only go to Him? If you all keep looking to Denver for your mentoring and knowledge, the Lord will withhold revelations that you could have yourself. Denver did a great job calling us all to repentance ...but it is time to move on and put way the Law of Moses (Aaronic) and find Jesus at the mountain. As long as you are looking to Denver as your leader the Lord will not take you from the bottom of the mountain to the top ... Denver is our test ... are you ready to graduate or not?

To me, this sounds like exactly what the post I linked to at the beginning warns against. "Let's rush into the pass. We are not in Old Testament times. Let's stop relying on Denver and move forward!"

For me, Denver's post was a direct answer to my many cries to the Lord, begging for help and understanding. I don't care what person it came through, it is the word of the Lord. It was a wake-up call to me.

My prayers will change and I hope I will continue as I now profess. I hope and intend to pray in gratitude - for this opportunity to become Christlike and patient, for the place in which I live, for the incredible blessings and miracles that have brought me to this point.

I have been guilty of ingratitude. I apologize to the Lord for that. I have thought I could press forward when I have not yet learned what He told me He intended to teach me this year. This year, as in a twelve month period, not as in for a few months until I get tired of it.

When God Asks for the Ultimate Sacrifice

Job. Abraham. Others. God either put into their lives something they greatly feared, or asked them to do something that - I believe - they greatly feared.

One of the parts on the path to God is that He will ask you to do something you do not want. It appears that it is something that is fearful to you. Abraham was going to be offered up as a human sacrifice. It is only natural that he should fear not only having such a thing done to him, but having it done to his beloved son. He had apparently already lost one son when Sarah kicked out the boy and his mother. He may have been fearful of losing his other son. Job plainly says that the thing he greatly feared had come upon him.

A friend and I were talking about Abraham's sacrifice. She pointed out that God wants us to face our fears and overcome them. That is the point of asking us to do the one thing we most don't want to do.

It is not so we can take a stand against God and say, "No. I'm going to be an adult here, and I will not do what you ask." (There is a thought process going around that Abraham lost his exaltation because he obeyed the command to offer up Isaac. Such a notion contradicts scripture.)

Neither is it to feed God's pride, or to show us and Him that we will bend to Him at all costs (though bending to Him at all costs is part of the process).

It is God helping us to over come all fear, all hesitation: Fear of what others will think about us or do to us. Fear of losing everything. Fear that your only son will not only be killed, but will be killed as a sacrifice.

Do we trust God? Do we trust that what He asks us to do is for our own benefit? Truly? Deep inside? Does God love us? Is He selfless in that love? Can He be trusted with all that we are, have, and believe?

It is a process of learning to trust God completely. When He asks for that one thing that we fear most, that one thing that we are most reluctant to put upon the altar, we are learning several things:

God always comes first. Not us. Not our families. Not our religion. Not our money nor our job. Not our reputation.
We learn to overcome all fear. After that experience, we fear nothing.
We learn to be selfless. Those who become eligible to be as God, must be as selfless as He is.

I'm sure there are many other things to be learned from this, however, this is all I have right now. Isn't scripture study incredibly interesting? Isn't there so much to learn and gain from looking deeply into what is there, and asking God to open up to us what we do not know?