I'm addicted to you

Besides being a great old school song about dumb love, it is how I feel about Disneyland.
I mean really. 
Colored sidewalks and always clean. Music everywhere you go, and on frequent occasion live music. Food that makes the palette exultant and rides and fantasy magic that every child believes in. It is where I go to become young again. .Especially the older that I get the more that I realize that life can age you rather quickly. Stress and other things can accumulate and then what? You feel old. 
There are several things that can fix that for me, but the deepest return to childhood is Disneyland. It cleanses long embedded spores of unnecessary viral aging and restores my belief in magic.
That may seem stupid and too childish to you, but the more I understand about the gospel and the more that I learn the more that my trips come to mean. They are not nearly as instructive as a temple experience or anything, but with the vacation from "real life" comes a new perspective that will always exist as I go about doing my thing. Disneyland is my escape from that. 
I have other escapes too, whether four wheeling in the mountains, taking pictures, spending time with family, hanging out with friends, or the other various activities of life that I have found recluse in they are in their own ways each therapeutic, but Disneyland will always hold a special place in my heart. It may be something in the air, but the more that I go it is something inside of me that draws me back each time. Something that has etched the goings and comings of that place in the eternal parts of my soul. Something that feels a lot like Home.

Disneyland

Do I miss it? You could say that.


Fantasmic


I will be posting about Disneyland on and off for a bit or at least until I can get over my pining.

To be or not to be...

Elder Holland is one of my heroes and I heard two talk references today that he gave so I thought I would talk about them because they are interrelated topics and from the same person.
The other reason is because I saw that a few people read the how to have a good day post and were probably disappointed. This is the best, concise teaching I have found on how to be happy and have a good day.
As Elder Holland states much better than I can, the best way to have a good day and be happy is to know that unhappiness has an end. Most anyone can suffer through unpleasantness if they know that it has an end. I am not talking about the eternity kind of end, though that will certainly end ALL sorrow and suffering. I am talking about the living reality of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Because He lives and loves us our bad days and suffering have an end in Him as soon as we seek the solace that He offers. We must keep moving forward and that takes real faith that the best is truly yet to be. 


The best is yet to be 

Good things to come.

How to have a good day.

Decide to have a good day.
That was easy.


No, I know that there is a lot more that goes into having a good day, but realistically this is a great start. Most of the time if we start out finding the bad in a certain thing then it becomes extremely difficult to find the good because we have predetermined that it is bad. 
One of the best examples; Monday. Ever since I looked at Monday as a continuation of my weekends it is a great day. I love getting up on Monday just as much as every other day now and it is no longer the dreaded Monday. It no longer ruins my weekend but only services to enhance it.


So Decide to have a good day and Day Light Savings Sunday March 13th, @ 2:00 a.m. Don't miss it.

Life gets interesting

I love looking back on things that happen in life. 
I love wondering during interesting times, "What will this look like when I look back?"
I love wondering why it's so hard to see right now for what it is.


Life is always getting more interesting. It is one of the things that gives me great joy in life. I love to be able to live life without stressing about others opinions or worries. I look at how much I've grown and realize that I used to be a punk.There are so many thing that I realize and the best way to describe it is like climbing a very interestingly shaped cliff. You reach a ridge that is sooooo high that you could never possibly see over it. You climb it with much help and physical, mental, emotional excursion and then you go a little way on and find another cliff. The interesting part is that when you look back on the first, second, third, etc. Ridges that you climbed each keeps diminishing in size because of your perspective. I use to think that being single was the worst punishment that could be endured by man. After dating lots of girls I realize that marrying the wrong person is and that I am happy and am able to make others happy just as well as a single as I can a married person. The happiness is different, but not more. It's made me more responsible and depend more on Heavenly Father. I have needed that. 
I also used to think that surviving in the world was impossible. Money makes the world go round, right? Wrong. Funny how you find that so many things that you though years ago are simply perceived with a limited perspective. 
I love going to the temple for that reason. Perspective. That is one of the greatest ways to make life interesting. You want to see your old troubles in their true light? You need to go to the temple for that. Then you realize the size of the world and our place in it, coupled with the size of eternity and our possibly ever present reality there.

Much love

I was reading Luke 7, one of my favorite chapters, and at the end of the chapter after all of the great things that Jesus does He sits with the Pharisee Simon to eat. During the course of the night there comes a woman who crying bathes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair and anoints Him with oil. Simon is troubled that Jesus would let this go on knowing that the woman touching Him is unclean, and the Savior precedes to give Him one of the greatest parables about love I know of. 

There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?
Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged.

I always find it interesting since returning from my mission to find people that love the Savior in varying degrees. We all owe the Savior an infinite amount. There is no one that can say, "Well I've never broken the law of chastity or the word of wisdom or killed anyone and this person has done all of that, therefore I need to repent of less than they do." All of the sin in the world is just as damning as the single smallest sin in regards to entering the Kingdom of God. There is no varying degrees within righteousness. We are either clean or we are dirty. Therefore we all need forgiveness equally. The difference of the people in the parable then is not one of quantity of sin for the quantity is the same, one. the difference between the two people is the one justified that he only owed his debtor fifty pence while the other accepted that he owed the full amount. If we claim that we have overcome sin "on our own" and therefore are the owners of it then we do not owe the debt of gratitude to the Savior for that sin. The truth is that Christ has already purchased all of our sin. We give it to Him and in return He gives himself to us. That was the trade in the Garden that night of Atonement and it is the trade today. The Son of God for the sins of the world or our world. If we realize how much Christ has done for us then we love Him that much more. If we feel that we come into anything on our own then we automatically love Him less. 

So it is with others. If we truly love someone then we think about what we owe them. We realize that everything good in life comes from them for they are sent into our lives from Heavenly Father and Jesus from whom all good gifts come. We realize that and it increases our love of God and of that person. We then seek to do everything we can for them and for God. Which in turn deepens our ability to love. 

Much love everyone.

Post 111

Make a wish. It's as close as it gets.

The Greatest Generation

So yeah the CES Fireside was pretty sweet. I think that it was interesting that Elder Perry brought up that his generation was marked as the greatest generation. I had heard that applied to my generation on multiple occasions but I think that he gave us some keys on how to become the greatest generation and what was to be expected of us in order to become the greatest generation. There is no scriptural precedence that God should have a favorite people on the face of the earth. 
The only way to gain favor in the sight of God is to follow Him. 
You cannot be born great. Only for greatness.


"They had to learn to accept the future that played out one day at a time."


Daily Prayer
Daily Scripture Study
Temple Worthiness
Daily Service


These are what I believe are keys to becoming the greatest generation.


"Arise to a new sense of commitment and arise to become the greatest generation"


I submit that a "return to Christian values" is more than an invitation to be missionaries. It is an invitation to become as the the Savior is. It is an invitation to become the greatest generation. 
The greatest generation of missionaries
The greatest generation of leaders of His church
The greatest example of righteous living.
And through the grace of God, partakes of the greatest gift. The Atonement. And then as Elder Perry states extending that gift to others. And becoming saviors on Mount Zion, partners with the Savior of the World.

Vanity

The following is an excerpt from, "Be and Not Seem" - Elder MARION D. HANKS

"Vanity it is, to wish to live long, and to be careless to live well. [Thomas å Kempis, Of the Imitation of Christ, chapter 1]

Vanity it is, I add, and foolishness indeed, to pretend--to say and not to do, to seem and not to be.

In its worst form, that is hypocrisy. In its best form, I suppose, it might be thought to be pursuing the "as if" principle--that is, to say to oneself, "I will behave as if I were honest, decent, moral, courteous, gracious, sensitive, and courageous; and in so behaving, I will acquire the capacities, make the habits, and become capable of being all those things."

I suspect that most of us fall some place in between. We do not savor, and in fact sicken at, the thought that we are hypocrites, and yet we do so much to be seen of men. We sometimes say that which will tickle the ears of men. We pretend, knowing that in our own quiet places--our closets or, wherever the place, our minds--we are not what we seem.

That is not to suggest that only the perfect may act with credibility in matters of important principles. All of us fall short and are inevitably visited with the pangs and pains of our own failures; there is a universal understanding of that, since none of us is exempt from it. But to deliberately pretend, to put on a show, to give long prayers when we have devoured the widow's house, to do less than we can and should and pretend to do, to go through motions--not because they are honest efforts to do better, but simply to try falsely to fit somebody's conception of what we are--all of this is vanity and foolishness indeed. Christ's life, His instruction, and His testimony centered in being what we ought to be. And there is great room in His holy heart to forgive when we fall short in genuinely trying to be what we ought to be.

Early this morning, under the heading "be and not seem," I noted for myself an idea or two about Him, and I share them with you. These thoughts are not a pretense at comprehensive scholarship but simply an expression of what in Him seems to me at this hour to be so admirable and beautiful and worthy of emulation. I noted first His acute awareness and sensitivity to the lives and needs of others, to the point that the woman in the mob who touched the hem of His garment found response, not only in her own well-being but in His knowledge of the incident. He knew He had been touched, though ever so lightly. And when He mentioned it, His disciples, seeing the thronging multitudes, wondered how He could ask such a question. Who had touched Him? Many were touching Him. But one touched Him with a special need and a heart ready for the response, and He knew it. (See Mark 5:25-­34; Luke 8:43-­48.)

Another characteristic of the Lord was His acceptance of others as they were without the intention to leave them as they were. He could heal the body, bless the mind, and help change the soul of one who was willing--the prodigal, Zaccheus, Magdalene. Remember also that moment on the cross when He forgave. Most of all, I am touched by that tender time when a father who loved his ailing son, and who had sought help from the disciples and had not received it, presented himself to the Lord pleading for help. To him the Lord said, "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." Do you think that one who has not loved a son might have a little less sensitivity to this. But with his heart and his life hanging on his son's well-being, when he was asked if he had faith he answered, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." He did not have perfect faith, but he knew to whom he spoke and trusted in Him. (See Mark 9:17­-27.) Oh, how I love and need that!

The reason that I choose this part is because it strikes me as the most important in my life. To wish to live long and to be careless to live well. And then with the plea help thou my unbelief. It will make more sense tomorrow, but I was researching, reading, studying and found this and it helped me understand a little better so I thought I would share this with you and hope that it helps you.

Faith

So I was reading today (and every other day too, but specifically today) and re-read that faith is the principle of action in all intelligent beings. Then in EQ they asked us why don't we do things that we know will bless us. The inverse then is true as far as I can tell. If faith is the principle of action then the principle of non-action is doubt. The reason that we do or do not do things is nothing other than a lack of faith. If you don't believe that it will rain out you don't wear or even take a coat. If you have a particle of faith that it will rain then you take a coat. If you really believe that it will rain then you wear a coat. So simple as I can put it is that when you boil everything down to the bits and pieces core it is Faith. The reason people don't go to church is that they lack faith that it will enhance every aspect of their lives. Apply it to raincoats, dating, church, school, and you will find that it is true. Faith is the principle of action in all intelligent beings and a lack of faith is the principle of non-action. If there is another thing that I am over looking I would appreciate your insight. This is still to be tested and analyzed but I think that it is a good start. 


P.S.
I know that there are only a dozen or so that even read this, but I have gotten lots of comments on needing to change my blog so that it is easier to read. I am not an interior design so if you want it to change then I need specific feedback. I am pretty relaxed about such trivial matters and the look is of no importance to me and I really don't think that it will make a big difference so if you want to see something I will be willing to try it.

Life in general

I couldn't think of anything specific to address today and so just a general state of life for now. 
Painting the house is an adventure but it will look great finished.
Work rocks my world. 
Institute is great.
I love my room.
My ward is pretty bom-diggitty
And people wonder why my life is great. Now you can stop wondering.

The Infinite Atonement

So this is a favorite topic to revisit specifically, and it gets drawn upon fairly often anyways, but the fact that the Atonement is infinite. I love that. 

Infinite

Boundless

Limitless

Unlimited

This means that God's mercy is unlimited. 

That is fairly ironic, because most of the time I think that people have a general perception that God is not as merciful as Christ. I believe that is false. I believe that they both have an unlimited amount of love and mercy. 

So the question that usually begets

"So if God has unlimited mercy then why will we not all return back to live with Him?'

Good question, but founded on a logical fallacy. We automatically assume that the only thing to keep us from returning to live with God would be Him. The truth is well founded in the opposite. Look at yourself. When you do something stupid to hurt someone's feelings how awkward is the first time that you see that person the next time? Multiply that by an unlimited amount. There is usually an awkward factor when people stop praying, reading scriptures, going to church, being social, etc. 

God wants everyone back. 

Do we want to be back with Him though?

The scriptures say that there will come a time of judgement and we will know that His judgement is just. The reason is that when we enter a kingdom of glory we will be eternally happy. It is a kingdom of glory. The problem is the scriptures also state that they who enter into a rest less than with the Father, do so only because they were not willing to receive that which they might have enjoyed. 

This does not mean that they will be miserable

They will live full happy and productive existences. 

However, because they were unwilling to deal with that awkward moment of I have really messed up and I want to make things right, they refuse and accept less. 

The great thing is that it will still cover the unfairness of life. 

Anything that was dealt to you unjustly or because of the actions of someone else will be compensated for. Things will be weighed equally, but there will still be some who will not want to have all that the Father has. 

It really shouldn't shock you though, if you think about it you all know people like that and I have a lot of those tendencies within myself. At its root; Pride. So, now what. Decide what you want and you will know who to follow to get what you want. 

Spectacular Events

So discussing spectacular events and things that are great and that you remember in an Institute class, I had an interesting thought. If anything from a few minutes to a few years is defined as a spectacular event then my life is a spectacular event. All of the great things I've done, and people I've met, friends, I've made and lost. All of these things are in their own way spectacular events. Thus my life is a spectacular event and this weekend it is going to be even more so.

Back to December

No this isn't a post about a great Taylor Swift song, though I have listened to it recently and like it for the most part. I just needed a title and it was on my mind. 
I love my institute class. I think that it is interesting to see different teaching styles though. I love how the gospel works differently on different people and you can totally tell the way that some people teach. There are some people who teach with source material, from source material, and with no source material. I prefer with no source material. It is much more difficult,  but everything is until it gets easy. There are teachers who demand class participation, encourage class participation, and discourage class participation by lecturing. Depending on the circumstance my mode changes but I know that I like the second option and things usually go best with the middle option. 
So why no source material. I find that writing a talk out was always laborious for me. I can never follow a topic and I prefer to derive topics and lessons and principle from the scriptures that are applicable to our lives and that is hard to do with lots of forethought. It floes much better to be speaking and then realize that it relates to a scripture and then deliver the contents of the scriptures in an applicable format. 
Kinda besides the point except that we had a substitute tonight that was a different style from our normal teacher, so it was different. 
We are in 3rd Nephi and talking about the teachings of the Savior to the people in the America's and miracle were introduced to the lesson with what seemed to be an intended tangent so that we didn't spend too much time in 3rd Nephi which irked me because I think that most people are uncomfortable in the particular block we are in because they do not understand it. But anyway we spent a good chunk of class covering two week old sunday school material but I got to thinking on my own tangent of the tangent of miracles and faith.
In 3rd Nephi Jesus Christ tells the people that he has never seen such great faith among all the Jews and that they have neither heard nor seen the things which they have heard and seen.
So I thought to reason that they learned by faith. Which means that learning by faith means that you discern spiritually, because of great faith, the true nature of things. Growing in faith means that your understanding grows and that as you come closer to the Savior that you accept with faith, based on prior manifestations the truth of what is presented. Faith is the price. Because of great faith they heard and saw things that others did not, because they were willing to do what others were not. They understood and continually grew in their understanding. That is why two people can sit in the same room and hear the same things and one understands and one does not. The one who understands exercises faith based on prior knowledge and experience. The one who misses the point refuses to accept immediately what has been given and wants to mull it over and separate it and put it back together. When the Spirit came to the first and said this is true and you need to change he said yes. The second said well I need to change to here and here but what has this got do with anything. I am fine there. 
Faith to change is a willingness to accept that we are not perfect and that perfection in it's truest form is progression. When we are becoming perfect we are always changing. Hence perfection is only achieved by gaining the narrow and narrowing way that leads to eternal life. From the distance a vanishing point is observed as the destination. when finding it however we realize that the road stretches on. Not to realize that the journey to perfection is impossible, but it is in our "eternal" progression. We will always be becoming more perfected. I submit that there is nothing that does not need changing and modifying in our lives even though we may have reached a perfection.

I hope that you are happy

So I was listening to some music and Wicked came on and it says, "I hope you're happy!I hope you're happy now! I hope you're happy how you've hurt your cause forever, I hope you think you're clever! I hope you're happy! I hope you're happy, too. I hope you're proud how you would grovel in submission to feed your own ambition. So though I can't imagine how, I hope you're happy, right now!"
I actually hope that you are happy, not like this.

The mind is a fascinating thing

So you hear all these stories about how powerful the mind is and I had an experience that now I am ready to do something about mind power. So in my house we recycle plastic bottles before recycling. We refill them with various liquids; milk, Kool-aid, tang, more water and they are great to take on the go. Well I reached in and grabbed what my mind registered as tang, an extremely orange flavored drink with tons of vitamin C and started drinking it. I was distracted listening to my brother and then I realized after looking at the bottle that I was indeed drinking water. My brain had actually simulated the taste and smell of tang so that I actually thought that was what I was drinking. This leads me to believe that there is more to positive thinking, and mind power than most people believe. I will keep you posted.

Breakthrough

So today made a breakthrough in my battle against pride.
Realization: If you base your self worth off of anything other than divine nature then you are prideful and limit the amount of people that you can love.
If you base your self worth off of being pretty and then someone comes along who is prettier or less pretty than you, you hate that person. If you base it off of basketball skill and someone comes along who is better or worse than you then you hate them.
The only way to eliminate pride is to see your own divine nature and then to see it in other people in everything that you do. Then being equals who both require God for everything that you are you can truly love that person as God does.
Shout out to Mac for teaching an awesome lesson by the spirit to help me put everything together.

A Mega Motion Picture Event

No I am not going to make a movie, but i saw a great one. I love how there were two movies this summer that had villains who become good guys. I liked Despicable Me, but didn't really see it as that when i was watching it. I thought the major difference was that there was no good guy in the end. It was two bad guys and it ends up being a bad guy and a bad guy that is trying to learn to be a normal guy. Megamind for me was totally different in the idea that you have the very polar difference in A good guy and a bad guy, and then a new bad guy shows up and there is no good guy, but the old bad guy now becomes the good guy. I feel that in a lot of ways that I relate really well to Megamind. For most of my life I have never really had people that understand me. I fully realize that it is largely my fault and for various reasons I find it easier in a lot of ways. I see the same thing in Megamind. That only changes when he finds that one person that he can completely trust. I believe that will be the way my story goes. I also think that we share many other similarities, I like the color blue, I believe in presentation, and I have been referred to as an evil genius more than once. Genius is simply a matter of identifying a problem, simplifying it to it's root, then eliminating the root. I love Megamind and hope that you will enjoy watching it with someone who is a hero for you. Doing the hardest thing. Putting away what comes naturally to do what it right. Gives me great hopes for my future.

Mega Weekend

So Megamind comes out on DVD tomorrow. Guess who is going to own it before the day really even starts. 
I guess I am kinda obsessed but I relate really well with Megamind. I will have a big long post about my Mega-weekend tomorrow. Count on it.

Early

So I thought that I would write early. I love institute and the insights that I get when I go. I love my Book of Mormon class. This is the fourth time I have taken it and 1.5th time from the same teacher. Why you might ask, many people do. But I find that the hardest thing to do is to learn new things from the same material. I love taking the same class over and over because I get to learn new things from the same material. It has helped my scripture study so much. I have the tendency to remember parts of the scriptures and be more or less scrupulous as I ma gong through them based on prior experience. I am training myself to always be looking for new things and for the majesty and power of the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon. So, I recommend everyone learn things over and over again, it is much better in a class than having to do it in real life and for a class that you don't have to pay for. It is the rockin'est!

So fantastic

I was evaluating my life and recently decided that it is fantastic. Are there things that may not be the absolute best, yes. But the thing about that is that I don't think that they are the best thing for me. The problem with me is that I am prone to look at other people and see what they have and decide that is what success is. The problem is that it is not what I need to succeed. God is already giving me everything that I need to succeed and that only thing I have to do is prepare myself to receive it. I am working on that.

I feel to share

I went to a fireside on Sunday and the speaker allowed himself to deviate from the topic for a bit because he said that, "I feels to share something with you."

I thought that was a particularly interesting wording. I was impressed with his application to daily life and throughout the talk how he put a large emphasis on the fact that there are two powers at play in the world, and everyone is always one hundred percent obedient. Either to one or the other or a mixture. And that we receive wages of he whom we listed to obey. Also that we see that God in his infinite mercy seeks to make us happy and will stand by us, while Satan seeks to make us miserable and will abandon us. 

I love the simplicity of the Gospel. There are only two forces at work and the simplest way to know is to test if it is of God. If it is not then you know that the driving force behind it is Satan. God will seek to make us happy, and if we align our will with His then we will be the happiest. 

God is the happiest of men, for He enjoys the fullness of all things in their glorified and perfected state. I feel to share that there is nothing sweeter than choosing to do things His way for the right reasons. C.S. Lewis said that there is the right attitude and the wrong attitude of those who follow God. The right attitude is, "thy will be done." The wrong attitude is, "Fine, have it your way." While both ways are following God only one will lead us to be like Him. Only one will help us to recognize the blessings that come from Him.

My first "Rant"

I really don't like ranting, but sitting in church and hearing false doctrine really boils my blood. We are talking about choices and agency, and then I hear this preposterous doctrine that I have still yet to find confirmed anywhere at all, "Satan wanted us to come down and he would make us do the right thing."
And I sit there and think, "Wow! Really?!? After having lived in Heaven with a perfect loving Heavenly Father, and Mother would we really believe that a third part of our brothers and sisters signed up for that plan? Blows my Mind. I never see that in anything scripturally either. The thing that I do see is that there is always this underlying theme that you can do what you want and there are no consequences."
So what is the best idea that I have heard. It is a very similar plan up to the point of accountability for sin. The "atonement" would be that Satan would suffer and grant unconditional pardon for the sins that everyone commits. This is misconstrued as "true love" for would God not want all of us back.
Then people say that he "sought to destroy the agency of man."
This is true and so turning to the scriptures we ask, "How do you destroy the agency of man if not to force him to do the right thing?
Great point aside from the fact that it is never stated. But what is not there is just as interesting as what is. For those who have already opened 2 Nephi 2 we will go there. 
I point out as a side note that agency is a Restoration term and never appears in the Bible or Book of Mormon though the doctrine and principles behind are all over the place.
Verse 13 Reads, "And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away."
I think that Satan would be pretty happy with that.
And how would you do that?
Simply remove accountability for your actions.  Hence no law, no sin, and right on down the line.
It is simple to see why his rebellion was rejected (note: Not a plan, a rebellion) really. He would never have had enough love to suffer for everyone in the garden and it defeats the purpose of the plan (also mentioned in the above scripture). If the plan was to return and live with God why leave in the first place. The idea is not to return and live with God, the idea is to return and be like God and even had Satan's plan worked to the very last detail, we would never be able to be like God, because there would be no progression. We would stagnate and decline from our mortal state, and then the "goal" will have been frustrated anyhow, because upon returning in this sick state we could still not be with God, for we would not be like Him. Cleansed from sin? Yes. Able to abide the laws of  the Celestial Kingdom? No. Hence being lost forever anyway.
This is simply a mimic of what lies he spreads to others everyday. Does he ever force them to do right? No he tries to remove accountability. "It's my parents fault I'm this way.", or "It's the way that I was raised." 
But we never hear things like that.
What do the anti-christs of the Book of Mormon teach? "Whatsoever thing a man does there is no crime..." something like that if I remember correctly.  
I will admit that I don't know if it false doctrine or not, but it requires too great a stretch of my imagination to assume that it is as simple as people often boil it down to. The thing about this that really bothers me is that it distracts us from countering Satan. The best way to win a battle is to get the opponent to attack in the wrong spot. If we ignore that one of the major things that Satan tries to push on us is to not be accountable, then we lose the focus of where to fight back.

Life as we know it.

I have been thinking a lot about life and how it is that we see our life in comparison with others. Often I see other's lives and think that  I might like some portion of their life, long ago realizing that their entire life is not even close to desirable for me, but then I also realize that with things in my life and probably things in their lives as well, if you get a part of it, you get all of it.Everything inter-relates in our lives. So getting that one thing from someone else would eventually snowball and you would end up with everything. So I think that the best option is to be extremely happy with life as we know it.

Back From the Dead

So I figured out why a high tolerance for pain can be a bad thing being that I had some compound of influenza and sinus infection and was just trying to survive. Anyway, feeling much better know and breathing again is a huge plus. 
Had lots of time to think and thought about life. There are things in life that we do that teach us profound principles.Then I realized that there are things that I cannot find any kind of profound principle that underlies it. These are things that I need to stop doing. 

What's love got to do with it.

I guess that it's acceptable to be able to write about love during February. 
I was at ward temple night tonight and sitting there I was thinking about love. Love is an interesting thing. If you've ever seen sword in the stone (and if you haven't, it's hilarious) Arthur is taking lessons with Merlin about magic, life, and the world around him. They have a run in with a couple of squirrels and they have been learning about gravity. At the end Arthur comes to realize that Love is the greatest power in the universe, even greater than gravity. 
I think that is phenomenal!
Loving the Lord.
That is a phrase that appears all over the scriptures. 
What does it mean though?
When you truly love the Lord anything that you would do would build Him up. Others would want to know Him because they know you. You serve Him, and do your very best while serving Him. Nothing is too hard, inconvenient, or impossible. We strive to be like Him in all that we do. In short true worship is emulation.
There are only two things that we are to love with all our heart might mind and strength. God, and your wife. 
That says something about the treatment of your wife. 
Love is something that we cannot possess. It is something that possesses us. It is something that overcomes us with an indescribable urge to do and be better. It is not the person that makes you want to be a better person. Being around that person makes you want to be a better person because you see a better way of living life. You see new possibilities that help you to understand your own divine nature. 
Love is the most powerful force in the universe.
Even more powerful than Gravity.

The Gospel

I love the Gospel!
I love everything about it. It just makes sense. I love debating about it in the realm of spiritual things especially. The gospel will always prevail and so the realms of secularism will never diminish it, but in the realms of spiritual precedence there is not anything in existence like it. 
Debating is an interesting art, but like most things quickly lost my interest once I learned how to cheat (bad thing about ADD). I know that if I ever get too involved with something then I just analyze the system, learn to cheat it and then I can stop obsessing over it. 
I have done this with the education system, every video game that I have ever played, books, movies, etc. Debating has the same mechanism. It has multiple but grouped together they are called fallacies. You are probably familiar at least by name with some of the more popular ones but there are many. A nice list that I found includes 42; Ad Hominem, Ad Hominem Tu Quoque, Appeal to Authority, Appeal to Belief, Appeal to Common Practice, Appeal to Consequences of a Belief, Appeal to Emotion, Appeal to Fear, Appeal to Flattery, Appeal to Novelty, Appeal to Pity, Appeal to Popularity, Appeal to Ridicule, Appeal to Spite, Appeal to Tradition, Bandwagon, Begging the Question, Biased Sample, Burden of Proof, Circumstantial Ad Hominem, Composition, Confusing Cause and Effect, Division, False Dilemma, Gambler's Fallacy, Genetic Fallacy, Guilt By Association, Hasty Generalization, Ignoring A Common Cause, Middle Ground, Misleading Vividness, Personal Attack, Poisoning the Well, Post Hoc, Questionable Cause, Red Herring, Relativist Fallacy, Slippery Slope, Special Pleading, Spotlight, Straw Man, Two Wrongs Make A Right and there are many others. 
I would usually construct these into my debates on purpose. I would construct a grand argument and augment it with a simple fallacy and then I would turn things over to the opponent who did what most anyone would do and they attack and try to break down the fallacy while ignoring the initial and most of the time invalid and terrible argument. 
We do this too often in the church. Opponents of the truth will always use fallacies to distract and dissuade, but the glorious thing of the gospel is that it is evidence in and of itself. There is no bravado, there is not show, no cover for the things that are not. It is simple and true and there are not holes to be found. It is complete and will always work. More so than gravity, and you can be assured that if it did not work then you did not try it. To read the book of Mormon and pray about it and say that you received no convincing witness is to say that you defied gravity, while holding onto the pencil and never letting it drop. You simply did not let the natural procession of consequences follow. 
Did you read with a pure heart, and real intent to know the mind and will of God? Did you read to gain a greater understanding of the eternal life changing truths contained therein? Did you ask Him with all the sincerity of your soul if the Book was true? 
The gospel needs no lawyers or artificers of speech and debate to proclaim the truthfulness of it. It will witness for itself. We have to let it. 
Have you let it grow within you?

Love

Post 90 should be special and I don't think I have talked about love on here yet and it is something that I study within the realms of both the gospel and human relations with much fascination and so I thought that I would post somewhat of my ideas/findings

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
-- Neil Gaiman.

Interesting

Have you ever thought of a perfect, loving, Heavenly Father or His also perfect, loving Son Jesus Christ and thought how am I supposed to be like someone who is so different from myself?

I read this and I feel a little bit closer to Him and Them who have and continue to suffer so much for us and yet we are often the ones of extend friendship when the Savior asks for devoted love.

I know something you don't know

I kinda feel bad after reading through my blog and realizing that there are things that are posted in reference to my life that others will never know about unless you were affected by it. There is merit to that, but it does feel weird. I begin to know how Joseph felt a little bit more each day.
I wonder how God does what He does and then I realize that He has a lot of advantage over me. 
I appreciate my prayers more and more and they grow more meaningful. It makes life sweet.
My Heavenly Father loves me and I think that He is pretty amazing.

Regrets...mistakes

Do you have any regrets?
No
Then have you never made any mistakes?
No
How do these ideas correlate?
Well, there are plenty of things that I regret and and those usually involve not doing something. There are also plenty of mistakes, but those involve doing something. So the only way to live without regrets are to do what you feel is right with all the information that you have and be willing to make mistakes. 
Because, if you ask most people which is easier to live with, between mistakes or regrets. 99% would probably say mistakes, because at least you don't regret it. You can still regret dong something or not doing something and have it be a mistake.

Curve Ball

So if any of you know me you know I know nothing about baseball and the only other sport I know that has curve balls is ping pong. 
It is interesting because if you play often then you realize that trajectory and force and angle will make the ball land on a certain spot of the table. You then expect the ball to follow a regular course after that. If you spin the ball however then when it hits it doesn't follow the expected trajectory and the results can be rather entertaining. Life is like that. 
:)

Interesting

I find some of the strangest things interesting. Economy, art, literature, fire, history, computers/technology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, reading. Equally strange are the things that are closely related that I don't so much enjoy. English, biology, writing, history, literature, mathematics, art, fire, economy, physics, chemistry, reading, computers/technology, reading, reading.
You probably noticed that some of the things made both lists.
The great thing about literature, history, math, art, and other things is that you can pick and choose what interests you and leave the rest. 
The problem is that being trained to do that a lot of people try to do that with the Gospel. 
This does not work. It is an all or nothing kind of game.
Should it be for the other things in life.
I don't think so

I love to laugh

One of the best songs ever that Disney produced from their live-action era. 
I love the song, mostly because I love to laugh. I think that as long as you can focus on the good that you will always be flying high. It also teaches that there is a time and a place for everything and every emotion. Sadness is what keeps us connected with our life on earth. It reminds us of that test, or that things we've been putting off. Yet there is the middle ground. The confidence that comes from knowing that we are about the work of the Lord is something to rejoice over. 
I think that for the most part people take their jobs too seriously, especially in the church. They try to do more than their hardest. They wear themselves out, afraid that their best isn't good enough. That is because it is not.
Your best will never even be close to good enough.
That is why we have a Savior. 
He expects us to magnify our calling and to do what we can and to turn the rest over to Him in faith that He can do His own work. He loves those we serve more than we ever could. He has felt their and our pain more poignantly than we will ever comprehend and so why do we try to do more than we can?
The Jews felt this way as well and that is what caused them to look beyond the Mark. 
He is the Mark.
Our experiences are not to solely bless the lives of others and to singlehandedly do a marvelous work and a wonder. He asks us to chip in and do our part and He will magnify it beyond our wildest dreams. No one wants the church to succeed more than He does. No one knows what it means to Him more then He does. No one has invested more into it than He has. He is not going to let it fail. He will intercede and preform the miracle. 
The only question is will we be there to witness it?
We cannot yield a miracle of our own will. It must be in accordance with the will of God. If it's going to work out is there anything that we did that would not have been done otherwise? Are we really so important in our own eyes that we think that God needs us?
I know that He doesn't by a long shot, but it is my pleasure to give Him everything so that I can have the opportunity to stand and see the salvation of God and for His arm to be revealed. 
Moral of the rant on my soap box;
Learn to laugh and do everything that you can and then stand still and wait for a miracle.
It may not come in the way you expect but it will come in the way that it needs to.
Never forget that our purpose is to bring others to Christ. First and foremost. He is the one that is Mighty to save.
I hope that you take your job seriously, but also realize your place. You are not in charge. 

Fight...for peace?

Can you fight for peace? That is an interesting phrase that was brought up in a quote from one of my institute classes. I submit that you can indeed fight for peace
Not only that but you have to. 
In a world that breeds negativity and discouragement, we can and must be the ones to stand up for peace. Inner peace that brings us happiness and the peace that lets us walk away and know that we have not been passive, but have boldly declared the truth and done so in a nonviolent way. We have stood our ground and we have extended the flag of His peace to the world. 
I submit that we can and must fight for peace.

If...

If money makes the world go round then why don't you ever see grumpy, old men on carousel horses.
The truth is that money does not make the world go round. I think that there are several things that make the world go round; love, family, friends, music, and happiness.
You think about what makes the world fall down around you. Money isn't on that list. It is more of an hurdle than taking the track away. I also find that money has this funny self destruct mechanism about itself. The more you make the more you spend, the less you make the less you spend and you usually have just enough or just too little.
Yet when I am at work and enjoy what I am doing I get to be happy and spread that happiness to others. I get to make them realize that life is often much better than we anticipate and that the best is truly yet to come.
When I come home to my family or get to hang out with my friends then my world truly turns on the axis of others. they make me want to be a better person and to reach new heights. Yesterday we had a talent show and go to see some varied talents that many people in the ward did not know that others had.
Love. Yeah nuf said there
When something interrupts these things then our world stops spinning, or gets thrown outta whack. Money is not what makes the world go round, cause the only people I usually see on carousel horses are kids (even if they are 95 years old).