Saturday, January 30, 2016

Our Relationship With God

Though I have many questions and have yet to understand many things about my faith, there is a fundamental belief or testimony that I have, that is the foundation for my entire spiritual life: that God is my Heavenly Father; that He is keenly aware of my life, my worries, my struggles, and my desires; and that He loves me. Here are some quotes:
If you are reverent and prayerful and obedient, the day will come when there will be revealed to you why the God of heaven has commanded us to address him as Father, and the Lord of the Universe as Son.

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

What man among you, having a son, and he shall be standing out, and shall say, Father, open thy house that I may come in and sup with thee, will not say, Come in, my son; for mine is thine, and thine is mine?

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?

Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

He who rules the universe is our individual Father to whom we may speak as a son speaks to his father.
I believe my faith in God as my Heavenly Father comes from an experience I had while I was in the Missionary Training Center in Provo in 1991, while preparing to go to Japan as a missionary. The moment we accept the idea that God lives, that He is real, that He has all power, and that He loves us; we start to pray to Him, and acknowledge His hand in our lives. When things go "right" (according to our view and understanding), we are grateful to God. But when things go "wrong," God can seem absent, and there is a temptation to blame and accuse God of not caring, or to feel like He cares about others but not about us. Enter the hard doctrine:
For, behold, I have refined thee, I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.
1 Nephi 20:10

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