Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Mountain biking and the Gospel.

When thinking about the Gospel I often find patterns occur and we can often make parables to help us understand. Jesus Christ himself often taught in parables and if its good enough for Jesus, by golly, its good enough for me. And I continued to think and ponder and wonder what I should make a parable to, and you know what? I came to the conclusion that I really love mountain biking. Like, a lot. So I figured I might as well go with something that I know a little bit about. And for the most part everybodys ridden a bike before. And if theres one thing that makes mountain biking fun is pushing the limits while still staying safe. Mountain biking is supposed to be fun, not get you killed. Likewise I think of our life here on Earth. We have this big beautiful world that we are privileged to spend a little time on and God sent us here to be able to learn and to progress. When we are able to make some mistakes and learn from them we are able to bring ourselves a little bit closer to God. The old addage "live and learn" literally comes true. Likewise, mountain biking really wouldn't be too fun if we hit a jump and then crashed. But you know what? It gets less and less fun when we don't try to improve and we eat dirt every time we hit a jump thats about the same size and shape.
Mountain Biking getting less fun
But when we learn and our experience grows we can jump all sorts of obstacles; berms, rocks, logs, tree roots, everything that the trail can throw at us. It even prepares us to hit bigger obstacles, which at the time may be scary but afterwards will be a good tale to tell the kids. Likewise, I know that "this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God" (Alma 34:32) and when we exercise our faith in Him as we go through our trials we can become closer to being what we need to be, and, also what we want to be.  

   

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Darn blogs...

So lately during the past couple three weeks I have been wondering what I could write a blog on. I have been putting it off for some time now and I needed to come unto repentance so as of right now I am going to redouble my efforts in my blog writing. I think of my past experience with blogs and I'm like, "Man I hate blogs..." But now I get to blog about the most important thing there ever was, the Gospel, not my feelings and insight on how I think Shakespeare shaped my childhood by writing "Hamlet". But one thing that I know to be true is that the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as restored by the Prophet Joseph Smith is able to help anyone in any phase of life. How? Because God loves us and knows what we need and he has provided us with the principles and ordinances that will bring us closer to Him. I testify that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true and that the way that we can know of a surety is by reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. In John chapter 7 Jesus' kinsmen doubt that he is the son of God so Jesus says
"My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." So if we want to know if anything that people say is true we put it to the test. So thats what we do, we invite people to put the Book of Mormon to the test and read and pray and ponder its message. I know that as you sincerely do so you will be able to know that it is true.