BeLeave, and just leave it behind. Talking with non-member friends the hardest thing that is going on in their conversion is believing that they will be like a member. Somehow in their head they got this screwy idea that members are saints or something..... DOH! I mean perfect or something. No member who had lived their whole live preparing for a temple marriage will marry me when my life seems to have been a life lived so wrong. How can I date a member, I don't want to explain to them my shortcomings but I also don't want to leave them in the dark as to who I am? Doubtful, unconfident, and hurt is how we feel when we don't understand how truly beautiful the atonement is. When someone accepts the atonement and the forgiveness therein they are completly forgiven. Their sins are forgotten. Their hearts are mending and they are allowed, no, commanded by God to forgive themselves. Then they MUST forgive others. Why is it that we still dabble in doubt? 2 scriptures
Prov. 3: 26 For the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.
Prov. 25: 19 Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth, and a foot out of joint
Both scriptures refer to the foot. This is what we have to stand on. With the Lord as our confidence we can procede steadily knowing that He has forgiven us of our sins. Without repentance and forgiveness we are as unsteady as a man with a foot out of joint. Nothing to stand on, our belief shaken and our confidence as ashes in the wind.
Forget the fools unwilling to forgive. FORGET THEM. I wish that those who have stepped outside the church and those wanted to step in will do so with confidence that those who have accepted the atonement will also accept the responsibility of "taking upon us the name of Christ" and forgiving other. Especially when they didn't know the gospel before those mistakes were made. If you have overcome so much to get to where you are, and someone dismisses you because when you were 13 you went to football games instead of church and drank before you were baptised your freshman year of college, forget them.
The key, in my mind, is repenting and recieving that confidence, and if they don't repent and recieve that, well, then don't stoop to their level.
I mean, I have lived my whole life being a Peter Priesthood and hanging out with Molly Mormons. I have never drank, I am still a virgin, and I went on a mission. If I wasn't raised a member, I can't say that any of those would be true, so why would I excpect it of others?
Ok, gotta get back to work, I just had to get that out of me. Get it out of my head
2 comments:
wow blake that is intense. but yes, i totally agree with you. when i first joined the church i was petrified that other would judge me for the things i had done before my baptism, but now that i somewhat understand the atonement all that matters is that He remembers them no more, who cares what anyone else thinks! i am glad you shared your thoughts.
Was this great timing or what? I was just wondering the other day if people were going to be judging me based on things that I've done in the past, but now I know that I shouldn't worry about what other people think. The Atonement is amazing!!
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