We Have Control!

How many times do we all look at our lives and feel helpless.  There is so much that affects the way we view our successes and failures, our triumphs and loses.  If all of you are like me, we blame a lot of our problems and attitudes on other people and situations.  This is actually quite common.  In my psychology class we learned about self-presentation and the self-serving bias.  With positive things we attribute to our personality and own merits, but when something bad happens we attribute it to the hard situation and the other people.  This is common, but we shouldn't fall into this trap.  In 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 it gives a list of things.   "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;"

I love this list! It gives us such a clear guideline on how we can be going through crazy hard things, but that there is always still hope and that we have control over some of it.  The first one is "Troubled on every side, yet not distressed" We all have troubles.  I know some of mine are family problems and having time for all of my school work.  Even though these things are troubling, I don't have to be distressed.  The second one is "perplexed, but not in despair." I can relate so well to this one.  I am perplexed at why my relationships don't work out or why I didn't get a job I want, but I don't despair.

This is how our peace can feel!

Now, I could go on through the rest of the list, but I'm going to stop there.  You could say "oh Annie, that's great and all, but I can't do that.  It's too hard for me."  You would be right. Alone, being troubled and not distressed is too hard.  It is only through Christ that this is possible.  He makes it so that we can be in hard times but not despairing.  He will keep us calm though the storm is raging around us.  Through Christ, we have control.

Charity = Christ's Love

So many times I have heard that charity is the pure love of Christ that it has become second nature to equate charity with the Love of Christ.  I love the idea of charity as the pure love of Christ, but it feels too abstract and unreachable.  In my new testament class we have this taught to us in a different way.  My teacher told us that true charity has only been seen once on this earth, and that was when Christ was here.  We read in 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 where it says:

 "4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;  6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;"

My teacher told us to replace "charity" with "Christ".  A little show of this would be "Christ suffereth long, and is kind...."   This is SO applicable.  We are striving to become more like Christ and if we act in the way that he does, we will be cultivating charity.  Also, since only Christ has shown true charity, my teacher described it in this way: we are not giving charity, we are reflecting the charity that Christ has given to us. We all should try to reflect a little more of the love that Christ has given to us by being long suffering and kind.  I hope that through my actions, I can share Christ's love with everyone around me.  We all can be a little more loving and kind.  Lets let our actions do that, but also remember that as my teacher put it, "charity isn't what we do, it's who we are."

Falling Asleep..... ZZzzZZzz

I love sleeping!  It is one of my favorite activities.  I don't sleep enough and that is a problem for me physically, mentally, and emotionally.  The sleep that I want to talk about today though, is not the closing your eyes and go to bed kind of sleep.  It is a kind of falling asleep with our habits and the church.  In my new testament class this last week we read Acts 20.  In this chapter we read about a man named Eutychus who was sitting in a window and fell into a deep sleep and fell down from the loft where he was sitting and died. 

My teacher gave us a way to interpret this story.  One is with the lens of the plan of salvation.  He talked about how Eutychus could stand for Adam and falling down from the window would be the fall.  His death would be like the spiritual death that we are all prone to, and Paul raising him is a symbol of the Savior.  This is great and all, but we also need to apply it to ourselves.  We are like Eutychus.  We sometimes fall asleep to the things of the gospel. 

This begs us all to ask the question, what things have I fallen asleep to?  Are there certain things that we each don't really pay attention to?  Are some things just habits that we don't really need to pay attention to?  I know there are certain things in my life that are that way.  One thing that was brought up in my reading for the research paper for my new testament class was faith and works.  In some respects we all fall asleep to the fact that we have faith.  We say "yeah, I believe in Christ and his teachings." But we forget that faith is not passive.  Faith begets action.  We need to wake up to the gospel again.  Let our faith guide our actions so that we can come closer to the Savior and not be asleep to the things that we are doing in our lives.

Let the Lord take the Reigns.

Alright.  How many of us struggle with wanting to control everything in our lives?  I know I do.  I like to think that I know what is best and what I should be doing.  It is hard for me to recognize that I need to let the Lord guide my path.  Luckily, I'm no alone. The apostle Paul had good desires and wanted to go teach the people of Asia of the gospel, but the Holy Ghost forbade him.  After that, Paul and his companions were going to go to Bithynia, but "the Spirit suffered them not." (Acts 16:7)  Paul had good intentions and he thought that he knew where he should go.


One thing I really like about this story is that Paul didn't just give up when the Lord kept stopping
him in his tracks, he continued to move forward with faith.  I need to do that in my life.  I need to keep pushing on and trusting the Lord even when what I think would be good for my life doesn't pan out.  Finally in Acts 16:9 the Lord shows Paul a vision which instructs him to go to Macedonia.

Me, looking forward to a bright future!

Would Paul have gotten the instruction to go to Macedonia if he had stopped acting?  No!  God likes answering prayers for people who are acting.  When we act, it allows God to guide us. This is something that the Lord is trying to teach me especially in my life right now.  I have made many different plans for my life.  I'm going to finish college in three years, now I'm going to go on a mission.  I guess I'm not going to go on a mission, I'm going to keep going to school and be the relief society president.  Now I'm going to date this guy and possibly marry him.  Oops!  Looks like he is not right for me.  Guess I'll go back to square one and focus on school. Right as soon as I thought I had an idea of where I should be going in my life, God would say "I don't think that's what you need to be working on right now..."  The nice thing, is that even though I keep being stopped in a lot of the things I've been doing, I know that God is leading me.  He has a plan for my life and as long as I keep acting and following Him, I will get where I need to be.  I know that I'm becoming who God wants me to be and that I'm learning to have joy in the process.