What I Believe — and Why It Brings Me Peace
"This is a perfect church, led by imperfect people."
There’s a lot being said about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (which others know by the Mormon church or LDS church). I wanted to share my thoughts, experiences, and things I believe as a loyal follower of Jesus Christ.
One of the coolest things our modern day prophet - President Russell M. Nelson - advised us as members to do was to refer to ourselves as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, rather than “Mormons.” I’ll admit, it’s hard to do sometimes only because it’s a long name haha. However, I do love it because members of our church are Christian - we believe and try to be like Jesus Christ. But these other names we were referred to seemed to confuse many others about what we believe. Jesus Christ is the core of our church. Everything we do in church is to try to be more like Him and follow Him.
I could go on and on about all the things we believe in our church, and I will be throughout this blog, but if I wrote down everything I believe, this would turn into a book! So let’s start off with a few that mean a lot to me.
Jesus Christ is at the center of everything.
Everyone is just doing their best to be more like Jesus Christ. We strive to teach in the Savior’s way. We strive to be perfect like Him (which isn’t possible in this life, but that’s why we’re so grateful for His Atonement). We strive to do what He’s asked of us. That applies to absolutely everyone in the church!
One of my favorite things I’ve learned is that to be like Him, you’ve got to really know Him. And how true is that! If you want to be like someone, you’ve got to really know and understand who that person is to be able to be more like them. Jesus has done so much for us, and I love hearing all the stories in the scriptures about how He helped, what He did, why He did it. And those stories are so so important. But it’s also important to pay attention to who He is. And we learn more and more about that the more we dive into the scriptures and look into His character. We also learn more about Him through our own daily experiences - seeing the examples of others and experiencing and overcoming trials.
And another HUGE way we can learn more about Him is through prayer. Prayer is one of my absolute favorite things. I’ll get more into that in another post though. But we can pray to Heavenly Father for help to recognize things, and learn more about the Savior. We can ask Him to direct us to ways we can find the Savior. We can ask the spirit to be with us as we study the scriptures - and specifically ask for help to learn more about the Savior in our studies. This isn’t knowledge that comes quickly, and I believe we will learn more and more about Him for the rest of our lives - we won’t have a perfect knowledge of Him in this life. But that’s the cool thing is that we’ll never stop learning!
But yes, as members of the church we LOVE Jesus. I’m so grateful for Him and everything He has done for us, and continues to do for us.
2. God speaks today.
This is why I love prayer so so much. God is just a prayer away! He knows exactly what we’re going through and how to help, but we need to show Him that we know He’s there for us and be humble enough to ask for His help. I’ll be honest, saying that sounds so obvious and easy, but when I really think about things I know I could do so much better about praying for help (and for what I’m grateful for). I don’t know why but there’s certain struggles I have that I just think I have to bulldoze through like a champ to overcome. But that’s just silly of me. God is there to help us in every struggle - no matter how big or small. And I honestly think for me, it’s the smaller or seemingly irrelevant struggles that I don’t think to pray about. But I know that God truly cares about what you care about - as long as it’s good and worthy. It’s not only church related struggles that you can receive help with, but everything you struggle with.
I had a hard time for a while with starting my business (and still do). But there was a period of time when I was working on getting my business up and running, but I felt almost embarrassed to ask God for help. Obviously, I hope to be able to make a good income from my business, so I felt like it wasn’t a good thing to ask God about. But it’s okay to want to be successful in this life! God wants that for you too! I think when it becomes bad is when you become prideful and don’t pay attention to God or your faith anymore. So I finally decided to pray for help, and I pray for help everyday. I know that I’m still going to make mistakes, but the thing I’ve noticed change is my motivation levels have gone up drastically. It’s still not easy, but I know He’s giving me strength and comfort to keep going and keep trying.
I also love this “key belief” because I know He speaks through our prophet who is guiding our church. A huge key thing that people seem to forget is that this is a perfect church, led by imperfect people. Even our prophet isn’t perfect - he’s still human! So that’s why I believe it’s so important to develop your own relationship with God. You can always go to Him for help on what is true and what isn’t. If there’s anything a church leader says that you maybe don’t agree with, or have a hard time with, you can pray to God for help! He will guide you in knowing the truth, and if it’s something that’s hard to live by, he will help you find the strength to live by these truths.
3. Families are eternal.
This is another big one. I feel like a covers a few things:
Jesus Christ died and was resurrected (lives again), making it possible for us to do the same.
In the temple, we are sealed to our families so that we can live with each other for eternity.
Family is a very important part to fulfilling our mission here on earth.
I’m so so grateful for Christ making it possible for us to live again! I’m so grateful to know that when we die, it isn’t the end. It makes it a little easier when someone we love passes away, because we know we will get to see them again, and I’m entirely grateful for that. It also makes death a little less scary - but that doesn’t mean it’s not still hard! I’ve had a few people pass away in my life and I miss them like crazy! I’m also scared to think about close loved ones dying, but I know that everything will be okay:)
The temple is a little piece of heaven on earth. There’s so many wonderful blessings that happen in the temple and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to go to the temple so often. Since my parents were active members of the church and we’re sealed in the temple when they were married I was “automatically” sealed to them. However, my husband didn’t exactly experience this himself. So when he was around 8 years old or so, he and his parents and sister got to be sealed to each other in the temple! That’s such an amazing blessing to have - anyone who desires can be sealed with their family and live with them for eternity!
Family is such an important dynamic. We do our best to keep the best relationships with our family for many reasons. I mean we will live with them for eternity so we may as well be happy with them right?;) but I also believe a big part is to have good people in our lives to help us, to cheer us on, and who we love. I believe I got handed the gold card because my family is the absolute best. Of course we’ve had our rough patches but we are all very close with each other and it’s blessed my life beyond measure. I truly believe they are a huge part of who I am today and I’m so grateful for them - this includes my husband, parents, & siblings)
Before I end this post, I just want to emphasize that what I’m sharing in my posts are just my personal experiences and opinions. I’m not sharing any of this to “be right” but I just want to share some light and be more clear about what we believe for those who aren’t members of our church, and share my experience being in the church!
Whether you believe like I do or not, I full intention of this space is to help you feel closer to God.
Tell me in the comments below!
I want to know about your experience! What do you believe and why does it bring you peace? What teachings in church or in your faith mean a lot to you?