Day 110-Never Surrender-July 16, 2006
Well, we didn’t have any investigators at church today. Next Sunday looks pretty good. S wants to come. Sister H is coming back from Utah tomorrow, so she’ll be there to teach S in her home. C and her mom are planning on coming next week to church. Now if we could just get in contact with W. (Sigh…)
We had an unexpected guest at church today. It was our less-active friend R. Here I was thinking that I might not see him again. He told us that he is still planning to move, but for now, he is house-sitting. I was able to show R the drawings I made of him in my journal. He thought they were hilarious. I was able to make some copies of my drawings to give to him. He loves them and plans to keep them as a memento.
After church we stopped by to see Brother W. I’ve been around Brother W the whole time I’ve been in Virginia and am only now starting to talk about him. I did not mean to take so long in mentioning him in my journal, but that is how it goes…Busy, busy, busy.
Brother W is a less active member that we check on from time to time to see if he needs any help. He wasn’t at church today so we went over to ask him, “Hey! Wha’ happen?”
Some brief background on Brother W. Brother W was called to serve a mission 20 years ago. He came home after two months. He said that he did not like the mission president or his companion. He met a lot of nice missionaries in his brief stay, but just did not get along with his companion. If ever there was a poster child for Elder Holland’s, “DON’T YOU DARE GO HOME” talk, it’s Brother W. I don’t mean to paint a bleak picture. I just know that I want something more for my life after my mission. He seems to like his life so that is okay.
We go by his apartment about once a week, share a gospel message, and encourage him to come to church the next Sunday. We also answer his doctrinal questions which are many. The problem with his questions is, in the big scheme of things, they don’t really matter. They aren’t dumb questions because there are no dumb questions. But if there were, these would definitely rank right up there. Some of the questions Brother W asks are, “Where’d dinosaurs come from? Did God create them? He asks questions about the Spirit World, but his biggest questions are about repentance. He asks, “Ya know, it’s never too late to say your sorry. If you had some sins that you did not repent of before you died, couldn’t you just tell God that you were sorry in the spirit world and He would forgive you? The short answer to that is NO. That may sound harsh but the truth is, just saying that you are sorry is not always enough. It is a part of repentance, sure, but just as “faith without works is dead”, so is “confessing without forsaking the sin” dead also. That is the key right there. Forsaking is more than saying, “I sure won’t do that again!”
Brother W asked us, “what if there was a sin that a person just kept on doing over and over again and just could not quit?” “You mean like smoking?” I asked. “Well, God knows us. He knows the desire of our hearts. Some people become so enslaved to their addictions that they may never feel able to break free of sin. Our Heavenly Father knows of our desire to break free and to fight back against our sins.
For example, I said, “In the movie, “The Lord of the Rings”, where Gandolf confronts the Balrog, Gandolf ends up falling with the Balrog down this long shaft. He keeps fighting all the way down. Gandolf does not give up. If he’s going down, it is not going to be without a fight.”
That is what our Heavenly Father wants. He wants our best effort in overcoming sin. When we are falling, and sin gets a hold of us, we can’t just say, “Oh, well,” and go along. We’ve got to wrestle tooth and nail all the way down! Now, hopefully it will never be that bad, but we all have sins. We all have things that we need to work on. It’s all about enduring to the end and never surrendering to the Balrog.
We had an unexpected guest at church today. It was our less-active friend R. Here I was thinking that I might not see him again. He told us that he is still planning to move, but for now, he is house-sitting. I was able to show R the drawings I made of him in my journal. He thought they were hilarious. I was able to make some copies of my drawings to give to him. He loves them and plans to keep them as a memento.
After church we stopped by to see Brother W. I’ve been around Brother W the whole time I’ve been in Virginia and am only now starting to talk about him. I did not mean to take so long in mentioning him in my journal, but that is how it goes…Busy, busy, busy.
Brother W is a less active member that we check on from time to time to see if he needs any help. He wasn’t at church today so we went over to ask him, “Hey! Wha’ happen?”
Some brief background on Brother W. Brother W was called to serve a mission 20 years ago. He came home after two months. He said that he did not like the mission president or his companion. He met a lot of nice missionaries in his brief stay, but just did not get along with his companion. If ever there was a poster child for Elder Holland’s, “DON’T YOU DARE GO HOME” talk, it’s Brother W. I don’t mean to paint a bleak picture. I just know that I want something more for my life after my mission. He seems to like his life so that is okay.
We go by his apartment about once a week, share a gospel message, and encourage him to come to church the next Sunday. We also answer his doctrinal questions which are many. The problem with his questions is, in the big scheme of things, they don’t really matter. They aren’t dumb questions because there are no dumb questions. But if there were, these would definitely rank right up there. Some of the questions Brother W asks are, “Where’d dinosaurs come from? Did God create them? He asks questions about the Spirit World, but his biggest questions are about repentance. He asks, “Ya know, it’s never too late to say your sorry. If you had some sins that you did not repent of before you died, couldn’t you just tell God that you were sorry in the spirit world and He would forgive you? The short answer to that is NO. That may sound harsh but the truth is, just saying that you are sorry is not always enough. It is a part of repentance, sure, but just as “faith without works is dead”, so is “confessing without forsaking the sin” dead also. That is the key right there. Forsaking is more than saying, “I sure won’t do that again!”
Brother W asked us, “what if there was a sin that a person just kept on doing over and over again and just could not quit?” “You mean like smoking?” I asked. “Well, God knows us. He knows the desire of our hearts. Some people become so enslaved to their addictions that they may never feel able to break free of sin. Our Heavenly Father knows of our desire to break free and to fight back against our sins.
For example, I said, “In the movie, “The Lord of the Rings”, where Gandolf confronts the Balrog, Gandolf ends up falling with the Balrog down this long shaft. He keeps fighting all the way down. Gandolf does not give up. If he’s going down, it is not going to be without a fight.”
That is what our Heavenly Father wants. He wants our best effort in overcoming sin. When we are falling, and sin gets a hold of us, we can’t just say, “Oh, well,” and go along. We’ve got to wrestle tooth and nail all the way down! Now, hopefully it will never be that bad, but we all have sins. We all have things that we need to work on. It’s all about enduring to the end and never surrendering to the Balrog.
posted by Garden Anywhere Box | 5:14 PM
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