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Well, I’ve been reading the Book of Mormon regularly lately. The sad part is that I haven’t felt any Spirit as I do it. I am interested in it, and the blasts of wisdom it provides, amidst the secular histories. Part of me wants to pray for an additional testimony (in addition to the spiritual experiences I had on my mission). But Moroni’s promise being contingent on “real intent” is a stumbling block. If given a strong spiritual experience after reading the Book of Mormon, or while reading it, am I really willing to embrace the gospel wholeheartedly?
Tithing would be a massive obstacle as I enter my twilight years and will have greater financial needs than my old body can provide….
What are your thoughts, would you be praying for a renewal of testimony in these circumstances? Would you be willing to act on a testimony building experience in prayer given your experiences with the LDS church and its gospel?I don’t think that spiritual experiences can be earned, so praying for those experiences and/or coming back to the church community seems like it might not necessarily be able to provide that or be worth that personal cost. I don’t think that personal experiences are a good benchmark for personal worth over time. The times I was “living well” didn’t always have spiritual experiences and there have been many times when I wasn’t living according to the regulations given by the church organization and had spiritual or emotional experiences. I think considering each decision point with a very boundaried approach (which is against church culture who wants church members to be “all in”) and focusing on “Can I Say Yes to This” and listening to self is useful.
I have found that when I say “Yes” resentfully, it means that I should have said “No” or “Yes and boundaries” instead – and that I wasted personal resources of mine because I went with an “All-in Yes” that wasn’t healthy or sustainable for me. There are tons of self-help resources out there to “generate good experiences” (both church centric and church neutral) that might be worth your attention to give yourself more meaningful experiences.
It is interesting that Jesus didn’t emphasize spiritual experiences much; rather, he emphasized love expressed in action. What are your thoughts,would you be praying for a renewal of testimony in these circumstances?No. I let God reveal himself on his own terms & at his own time & in his own way.
Would you be willing to act on a testimony building experience in prayer given your experiences with the LDS church and its gospel?Maybe.
My spiritual expectations are not very dramatic. I don’t have very high expectations. I am open for God or Heavenly Father revealing himself
in smaller & unexpected ways. Since coming to StayLDS.com, I do consider myself fully active again. It is just not the same way as it was prior
to my FC. I do pay tithing, I have a Temple Recommend (I rarely use it). I don’t have a leadership position (that is my choice). On rare occasions,
I do speak up during PH & SS (diplomatically). I rarely follow the “party” line. I do speak in Sacrament Meetings. I rarely speak on the assigned
topics. I usually speak from talks by church leaders that “move” me. (Elder Uchtdorf)
In other words, I live the gospel on my own terms & don’t usually go into explanations. I have some very close friends that understand where
I’m coming from & don’t judge. They can talk with me & know that I won’t judge or communicate with others in our ward. I extend myself to
others that are new in the ward. In many ways, I feel that this is the way God answers my prayers & needs. (For now.)
This is my answers to your questions. I hope this makes some kind of sense.
Another way to put it: God’s willingness to give us additional testimony or to answer our personal prayers is limited on our own personal expectations
with time & God’s willingness to answer. By this I mean, JS got his answer in the sacred grove at the very moment he knelt in prayer.
Some of us won’t get our answer in our lifetime.
Our Missionary approach has been to challenge “investigators” & come back in a week & ask for a commitment to be baptized.
Why? Because we have a preconceived idea about God’s timetable & overall plan. It doesn’t always work that way. Another preconceived
idea is: when I lose my car keys all I need to do is pray, God will answer my prayer & He will show me where the keys are. All in time
to get to church on time. Sometimes we have to be patient & wait for the answer or inspiration to come or work through the problem
on our own.
Good topic SD!
After reading the Book of Mormon a lot, and pondering the responses here, I don’t think I have the real intent necessary to get a new testimony. I am tainted by life experience in the church, unfortunately, to the point that full blown service seems distasteful to me. I am not sure I could go back to it. And I think that disqualifies me from any major revelations. SilentDawning wrote:
After reading the Book of Mormon a lot, and pondering the responses here, I don’t think I have the real intent necessary to get a new testimony. I am tainted by life experience in the church, unfortunately, to the point that full blow service seems distasteful to me. I am not sure I could go back to it. And I think that disqualifies me from any major revelations.
How can we help you here? What kind of major revelations do you feel or think that you need for your life?
I can’t help you a lot here because what I am getting from this post is a focus on “what you are going wrong / your actions aren’t good enough” vs the randomness of interacting with God.
I think it can be similar to getting back the childlike wonder and magic of Christmas again. There are certainly things that you can do to put you in a more Christmassy mood, like listening to the music, watching the movies, maybe going sledding, or treating yourself to some hot cocoa with marshmallows, and definitely surround yourself with people that you care about. However, even with all this, I do not think that one could achieve the same childlike sense of wonder and magic and this is 100% not because you are doing it wrong or failing to try hard enough. I also do not mean to say that traditional believers are foolish or gullible, just that they have not gone through the same sorts of experiences that many of us here have that fundamentally altered our perspectives.
AmyJ wrote:
How can we help you here?I am not sure how anyone can help me here. I partly use this site as a kind of interactive journal where I record my thoughts and questions, and then make decisions after I hear what others have to say. Others, like yourself, who aren’t bound by the standard answers you get when you ask traditional believing Mormons. Sometimes I come to a conclusion, other times the idea just sits unsettled, perhaps never to be answered. So, your answers to my questions are probably the most help you can provide.
Quote:What kind of major revelations do you feel or think that you need for your life?I can’t help you a lot here because what I am getting from this post is a focus on “what you are going wrong / your actions aren’t good enough” vs the randomness of interacting with God.
When I was a teenager, a few close friends turned on me, and I also lost a girlfriend. At the time (I was 15) this was really hard on me, and I went into my first kind of depression. My parents asked me to meet with our United Church of Canada minister. He FILLED ME with the holy ghost as he taught me about God. Once, I left his office full of joy to the point I hugged myself once on the way out of his office. And while praying one night, I felt this overpowering spirituality come over me as I knelt by my bedside and prayed. It was a clear revelation at the time that God existed.
When the LDS missionaries taught me at the age of 20, when they told me about Moroni’s promise, I felt I understood what revelation felt like given my bedside experience at 15, about 4-5 years previously. I expected it to be the same overpowering experience I had at 15 which, to this day, has me believing in God. And this in spite of all the other negative things that have happened to me in the LDS Church.
It took me over a year of praying for a similar experience to have that same kind of overpowering spirituality in response to the question “Is the Mormon church true and should I become a member of it?”. The experience I eventually had was about 60% of what I experienced as a 15 year old praying to God, but it was enough to convince me that I should join the LDS Church.
At the time, I accepted Joseph Smith and Christ on faith. One thing my minister never could convince me of was the need for a savior or that He even existed as a divine being on earth. The missionaries clarified this for me with the passages in the BoM about the law of justice and mercy — something that wasn’t clearly stated in the Bible. All of a sudden, the BoM clarified for me the phrase my parents and minister had said “Jesus died for our sins”. I heard that a lot and never knew what it meant. But the Book of Mormon explained it clearly — and this helped develop my current affinity for the Book of Mormon. It did answer questions that the Bible was rather vague about. To this day, The BoM is my go to scripture for that reason.
So, that kind of electric, overpowering almost hurting sensation in direct response to a question is the kind of revelation I need to really believe something — to answer your question.
Thank you for sharing:) I can respect that and it makes more sense to me.
I don’t have a lot of faith, but I do believe that if something really needs to happen – something happens.In my life, I have a pattern of getting what I perceive as promptings when something really needed to happen – for me to serve a mission, for us to move to the Mid-West, for us to have our 2nd child.
If anything, for each of those situations I was living “less worthily” but apparently needed that answer more. It’s in years past hindsight that I see how much I needed that answer at that time. I still don’t understand it.
AmyJ wrote:
It’s in years past hindsight that I see how much I needed that answer at that time. I still don’t understand it.
I have had a similar experience. I was in freefall and desperately needed the comforter.
I choose to believe that my experience came from God and I felt wholly loved and accepted. I also understand that my experience only has any applicability to me in that moment. I do not make any claims about any others or suggest that they can follow a formula to get similar results.
I speculate that there can be a confluence of factors that can combine to create the perfect environment for spiritual experiences.
Roy wrote:
I speculate that there can be a confluence of factors that can combine to create the perfect environment for spiritual experiences.
I concede it is possible that there is that “confluence of factors” and “that recipe for spiritual experiences” exists. I treat it in the same mathematical realm of intergalactic space travel – we ain’t there yet.
This biggest concern I have about outlining that list of factors brings into our thinking a theme of “control” in the sense that “we can set up the environment for spiritual experiences”. I think for some (mostly smaller) experiences, that spirituality is us getting in touch with our inner selves/soul and that those encounters can be engineered. For those memorable experiences that zing you like you’re the lightning rod in a storm, I think that there are mundane ways such as mind-altering drugs to generate those experiences, and there is also a margin of “inexplicably important” non-drug-induced experiences.
But in a sense, it comes back to Roy’s “Christmas” observation. It’s a different form of magic to be able to “set up” Christmas rather then just waking up Christmas Day and experiencing Christmas.
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