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This evening I participated in a disciplinary council. This council was to determine if someone could be welcomed back into full fellowship of the church. This brother stood before us and talked about his journey over the last year in applying the atonement in his life. I felt love and goodness (the spirit?) as I listened to him speak about how the atonement had made it possible for him to make the changes he needed in his personal life, in his relationship with his wife, and with his children. His home teacher was there and it was made clear the impact this brother had on his life over the last year of being a friend and a good influence.
I doubted my doubts this evening. I felt such an outpouring of love and affection and my faith and hope in a loving God and a Savior who can help us let go of our mistakes to progress forward was increased. I still don’t claim to know anything, but the dial was moved a little further and I felt proud to know and be associated with good men who give of their time and themselves to help another back to the fold.
It was a truly spiritual experience.
-SBRed
I’m glad you had a good experience SBRed. I know I’m speaking with experience from one side of the table, but I maintain that disciplinary councils have generally been good experiences for me. Okay, so I really am liking this particular thread, so I’ll do my part to bump it to the top. Just three things: I got called in to meet with the bishop yesterday morning and was surprised to be asked to participate in a choir that will sing in General Conference this October. I love many of the messages that I hear through sacred music and am grateful I can be a part of it.
Sacrament meeting… great talk from a woman in our stake primary presidency. Part of it she talked about how close she was to a brother who died in an accident. This brother also struggled with schizophrenia throughout his adult life. I could really feel her love as she spoke about what she did throughout her life to help him cope.
My youngest daughter is getting ready to head out to her freshman college year away from home. I am very excited for her to have this experience, but it definitely does not comes without some strong emotions for me. Last night as she gave the family prayer, she closed it like she normally does by telling Heavenly Father that “we love thee so very much”. Then she sang a song to her older sister who has a severe disability but absolutely loves to be sung to. I’m going to miss that girl.
Our Sacrament Meeting yesterday was very Christ centered and quite refreshing. I really do wish all SMs could be closer to this one with a focus on Christ. The first speaker was my adult daughter who is here visiting before starting graduate school. She talked about how it’s human nature to label people with things like “drug addict” or “Utah Mormon” but that Jesus didn’t do that – he ministered to the prostitutes, the tax collectors, and the poor equally. She also pointed out that we often focus on the God side of Jesus but that he had a very human side also, and that he demonstrated a full range of human emotion, and she testified that this alone helps us to believe that he has felt what we feel. She also mentioned how Jesus lived in a very complicated time with many factions of Jews and Roman rule, and that his message was simply one of love and tolerance.
The second guy is one of the piccolos in our ward, always contributing liberally to SS and PH lessons with the standard answers. He mostly quoted scripture focused n Christ’s love (“This new commandment” “On these hang all the law”) with some pontification and he threw in a couple stories about how he has tried to be more loving and tolerant of people he works with and so forth. It was a good talk.
The concluding sister focused on the atonement and how we don’t really understand how it works but it’s good enough just to know that it does work, and she did a good job at bringing grace into the equation without focusing on the “after all we can do” and “keep the commandments” part. She bore a very nice testimony (she didn’t “know” anything) about how God has demonstrated his love for us by requiring justice and mercy and providing for the mercy through Christ.
I skipped SS as usual (I figure the “ones” generally aren’t in there) but there was also an interesting little tidbit from PH. A brother who usually doesn’t teach the HPG taught. He’s a temple worker one day a week, and he said how toward the end of the day he often works the recommend desk. He said that often the temple president comes out to the desk late in the day as well and they often have chats. He had talked to the temple president about his wayward adult son and said he tearfully expressed his concern for his son’s eternal salvation and talked about how he is not on the path and wondered how he can possibly return and gain “all the Father has.” The temple president’s reply was that we know almost nothing about the afterlife (which includes the millennium) and we’re mostly guessing what will happen, that’s it’s “uncharted territory” – but not to underestimate the mercy of God.
Quote:The temple president’s reply was that we know almost nothing about the afterlife (which includes the millennium) and we’re mostly guessing what will happen, that’s it’s “uncharted territory” – but not to underestimate the mercy of God.
Don’t underestimate the mercy of God. What a wonderful response.
Our Sacrament Meeting yesterday was the high council day, and both speakers talked extensively about Jesus in their talks. In fact, the first speaker (a counselor in the Stake Sunday School presidency) based his entire talk around the question: Quote:Do you remember what it was that first influenced your testimony of Jesus?
The PH lesson was about raising righteous children, and it was a good example of why I love my ward so much. All but two of the men in the group have no children left at home, so the discussion focused mostly on adult children. One brother mentioned that few people have the ideal we teach and that we need to love our kids no matter what they choose to believe and do. Another brother mentioned that we need to respect our children when they grow up enough to let go and not meddle in their lives. The teacher mentioned directly that he has an adult child who isn’t active and that he always invites her to attend church with him and his wife – but that he smiles when he says it and simply answers “Okay” when she declines every week.
The consensus from the lesson is that we need to love and respect our kids – and prove it by the way we treat them.
Love this thread. I have a hard time finding and focusing on positive things being taught at church (my fault, not the church’s) and I need to work on that. A couple of weeks ago I blessed my third child in fast and testimony meeting and felt the Spirit stronger during that blessing than I had felt it in years. I had blessed our two older children before going through my faith crisis and remember worrying about checking off all the right boxes (mission, temple, marriage, etc.) during each of their blessings but with this child I was able to give a truly heart-felt blessing to my son without running through a mental checklist. I blessed him to be kind, loving, tolerant, accepting, understanding, and to always remember that both God and Jesus love him very much and are always there for him. After the blessing I was feeling “in tune” and really paid attention to testimonies that were being said. All were beautiful and uplifting. Best fast and testimony meeting I had been to in ages. I know this tread is mainly about what happens at church on Sunday, but one of my sons got married in the temple very recently and I want to share my experience. I was worried what it would be like for me in view of the “renewal” of my FC/FT. It turned out to be an amazing “faith renewing” experience. Family on both sides had been concerned about how my new DIL would feel about the endowment since she’s a feminist and very unorthodox (which I love about her. She doesn’t know about my closet un-orthodoxy). She had a wonderful experience and loved it. She even saw an aspect of it in a way I never had before. It was enlightening. I work in the temple and hadn’t gone for a long time as a patron. I also had a calming experience viewing everything in a figurative, symbolical and not literal way. I was relaxed and peaceful, something unusual for me in the temple.
The sealing was such a beautiful experience too, and at the reception, they had a “ring ceremony” where they exchanged expressions of love for each other that they’d written. All those who were excluded from the temple, including some Christian fundamentalist family members, felt included and were very grateful.
The whole event made me feel so much better about my FT journey and that maybe there is a place for me in this church. I think I’ve been clinging as tightly to my “doubts” as I did to my TBM knowledge. I’m learning that it’s best not to know anything and be open to everything, including the very good that happens in the LDS church.
We had a nice lesson in priesthood today about how to give a talk. Good participation and good feedback, with lots of constructive ideas about what to do and what not to do. Focusing on Christ was mentioned as paramount, and practicing beforehand with a timer was also mentioned and highly endorsed – with timing being the main reason. Also brought up and very well received was to follow the prophet (! 
The testimonies today were focused largely on service and love – and multiple references to God’s grace. The lesson in HPG was about Home Teaching. It was a really good discussion of why it’s so hard and sometimes ineffective, how it has changed at times, what it really means / what the pure purpose is and how we can tweak the “normal program” to do what it is supposed to be rather than just a one-size-fits-all program.
A friend who doesn’t participate on this site but who shares similar views to many here was called to the bishopric today. The youth in our stake participated in an event packing meals for starving children around the world. It was actually held at an LDS meeting house, but it’s an annual thing that ward participates in as part of a coalition of local churches who sponsor it. It was said, but is unverified, that the church humanitarian fund gave a substantial amount of money to the group and offered to donate rice. We had two good things happen yesterday. There was a good talk on the sacrament that brought in some symbolism and talked about things that are only tradition, like taking the sacrament with the right hand. The best part was that it came from a recently returned missionary.
In priesthood there was not a single quote from the book. The discussion opened up with what it means to be in the world but not of the world. Several comments suggested that we aren’t to build bubbles around ourselves and separate ourselves from the world, that peculiar doesn’t mean strange or weird, and that comments such as “do you want to go out for a beer?” are usually just an invitation to socialize and not an invitation to violate the WoW. To the latter point, a business man said he goes “for coffee” all the time without drinking any coffee and no one cares, that’s not the point – the answer to beer or coffee isn’t “I don’t drink beer/coffee” because that just shuts down the one doing the inviting.
I was in a Gospel Principles class yesterday. The lesson was on Charity, and a new convert talked about why he comes to church, and that sometimes he doesn’t want to but he knows it helps him. He talked about, and was very emotional, about his son that was murdered, and even though his son had made some choices that put him in bad situations we still shouldn’t judge and that he misses his son a lot. It was one of those simple, honest, authentic, raw moments that makes me question my doubts because you realize how much the story of Christ can help people. It was a humbling moment.
-SBRed
Yesterday was a good day at church. I was asked to speak on “Strength through our Trials”. While I wasn’t too excited about speaking, it helped me deal with some aspects of the stillbirth my wife and I had nearly 4 years ago. Also, my parents showed up (didn’t think it was a good thing) and after Sacrament, my Dad (who never seemed to reveal his feelings) mentioned how talking about events (stillbirth was mentioned in the talk) helps us deal with it and that he couldn’t talk about my neice (she died at 6 months old) for a couple of years after. I was shocked. My wife and I were asked to speak with the Bishop after and as we were waiting in the hall, a couple of youth came up to me and expressed their appreciation for my talk. My wife and I were speachless. All in all, a good day.
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