Our Reason to Be August 11, 2024
Our purpose of living here is to learn, to learn as individuals, to learn as families, and to learn as a worldwide society.
Everything that happens to everyone, individually and collectively, is eventually for our good, as that is the promise of God in scripture and by His very nature.
This is impossible to believe unless we think celestial, which is the admonition of Russell M. Nelson, the current Prophet on Earth, as he is the President of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints.
Thinking celestial means to think from the perspective of God, outside of applying time and place. It is only with a celestial understanding that we can understand the "good" of the most terrible of evils,
This is, to me now, the ultimate lesson learning. To understand that even the most terrible of evils, brought into this world not by God but by the choices of people who have been granted the great gift of free agency, are still eventually worked, by God, into something good for all.
Then there are, and will be, many more specific lessons learned and still learning, in me, and in you. This section describes how that happened, and is happening, in me, as I constantly ask the question, in every circumstance, good and evil, what God wants me to learn now, to become more like Him, even Jesus Christ.
Pray Out Loudest August 11, 2024
My conception of prayer is ever evolving, and I now believe that I, and all, are best served by praying out loudest. In some religious traditions, you are instructed to pray out loud, do that the words of your mouth will surely be heard by God. Some of those prayers may be personal and specific, while others may be long established rituals of prayer, and prayed collectively with others. All prayers are surely beneficial to those who pray.
A major revelation on prayer happened to me in about 2013, as I sat, at night, in my hot tub high on a hill overlooking the town of Idaho Springs, Colorado, where I lived for about seven years before moving to Utah in 2019. It was there, on many such nights, that I fully comprehended that God hears, and participates in, my every thought. That the scriptural admonition to "pray always" is not so much a command, as an understanding that God is always present in each us, and is always listening, and trying to help us pray for His will of Love to be done, in us, and in the world around us.
A further revelation has occurred, gradually, since then. That is this idea of "Pray Out Loudest". Ironically, I have to appear in court on a charge of Disorderly Conduct for perhaps praying out too loudly in an incident last year, where I frightened a man by my loud prayer.
To Pray Out Loudest to me, means to write down my prayers, even as I am doing now. And to share my prayers, on platforms such as Facebook and X, so others can learn by my prayers and have their own revelations on, and through, and with prayer. Written prayers may even become eternal prayers, as we get better at keeping our records "in the cloud" as a great cloud of witnesses to the Faith, Hope, and Love we experience as we live in Jesus Christ.
Walking and Talking with God August 11, 2024