Don’t Avoid Trials
I think it is a great time in life to stop trying to avoid trials. “Trials Happen.” Trials are necessary for spiritual growth. If you have never had trials and challenges, how can you ever appreciate the great things in your life? There must be an opposite in all things.
Of course I do know quite a few people who don’t seemingly have many trials. They have money, a happy marriage, a great job and seem happy in life. If having these great things and yet having no trials, I don’t think anyone could have as good of a life to come, without some trials to overcome. The more we have a challenge and overcome it, the more we learn on our path to Godhood.
Believe me, I don’t ask God for trials but they just keep coming, which I am grateful for. I have a wonderful Aunt Beth who always said to me “I never worry when I have a trial, I worry when I don’t have one, as they strengthen my testimony.”
Try this experiment. Next time you have a trial, stop for a moment and say. Thank you Lord for this trial. What is it I can learn from it? You can either get closer to the Lord or further from Him. It’s your choice.
Why Return to Normal?
With the cry today by many to want to return to “normal” so to speak, makes me desire in never “going back.” I want to move forward in Christ. We are experiencing some evil times currently. Deep State governments which have been stolen. We are in a world wide situation where our political officials are “selected” not elected. Satan’s world is all around us with abductions, rape, murder, and even the little evils of the world in arguing, hating, doing what ever we would like, and forgetting God.
Lets clean up the system by personally contributing, and ask God to help us move forward. I invite each of you to attend our upcoming Firm Foundation Expo. We have discovered so many inspired and special speakers you have never heard before. Many people have approached us out of nowhere it seems, and they fit in with what Firm’s mission is, of bringing all unto Christ.
Listen to some of these speakers who will attend and the titles of their presentations:
Eric Moutsos- Cancel Culture and the Devil’s Demandments
Greg Hughes- Utah’s Building Boom of Great and Spacious Buildings
Jason Preston- The Royal Army of the Lord. Becoming Modern Day Sons of Helaman.
Ridge Hartley- I Absolutely Love the Heartland
Steven A. Bishop- Putting On Christ. The Knowledge of God through Redemption in Christ
Morgan Philpot- The End of all Nations
Joel Skousen- Giving a World Affairs Briefing
Greg Matsen- Social Justice, The Tree of Life, & The Book of Mormon
Tim Ballard- The Hidden War: The secret agenda to enslave our children in the name of liberating them.”
Hannah Stoddard- Running Out of Time: The Call For “Joseph’s Boys” & Girls Today
Rod Meldrum- The 10 Most Powerful Defenses of the Book of Mormon and Why they Matter
Jonathan Neville- Confound the Wise: Restoring Translation to the Restoration
Jen and Sophie Two Red Pills- Corruption, Collusion, Crimes, and Coverup: 21st Century Gadianton’s
Kate Dalley- Underestimating Satan
You are is store for an amazing and inspirational 3-days
Information Here:
Tickets Here:
Complete Schedule Here:
We also have over 104 vendor tables and booths with speakers, authors and professionals to share their books and DVD’s and studies with you.
Extraordinary Measures
“It is now time that we each implement extraordinary measures — perhaps measures we have never taken before — to strengthen our personal spiritual foundations. Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures.” Oct 3, 2021 President Nelson
“I admire men and women who have developed the questing spirit, who are unafraid of new ideas as stepping stones to progress. We should, of course, respect the opinions of others, but we should also be unafraid to dissent – if we are informed. Thoughts and expressions compete in the marketplace of thought, and in that competition truth emerges triumphant. Only error fears freedom of expression.
“And while all members should respect, support, and heed the teachings of the authorities of the church, no one should accept a statement and base his or her testimony upon it, no matter who makes it, until he or she has, under mature examination, found it to be true and worthwhile; then one’s logical deductions may be confirmed by the spirit of revelation to his or her spirit, because real conversion must come from within.” – Apostle Hugh B. Brown, “A Final Testimony,” from An Abundant Life, 1999
https://www.sciencemeetsreligion.org/lds/brown-final.php
Comfortable Gods
“Sadly enough, my young friends, it is a characteristic of our age that if people want any gods at all, they want them to be gods who do not demand much, comfortable gods, smooth gods who not only don’t rock the boat but don’t even row it, gods who pat us on the head, make us giggle, then tell us to run along and pick marigolds.” Holland, Jeffery R. “The Cost—and Blessings—of Discipleship.” Conference, April 2014.
Do We Really Want to Go Back to Normal?
“Here’s a question that keeps coming up in conversation and online: when will things go back to normal?
It’s natural to long for normalcy during a trial that doesn’t seem to have an end date. If only we knew the future—if only we knew the specific dates when this trial would be over—we could fortify ourselves by looking ahead to that goal. Unfortunately, the aspect of a trial that makes it so, well, trying is that we don’t see as far ahead as we’d like. We don’t know how long it will last. That’s why it’s natural to want what was normal.
But the truth is, whatever will become “normal” on the other side of the coronavirus crisis will not be the old normal. It will be something new. We are not going back.
So here’s the question I hope we will begin to ask instead: Do we really want to go back to normal? Was the old normal good? Were we really flourishing in the old normal? Was the old normal spiritually healthy?
Old Normal
What was the old normal? A world with less and less in-person interaction, looser commitments, increasing polarization, and, above all, loneliness.
Let’s look again at the old normal:
1- Americans have been interacting less with their neighbors as the years go by, choosing instead the virtual neighborhoods of Facebook and Instagram, often at the expense of knowing the names and stories of the people who live only yards away. (It’s hard to follow Jesus’s command to love your neighbor when you don’t know your neighbor’s name.)
2- In the past 30 years, our commitments have grown looser, with civic groups on the decline as well as a drop in church attendance. Fewer and fewer Christians attend church every week, preferring a hit-and-miss pattern that easily allows other responsibilities and leisure activities to impinge upon the regular rhythm of meeting together.
3- Family time has suffered; parents are more and more focused on job security and maximizing their efficiency, while ensuring they have enough time leftover to binge watch the latest offering on Netflix.
4- We are more committed to consuming entertainment than we are to cultivating or creating something. We eat out more and cook less. We are less likely to pick up an instrument or learn a new craft. We play more games on our phone than we do with our families and friends. Reading has shifted away from deep concentration required by books in favor of newsflashes and commentaries we digest as bite-sized chunks of information while scrolling on social media.
5- Political polarization has increased, in part due to an over-focus on national politics to the neglect of the community closest to us and the places we could actually make the most difference. By catastrophizing whatever happens at the national level, the fever of D.C. anxiety spreads to the whole country, leaving us restless and suspicious. The list could go on: the deaths of despair, the opioid crisis, our loss of social solidarity and moral bearings, the evidence of lingering racial disparities, and a weary sense of meaningless across the country. That’s the “old normal.” It’s no wonder studies show a decline in overall happiness among Americans in recent decades, especially among younger Americans who have never known life to be any different and yet who sense that settling for being “lonely together” is not a worthy aspiration.
Building a New Normal
The question we should ask, then, is not when will we get back to normal but should we want to go back to normal? And the follow-up question: What should the new normal be?
What if this crisis is a divine disruption that allows us to rethink ourselves, to rethink our lives, to reconsider our habits?
What if this crisis is a divine opportunity to reflect on what matters most and to order our lives accordingly?
What if we now have the opportunity to make different decisions—to prayerfully discern how to create and cultivate a new and better normal on the other side of this crisis?
What if we now have the chance to reset our expectations, to refocus our attention on what matters most, and to recommit to the people we’re called to love and serve?
What if this season of total reliance on technology for spreading communication helps us see the limits of technology for building and sustaining community?
What if this period of forced isolation can help us see the end result of radical individualism’s trajectory, so that in the end we come out of our enclaves and homes with a stronger commitment to our communities, our churches, and our country?
Let’s not go back to normal. Let’s come away from this challenge with a new vision of what normal could be.” by
