Well this week has been a big learning week for me and my companion. We are working really hard, and puting forth our effort to have success. In the week I got a little bit sick with some congestion, but nothing that was too bad. More than anything most of our potential baptisms have been falling, and we have been walking around a lot looking for more investigators to no avail. Fortunately, as you already know, the Lord always puts through trials to help us learn something and grow spiritually.
I feel like I really found my answers in the scriptures in this week. It's amazing how the Lord guides us so much in our lives to help us become better people. I had been praying a lot that the Lord could help me become stonger, and more firm in my faith, and I am certain that the events of this week have been a clear answer to my prayers. As I was studying the scriptures this week there were a bunch of things that really stuck out to me, and made me ponder. As we were having a hard time in the week I was really thinking about what it was that I needed to do better, and the things that I could change. I was reading in the end of Alma, about the Sons of Helaman. It really stuck out to me the great faith that they had. It is a huge miracle, that in such wars that they were in, that not one of them died. Such a miracle, that it would be impossible to think that something like that could happen. I came to the conclusion that it was due to their firm faith in Christ, and thus they received the miracles. Later on most of the armies with them were destroyed, and they had very little support. The Lamanites had a great army in a very fortified city. Although they were worried the Lamanites would be able to take them over, due to their significantly greater number of people, Helaman and his army put their trust in god, and were not only able to withstand the Lamanites, but actually cast them out of the city in the which they occupied. For me that would take miraculous powers to be able to accomplish a feat such as that. Later on in Helaman 3, there is a story of the conversion of thousands of people, then in 5, again another group of thousands that were baptized. There are many other similar stories that came to my mind from the Bible and the BOM, and it really made me stop and think.
I realized that early in the Restoration of the Church, it was also miraculous numbers of people being baptized. It really made me start to wonder: Why don't we see miraculous numbers of people being baptized in our companionship/District/mission? I then found a scripture in Ether 12:12, that really answered the question for me personally. It says that the Lord can do no miracles when the we don't have faith. I came to realize that there is absolutely no reason that we shouldn't see miraculous numbers of baptisms in our day and age. God is the same god of miracles yesterday today and forever, so wouldn't it make sense that he would be able to do those kind of miracles in our companionship?
I have spent most of the week meditating in this thought, and came to the conclusion, that for one to see those miracles, they would have to have such great a faith, as to bring to pass those miracles. I realized that the big factor that I have been missing most of my mission has really been the faith. I really feel like we can be baptizing every week, and we are now setting goals to really bring to pass these miracles, by first increasing our faith. I feel very blessed by the Lord in this week for all that he has tought me in my personal revelation in studying. I know that this is the true church, and I know that God can and WILL do miracles for all of us in our lives, if we exercise just a little bit of faith. I really know that God is preparing people to be baptized in our areas, and now it is our responsability to find them and baptize them weekly.
~Elder Ryan Griffin
No comments:
Post a Comment