Complete Collection of Narrations

The Human Condition

We are all so very human. Our wandering feet carry us along many curious and often frightening paths. Our untamed hearts pull or push us in unexpected directions. Our wide eyes marvel at the fleeting scenes of beauty and filth which unfold around us. Our grasping hands shape the environments and cultures we touch. Our unceasing voices speak much, yet too often say little. Our twitching ears are filled with the discordant noises of life. Our restless minds wrestle with the meaning of it all, desperate to forget the bitter and remember the sweet. Yet humanity occasionally manages to find itself, to gentle itself—to see, free, quiet, harmonize, and understand itself.

The writers of this book are brothers. We use the word writers because we feel that we are not the authors of any particular words of greatness. Instead, we are hunters and gatherers of knowledge. We till and seed the soils of our souls hoping to harvest wisdom.

We are native citizens of the world, yet we perceive the foreign nature of mankind's walk upon the Earth. Though our journey is not complete, my brother and I have found ourselves both on the side of right and clearly in the wrong often enough to have gained an abiding appreciation for the many profound lessons that can be gleaned from the human experience.

Origin of Our Writings

As a young man I, Aaron, chose to serve a mission to the people of Argentina for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In my idealism, I hoped to bring light and goodness to people who had been less fortunate. I like to believe that I left something of value behind for the people I came to love, but I returned deeply transformed by my experiences.

The new thoughts I learned to think and the tender feelings I came to cherish during my mission planted in my heart a seed of passion for sharing things of worth with others. I returned to a world that is far more complex and fast-paced than my mission experience had been, and I found it somehow the lesser for it. In spite of this, that latent kernel of desire swelled in my heart and grew. I began searching for ideas, experiences, and things of great worth. I wrote of them. I did not know to whom I was writing. I had not considered my audience.

After some time, I suspected that I might be crafting letters to my unborn children. I came to believe that my collection of writings could become a simple legacy that I might leave behind at my journey's end. I became convinced that stories of my life, my tempering experiences, and meaningful traditions, along with my humble understandings, precious beliefs, and faith-filled encouragement are the only meaningful inheritance I can bequeath to my posterity.

When my adventures with family and children began, my yearning to gather and then write of these things became a driving need. In my late thirties, I felt a strong urge to better organize my hard-learned lessons and happy discoveries in the form of a book or collection of letters. I am not finished learning, but I felt my experience and understanding was sufficient to truly begin sharing. Spending a few hours each night, as I could spare, I finished my first rough draft in a little more than six months.

I shared my collected works with my older brother, Jim. He has long been more than an example of manhood to me; he is a trusted friend. His comments, questions, suggestions, and assistance became such an important part of editing my letters that I realized they are as much the result of his life experiences as they are of my own.

Our long studies and preparations seemed to take on a life of their own. We quickly adopted the belief that such beautiful ideas and experiences must be shared in words of plainness. This philosophy became the title of our work. We understand that the publication of such personal things may open us to criticism and unforeseen consequences. We have long considered and earnestly prayed about our decision to act in accordance with our desires. We offer our Words of Plainness to you with hope, for they are the treasured things of our souls.

Timeliness of Our Words

The topics of our writings seem appropriate for the times in which we find ourselves. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members have become the subject of a surprising amount of media coverage, both favorable and not. Debate over the Church's history, beliefs, and practices appears in popular tabloids, newspapers, books, television programs, online forums, and even in widely public political arenas.

An enormous volume of misinformation and malicious propaganda exists about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and members of the Church. During our long years as public school teachers, we struggled to convince students of the vital importance of using authoritative sources of information when doing research and in the formation of lasting opinions. Gossip columns, hate blogs, and literature critical of the Church are tantalizing reads, but they seldom offer much in the way of actual credibility. Tracing the citations and sources of such information, one finds little more than hearsay and quotations either taken out of context or hastily borrowed from other unverifiable sources. Though false information might be presented energetically and even well-received by many, it remains fundamentally untrue.

Throughout history, it has been consistently true that the odd combination of ignorance and confidence eventually leads to suffering, oppression, bigotry, and hatred. We believe that it is essential to the character of each human being to search for truth, meaning, and lasting happiness—and that we must do so while upholding the virtues of honesty, compassion, and tolerance. Surely these are the noblest of emerging characteristics possessed by enlightened individuals and found within civilized cultures.

Learning from Authoritative Sources

With regards to faith and religion, it seems like common sense that if you want to know what a Baptist believes you should ask a Baptist. If you want to know what a Methodist believes you should ask a Methodist. This is also true for Roman Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and so on. It is equally true that not all Baptists believe the same body of doctrines or behave the same way. Likewise are the Methodists, Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and so forth.

On a related note, the term "Mormon," though once commonly used as a shorthand, is technically inaccurate and increasingly discouraged when referring to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its doctrine, history, or its members. This is because it obscures the Church's Christ-centered identity and reduces a complex faith to a nickname derived from the Book of Mormon rather than from Jesus Christ, whom Latter-day Saints worship as the Son of God. The name "Mormon" originated as an external label and later became culturally widespread, but it does not appear in the Church's formal name and can unintentionally imply that members follow a figure named Mormon rather than Christ. In recent years, Church leaders have emphasized using the full name of the Church or the term "Latter-day Saints" to reflect theological accuracy, historical continuity, and respect for religious self-identification. Using precise language not only honors the beliefs of its members but also avoids reinforcing misunderstandings about their faith, practices, and relationship to broader Christianity.

Our Credentials as Latter-day Saints

My brother and I have spent our lives within the culture and practices of the faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We vehemently oppose any who are audacious enough to pretend to know more about our own personal views than we do. We claim the right to be the supreme mortal authorities over what we personally believe, how this makes us feel, and how we interpret the effects of living as Latter-day Saints within our own life experiences.

We are active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, yet we feel the need to offer some few credentials which establish our general worthiness to represent regular, ordinary, everyday members of our Church and that we live a reasonably common Latter-day Saint lifestyle.

Our Conversion and Upbringing

We were born to Lutheran parents. Our mother investigated and eventually chose to convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many friends and relatives questioned or even opposed her decision. She was baptized while she was pregnant with Aaron, the younger of the two writer brothers. James also later converted. Our childhoods were strongly enmeshed in the culture and society of Church members. We actively and regularly attended worship services and participated in the Church's Primary and youth programs.

Priesthood and Service

We were both formally ordained to the "Lesser" Priesthood in our adolescence. We were successively set apart in the offices of Deacon, Teacher, and Priest. We feel that we faithfully officiated in these offices by preparing and passing the emblems of the Lord's Supper, collecting fast offerings for the poor, home teaching our fellow members, baptizing those who came into the Church, and assisting in assorted temporal responsibilities.

As young adults we were both ordained to the "Higher" Priesthood. We were both set apart as Elders and performed as such. We were both called and set apart to full-time proselyting missionary service. We both received our temple endowments, whereby we made sacred covenants (promises) with God in His holy temple.

We have been married to our wives in the temple and sealed to them for time and all eternity. We have raised (and are raising) children who have been sealed to us for eternity in the temple. We have been called and set apart in many positions of service throughout our lives in the Church. Currently, James is serving as a High Priest in his ward. Aaron is serving as an Elder in his ward. We anticipate, God willing, a lifetime of service to our fellow members and to all God's children.

Our Lives as Latter-day Saints

We pay our tithes and offerings. We worship in our ward congregations every Sunday. We attend and officiate in temple worship. We fast and we pray. We read and study the Scriptures. We are not perfect, but we continually repent and seek to align our lives with God's will. We strive to cultivate the fruits of the Spirit: patience, kindness, love, charity, peace, joy, meekness, etc. We seek to obtain the gifts of the Spirit described in 1 Corinthians 12: wisdom, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues. We study with open hearts and minds.

We seek to be of service to our fellowman. We seek to be forgiving, slow to anger, and to avoid unrighteous behaviors. We seek to be good neighbors. We seek to be good friends and good examples, even if no one is watching. We seek to be humble and teachable. We seek to be genuine disciples of Jesus Christ. We bear public witness that Jesus Christ lives, that He loves us, that He has made it possible for us to be forgiven of our sins, and that all are invited to come unto Him and be sanctified of their sins and made righteous if they will but have faith in Him, repent, be baptized, and follow Him to the end of their mortal journey.

Christ-Centered Faith

Our Witness of the Savior

Latter-day Saint Christians proclaim with deep gratitude and open enthusiasm that Jesus Christ is the Lord and Master of all creation. We seek to take His name upon us. We believe and testify that He is the divine Son of God, our Savior and Redeemer. While theologians debate the nature of Christ's divinity, we believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the long-awaited Messiah of whom ancient Prophets had written. We accept Him as our personal Savior. We study His life and teachings, laboring to make ourselves His disciples through faith in Him, repentance, baptism, and seeking after the peaceable gifts of the Spirit of God.

Those Latter-day Saints who remain faithful dedicate their lives to the service of God and our fellowman. Though we are imperfect and subject to the same temptations and foolishness as are all members of humankind, Latter-day Saint Christians labor to sanctify our lives—to become holy through the grace of Christ through continued repentance and devotion to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We invite others to do the same out of genuine concern and love for all God's children. We hope to truly be worthy of the title "Saints" in these latter days.

Kinship with All Believers

We as Latter-day Saints happily recognize the light and goodness found in all people who search for truth, meaning, and lasting happiness. We feel a close kinship with all those who believe in Jesus Christ. We do not discourage their faith. Faithful Latter-day Saints who understand the core teachings of the restored gospel do not condemn others; rather, we humbly believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior of us all. If you cannot agree with the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we plead with you at least to believe in Christ. If we all heed the Savior's call, "Come follow me," we will undoubtedly find ourselves together in His kingdom at last.

However, if any of us dare to persecute one another over differences in doctrine and silly rumors—as though we were truly wise in any way—we will undoubtedly find ourselves both unworthy and uncomfortable upon leaving this life to stand in judgment before God. Jesus said that those who are angry with a brother without cause are in danger of judgment. He also taught, "He that is not against us is for us." Further, Jesus "came not to condemn the world." Do we, then, have any right to condemn one another? Are any of us better or wiser than He?

When Latter-day Saints invite others to investigate the Church, we do not attempt to take away what light and faith they have. Rather, we invite all to come and see what the Lord has done in our lives in the hope that we can add to the light others already possess. A vital point to make is that those who think that Latter-day Saints believe only members of our Church will reach heaven misunderstand our doctrine of God's expansive mercy and multiple degrees of glory.

Organization of Our Writings

This book explains what it means to be a sincere Christian disciple from the perspective of faithful Latter-day Saints. Our writings are divided into five parts. Each section builds upon the previous, representing increasing depth of sincere discipleship and understanding.

Part 1: Our Faith

The intent of these first chapters is to lay a foundation upon which all readers can build a common understanding of simple and sincere Christianity, no matter what specific beliefs to which one subscribes. We begin by describing that deep longing for truth, meaning, and lasting happiness which is common to all humanity. We then explain our views of academic knowledge and spiritual knowledge, both of which are essential to the search for God. We continue by explaining the Latter-day Saint understanding of and approaches to prayer, faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, and discipleship. We conclude this section by seeking to clearly explain the core concepts of living prophets, gospel dispensations, and the restoration of Christ's Church in the latter days in our day.

Part 2: Our Promises

It is not enough to merely discover the truth. We must be willing to embrace it to benefit therefrom. In these chapters we demonstrate that God has asked His people to make sacred promises (covenants) in every gospel dispensation. We then endeavor to clearly explain the sacred covenants Latter-day Saints make as we embrace faith in Jesus Christ. These include covenants made in local congregations and in the holy temples of the Lord.

Part 3: Our Practices

Yet again, it is not enough to merely promise to abide by truth and commit to faith in Jesus Christ. We must exercise our faith in keeping our promises to God and His Son Jesus Christ. In this part of our book we describe the day-to-day practices of faithful Latter-day Saints—the ways in which we sincerely strive to live our faith.

Part 4: Our Theology

As we search for truth, meaning, and lasting happiness we eventually awake to the realization that God lives and still participates in the lives of all His children. Further, as we exercise faith in the gospel of salvation we come to know the character and divinity of Jesus Christ, and we discover the nature of our relationship with Him. As we mature spiritually we begin to sense our individual worth and eternal potential. As matters of theology all of these things have been described by Prophets and Apostles throughout the ages, but each of us must discover these things as part of his or her personal salvation.

Part 5: Our Witness of Christ

Finally, we provide an overview of God's Plan of Salvation. We then conclude our writings with our personal witnesses of Christ and offer our assurances that these things are true.

Our Plea to You

Our work has been to gather plain and precious truths that God has revealed concerning His personal nature and His will for mankind. We generally write in our own words and according to our own understanding, but we cite the sources of truth. We draw from the inspired teachings of prophets and apostles of God, both ancient and modern. We quote holy scripture—the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price—which contain the word of God. We encourage you to study the references from which we have drawn in performing this labor of love.

We plead with you not to be offended by the fact that we may hold some ideas different from your own. More importantly, we implore you not to rebel against the idea that there is a higher authority than mankind, or against the idea that we all ought to obey commandments of God. We encourage you not to reject the idea that mankind needs to be saved. At the very least, we need to be saved from sources of unhappiness: ignorance of life's purpose, the consequences of wandering from wisdom's path, and our estrangement from our Creator.

My brother and I take great joy and comfort in what small light and knowledge God has given to us. We feel as if we have awakened from a deep sleep, made new and somehow more whole by our acquaintance with God and His Son. We openly confess our own imperfections and limitations. We do not seek to set ourselves up as a source of light for the world. Rather, we seek to remind all humanity that God is the light by which all may see in the dark.

What you get out of reading our Words of Plainness depends entirely upon what you are looking for as you study them. We hope that you find in our writings encouragement and inspiration to believe in God and in His Son Jesus Christ. Our prayer is that you will be blessed by the Spirit and grace of God as you consider our words, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Note to the Reader

This chapter will feel unconventional compared to other chapters within our Words of Plainness writings. What follows is not a chapter that has "arrived at" conclusions. It is a demonstration of the nature of "Our Search" in action, focused on the personal growth of Aaron, the primary writer.

I, Aaron, first wrote about the most important life questions we all seek to answer—the subject of chapter two—more than two decades ago, when I was in my early thirties. I was just beginning my teaching career and my children were very young. My brother, in his forties, had traveled somewhat further down a similar career path, but we lived on opposite ends of the country.

In those days of writing alone, I had already been ministering the gospel of Jesus Christ for more than fifteen years. I had genuine conviction then, and much of what I wrote still rings true. But the "refiner's fire" described in Malachi has shaped and molded my understanding and sensibilities.

More than two decades of maturing ministry, interfaith dialogue, teaching high school sciences, and the unique crucible of ordinary living and raising a family within evolving communities have all done their work on my soul. Some of my earlier certainties have been tempered. Others have deepened in unexpected ways. Now, in my fifth decade of life, I recognize a significant softening of my ego, making room for a compassion—empathy even—that feels less like a choice and more like a reflex. This character trait has finally settled into my bones, becoming a visceral recognition that my own spiritual growth is bearing the "fruits of the Spirit.".

Rather than erase my earlier voice or pretend that I have arrived at final answers at this stage of my life, we have chosen to present both: the questions as I framed them then, and the spiritual wrestling I continue with now. You will encounter my younger voice—from my thirties—in regular text, and my current voice—now in my fifties—following each section.

I do this because "Our Search" is the point of this chapter. Some refer to this "Search" as their spiritual "Journey" or "Path." It is not easy or comfortable to grow spiritually. This is illustrated beautifully from the life story of the prophet Enos in the Book of Mormon, who wrote, "I will tell you of the wrestle which I had before God," for "my soul hungered.".

If these Words of Plainness presented only firm conclusions as final declarations of truth, they would betray their subject. The hunger we share—for meaning, for truth, for something substantial enough to stake our lives on—is not a problem to solve in a single go. This personal searching and striving is not a "One and Done" experience. It is a necessary, ongoing tension to live within. The traditions that sustain people do not offer final answers but livable frameworks.

Your spiritual journey is your own. I will not hijack it. My hope is only that seeing one person's search across time—with its clarifications, revisions, and enduring convictions—might give you permission, and a sense of companionship, to pursue your own search.

We are fellow searchers. Let us begin.

Thesis 1: The Hunger Within

From My Earlier Writings

Central to the human experience is a profound hunger for greater understanding, a nobler purpose, and enduring satisfaction with life. Tragically, the noise and worries of daily living often deafen us to this yearning. Yet as we experience life, many of us eventually awake to the realization that selfish pursuits and common pleasures are ultimately unsatisfying. We deeply need more than these can offer. To the searching and discontented soul there seems to be a famine of truly meaningful experiences in the world, a drought of something substantial to satisfy the driving thirst of the human heart.

We all occasionally feel that something is not quite right with life, even when things are going well—as if something is missing. This can become a mournful itch that we do not know how to scratch. Have you ever felt like there is more goodness and nobility inside you than is apparent? Have you ever felt longings, like homesickness, without any explanation? These longings are a normal and healthy part of the human experience. There are times in our lives when we become especially thoughtful, and we think about the nature of our existence. There are as many reasons to contemplate life as there are people. Many devote much energy and time to the search for truth and meaning.

The most basic reason to improve our understanding is for simple survival. Many of us feel driven to learn and explore by curiosity or even boredom. Some seek to lessen pain resulting from a traumatic experience or loss, while others fear death. Many of us seek for something more authentic, some meaningful and lasting cause for which to hope or to work. Others may feel empty or lost in life; whatever the reason may be, the desire connected with these thoughtful moments is to gain more perspective on life. We need to define our place in the world, as we all eventually hunger and thirst to live each day with greater purpose and satisfaction.

Twenty-Plus Years Later

Reading these words now, I am struck by what I got right and what I had not yet learned to see.

The hunger is real. I would not soften that claim. After decades of teaching, ministering, and living alongside people from vastly different backgrounds—atheists and believers, scientists and mystics, the wounded and the thriving—I have found this hunger to be universal. That we exist is something we can agree upon. Why we exist is the subject of much debate and passion. What we do with existence defines our character and sense of identity. These three facts form common ground for every searching soul.

What I would add now is this: the hunger itself is not a sign that something is wrong with us. It is evidence that we are awakening spiritually. Those who feel no such hunger may have numbed themselves to it, or they may have found worldview frameworks that satisfy them, at least for a season. Both possibilities deserve respectful tolerance.

I have also come to appreciate a truth my younger self was circling but had not quite grasped: the living traditions that sustain people tend to offer not final answers but an imperfect, incomplete collection of coping skills for survival. This spiritual hunger does not disappear when we find faith or a portion of truth. It transforms. It becomes anticipation rather than anguish. I feel a pleasant sense of "something more" approaching, a developmental shift I cannot fully name but will welcome when I recognize its arrival.

If you recognize this hunger in yourself, know that it is neither weakness nor failure.

Thesis 2: Questions That Demand Answers

It is the evidence of your "aliveness."

From My Earlier Writings

As we search for understanding, we naturally wonder about life's purpose and question the wisdom we've inherited. Many traditions teach that we are born to die, yet we must die to truly live. Mortals live only for a time and then die. Mortality is the limited span of this life, while immortality is eternal life. As seeds of God, we seem to barely have time to take root and blossom in the gardens of mortality. It also seems that we might only mature to bear the fruits of immortality long after our mortal journey ends.

There are many more immediate concerns than our fear of death and hopes for immortality.

Consider these fundamental questions: Who am I? Why am I? What can I become? What is happiness, and how do we find it in this life? Do good and evil really exist as objective realities? What is the true nature of our existence, and what are we becoming? Is there an authority greater than human conscience and desire? In what or in whom can we place our trust? How can we distinguish truth from error?

Twenty-Plus Years Later

These questions still matter. But in recent years, I have found a simpler way to organize them—one that emerged, unexpectedly, through dialogue with an artificial intelligence and refinement in numerous interfaith chats on virtual reality social platforms. When I asked "What questions feel most essential for people to answer so that they can feel like things are okay?" The volume of responses clarified what I had been perceiving for decades.

First, identity and worth: Who am I, and do I matter? We need assurance that our existence has significance—that we are not merely interchangeable or accidental. Second, meaning and purpose: What am I here for? Most people need to feel their days add up to something—that their effort and suffering are not arbitrary. Third, connection and belonging: Am I known, and do I belong somewhere? Loneliness is not just uncomfortable; it is existentially destabilizing. Fourth, goodness and moral orientation: What is right, and can I live it? Moral confusion creates deep anxiety and spiritual unrest. Fifth, suffering and coherence: Why do bad things happen, and can I bear them? We can endure remarkable hardship if it fits into a coherent story. And sixth, death and continuity: What happens when I die, and does anything last?

What strikes me is that these are not puzzles to solve only once—they are divinely created existential tensions to live within. I no longer expect to arrive at answers that silence the questions. Instead, I have learned to dwell within them, letting the questions themselves become companions on the journey. Perhaps this is what spiritual maturity looks like: not the accumulation of certainties, but the capacity to hold uncertainty without despair.

Thesis 3: How We Cope

From My Earlier Writings

To satisfy our hunger for truth, meaning, and lasting happiness, we must pursue them directly and honestly. Unfortunately, many of us cope with such hunger by substituting temporary distractions in its place. We have observed several such coping mechanisms in ourselves and in others, including pride, despair, rebellion, submission, and self-justification.

Pride. Competition is a natural part of the human experience. It can be very healthy when combined with wisdom and civility. However, when competition is adopted as the meaning of life, all there is to one's existence is the survival of ego and the pursuit of power, position, and fame. Such competition is a vain attempt to create meaning where none can exist for long.

Despair. A sorrowful way to deal with life is to actively refuse to cope. Some have been overwhelmed by the search for truth to such a degree that they feel confused, frustrated, or even scared—losing hope in ever understanding life.

Rebellion. Some cope by resisting authority or authoritative ideas. While it is healthy to consider ideas independently, many categorically reject traditional wisdom. Rebellion often arises as a response to traumatic or confusing experiences and becomes a defense mechanism rooted in mistrust.

Submission. There is wisdom in carefully evaluating long-held traditions. However, we refer here to those who embrace authority without question or careful thought. Some distrust their own judgment, preferring to be told what to believe.

Self-Justification. We often go to great lengths to excuse our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Many seek self-justification by embracing philosophical systems that validate their choices.

Twenty-Plus Years Later

This section troubled me significantly when I reread it in my fifties. Not because I think the categories are wrong. Pride, despair, rebellion, submission, and self-justification do describe real patterns I see in myself and others. What troubles me is the tone of certainty from my early decades. My younger voice named these distractions as "false substitutes for truth," which implies judgment. It suggests that people who cope this way are making a choice to avoid truth when they could simply choose otherwise.

What I have learned in the last twenty years of teaching, ministry, and simply paying attention is this: most people are doing the best they know how. They live with a mixture of strengths and weaknesses, shaped by their unique backstories and formative experiences. Each person possesses a unique blend of incomplete coping skills, uncertain resources, and shifting social structures. Each of us is also possessed of attitudes and worldviews that might or might not be adaptive to the needs of life. No one is completely evil. No one is completely good.

The person who retreats into pride may have learned early that vulnerability invites harm. The person who sinks into despair may have been genuinely overwhelmed by losses no one should have to bear alone. The rebel may have been burned by authorities who violated sacred trust. The one who submits may have never been given permission to think their own thoughts. The self-justifier may be carrying shame so heavy that facing it directly would break them.

These are not failures of will. They are survival strategies, bookmarks of safety in our story of healing and progress. They deserve compassion, not condemnation.

This does not mean we should remain in patterns that harm ourselves or others. Growth is possible. I have witnessed it literally thousands of times in my students, and experienced it myself. But growth rarely comes through being told we are doing it wrong. It comes through being met with understanding, being offered better tools, and being invited into communities that hold space for both our wounds and our healing growth.

If you recognize yourself in any of these patterns, please hear me: you are not broken. You are surviving. And surviving is the first step toward thriving.

Thesis 4: The Path Forward

From My Earlier Writings

All of these coping mechanisms can become artificial substitutes for the genuine discovery of truth, wisdom, and happiness. We must pause to evaluate ourselves periodically. Embracing extremes of pride, despair, rebellion, and submission can cripple the soul. Wisdom lies in avoiding extremes and finding the balanced middle path. For example, humility is in the balance between pride and despair. Another example would be independent judgment, which lies in the balance between rebellion and blind submission.

We invite you to embrace the search with honest humility. Even when we grasp important truths, vast understanding still awaits discovery. We assure you that truth is knowable, and enduring happiness can be found in this life. Renew your search with courage and hope, remembering the promise: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find." "Our search" is worth any sacrifice. These things we testify in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Twenty-Plus Years Later

The balance my younger self described is real: humility between pride and despair, independent judgment between rebellion and submission. This principle has guided my life and I still teach it. My thousands of students will recognize—and probably roll their eyes with a smile at—the numerous repetitions of my personal catchphrase: "Truth, health, and wisdom are usually somewhere in the middle of extremes." My teaching style was to require the application of this principle in the science classroom and laboratory as I helped young minds understand natural principles, like: dynamic equilibrium in physical science, homeostasis in biology, and sustainability in environmental science.

What I would now add to this chapter is that finding balance in spiritual development is not a destination but a practice. For example, we do not arrive at humility and then possess it forever. We practice humility, daily, in the face of our recurring temptations toward either pride or despair.

The opposition in all things—whether viewed as wisdom in science or spirituality—is the tension between what we are and what we might become. This dynamic tension is woven into the structure of existence itself. It is not an obstacle to development but the very means of growth. I now see mortality as a learning experience for our spirits. And the Creator—the Master Teacher—wrote these conditions of opposition as the curriculum of our mortal education.

I still believe what I wrote decades ago: truth is knowable. Enduring happiness can be found. Ask, and it shall be given. Seek, and you shall find.

But I have also learned that asking and seeking look different than I once imagined. They are less like solving a puzzle and more like cultivating a relationship. They require patience, humility, and the willingness to be surprised—even by the source of the answers.

Another personal milestone has been settling into a humble confidence in God—one that doesn't depend on having final answers to life's important questions. I have become less concerned about formalized creeds and official doctrines, though they are still a source of puzzling fascination to me.

With or without perfect understanding of "correct" theology, I have accepted Jesus Christ as my divine and living Savior. Whether or not others approve, I will follow Him. I feel His peace. I perceive God's power and Spirit operating in my life. Whether I am accepted by particular traditions or philosophies has no bearing on my view of their adherents as fellow children of God, for I see them as brothers and sisters, fellow searchers.

The Gift of Holy Dissatisfaction

There is something I did not understand when I first wrote about the hunger within us. I described it accurately—the restless longing, the sense that something is missing even when things are going well, the itch we cannot scratch. But I did not yet see it for what it truly is. It is a divine gift and an essential component of a plan based on divine wisdom that is beyond our own.

Consider: God created us with moral agency—the capacity to choose. He placed us in mortal conditions of opposition in all things—light and dark, pleasure and pain, growth and decay. These are well-established principles of both the gospel and science. But there is a companion gift to agency that I had not fully appreciated: The Creator also made us unable to remain satisfied for long with any level of accomplishment or personal development.

This is not a curse. This is not evidence that we are broken or ungrateful or missing the point. It is the deliberate design of a wise God who is the literal parent of our spirits—the divine pedagogy of a divine teacher.

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." Why would a loving Creator build restlessness into our souls? Because creation is not yet finished.

We are still being created—shaped, refined, and polished. The process that began before mortality does not conclude in mortality. We will continue to develop eternally.

If we could reach a point of complete satisfaction—a state where we felt no pull toward growth, no hunger for more light and truth—we would stop becoming what we are meant to become. The restlessness is not a flaw. It is the engine of eternal progression.

The Safety Net of Grace

But here is where the good news of Jesus Christ becomes essential. If we are perpetually stretched toward growth, perpetually placed in conditions of opposition, perpetually invited to exercise agency in a world designed to challenge us, then we will inevitably make mistakes and eventually be held accountable.

This is not pessimism. It is the nature of an educational environment where the curriculum requires risk, choice, and the possibility of failure.

The good news is that we can recover from mistakes. Through the grace of Christ's atonement, we can recover and grow. He has promised never to give up on us. The prophet Malachi described Him as one who would "sit as a refiner and purifier of silver." The Lord patiently, attentively, watches us over the refining fire until the impurities are drawn out and His own image can be seen reflected in us.

This divine transformation—named in various traditions as sanctification, theosis, purification, insight, discipleship, consecration, holy anointing, and more—happens through the power of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth. It is not instantaneous. It is not comfortable.

And it is not completed in this life; it continues beyond the veil of death. The resurrection is not the end of development; it is the next phase.

God Loves Broken Things

I admire a musical testimony by Kenneth Cope. He captured something essential in his song "Broken." He writes that broken clouds give rain, broken soil grows grain, broken bread feeds us for one more day. Broken storms yield light. The break of day heals night. Broken pride turns blindness into sight. The refrain is simple and profound: God loves broken things.

The lyrics help me as I attempt to explain my own awakening to this principle. For years I had thought of brokenness as the problem and Christ as the solution—as if the goal were to be fixed and then remain unbroken.

But the pattern of creation itself suggests otherwise. Seeds must break open to grow. Bread must be broken to nourish. Hearts must be broken to become capable of deeper love. The most holy of sacrifices we can give to God is a "broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart". This, He can work with.

The hunger we feel, the dissatisfaction with any resting place, the holy restlessness that drives us forward—this is the breaking that makes growth possible. Christ does not stand at the end of the process, waiting to congratulate us when we finally get it right. He walks with us through every breaking—every reformation—every new becoming.

"He will sit as a refiner." Not standing apart. Sitting. Attentive. Present. Patient. Participating. Masterful. Watching until the work is done—and the work is never done, because we are eternal beings with infinite potential.

The Invitation

So when you feel the hunger return after accomplishing something meaningful and find yourself quickly restless for more, do not interpret this as failure. Do not assume you missed something or chose the wrong path. This restlessness is a gift. It is the voice of your eternal nature refusing to settle for less than what you are capable of becoming.

And when you stumble, when you make mistakes in this mortal educational environment—as all of us do—know that the Refiner sits beside his holy fire, watching, waiting, ready to continue the work whenever you willingly return to Him. He has promised not to give up on us. The process of sanctification does not conclude in this mortal life. There is eternity. There is grace. There is always another invitation to move forward.

Creation is not finished. Neither are you. Neither am I. And that, I have come to believe, is very good news.

To My Fellow Searchers

I do not know where you are in your search. Perhaps you are just beginning—overwhelmed by questions that seem to have no answers. Perhaps you are deep in the middle—having found some things but still hungry for more. Perhaps you have wandered for years and are tired—or even angry.

Wherever you are, know this: the search itself is meaningful. The hunger you feel is evidence of your aliveness. The questions that haunt you are invitations, not accusations.

I have not arrived at my final destination. Neither, I suspect, have you. But we are on our way, together. And perhaps that is enough.

Here is what I am still discovering: That compassion for others begins with compassion for myself. That conviction and humility can coexist. That the Creator's wisdom can be read in the Creation if we have eyes to see. That unexpected conversation partners—even virtual or artificial ones—can illuminate what we have long sensed but not yet named. What are you discovering? Our search continues along the straight and narrow path. May we find one another along the way is my prayer these days.

A Promise I Hope to Fulfill

If I am blessed to remain in this mortal educational environment for another twenty years, I am confident that I will need to revise this chapter again to reflect yet another cycle of spiritual wrestlings and personal growth. I testify of my confidence in the divinity of the process—confidence in "Our Search," in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Faith and Learning: Companions in the Same Cause

In spite of our variety of methods for coping with our very real hunger and thirst for truth, wisdom, and lasting happiness, we all continue to puzzle over the purpose of life. Human beings need to explore life and our surroundings. Even when survival needs are met, many of us continue to explore our existence out of curiosity. As we gather pearls of wisdom, we discover that the most satisfying truths are simply beautiful and beautifully simple.

As we mature and become more observant, many of us grow increasingly amazed by the energetic vitality and organized complexity of life and all of nature around us. In the spirit of exploration, human beings seek truth and meaning diligently, chasing down many paths of knowledge and avenues of life experience.

Latter-day Saints believe in eternal progression. Therefore, we place a high value on learning. We do distinguish between academic knowledge and spiritual knowledge, but believe these should be viewed as companions in the same cause. God and science are not mutually exclusive. If any conflict exists between academic knowledge and spiritual knowledge, it is the result of a lack of sufficient information within one or both domains of knowledge. Albert Einstein famously observed that science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind (Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, 24–28). This chapter focuses on our views of academic knowledge, while our views of spirituality will be explored in the following chapter.

Please be patient in digesting the material for these two chapters. We have found high value in both types of knowledge, and have benefited from viewing them as two halves of a whole–what might be called a holistic epistemology. We believe all paths to knowledge are interconnected, each contributing something essential that the others cannot fully provide, together forming a more complete framework for understanding truth and our place within it.

The Nature of Truth: Faith Perspective

Many suspect that ultimate truth exists, but some question whether human beings are capable of "knowing" truth with any degree of certainty. Human beings have discovered so much about our existence in the universe, but what portion of reality yet escapes our attention? Of those quiet things yet hidden, both still and active, how much is there yet to learn? Regardless of our indefinable level of ignorance, what does it mean to have knowledge? What does it mean to know?

In preparation for our careers in education and throughout our combined decades in front of classrooms, my brother and I carefully considered these questions. Our formal studies and personal experiences reveal a disappointing lack of a unified definition of the word knowledge. In the place of clarity, numerous theories exist to explain the concept of knowledge. Though the definition of knowledge may be unclear, we feel it is important to plainly define the Latter-day Saint view of truth. One formal doctrine states: "Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come". To this definition we add the following: The whole, ultimate truth is known only to God. There is only one ultimate truth; no separate truths exist for academics and spirituality. We can perceive or discover part of the whole truth, but we cannot know by academic means how correct this partial knowledge is in the ultimate sense. Truth does not have to be perceived, understood, believed, or justified to still be true.

How Human Beings Gain Knowledge

So, how do human beings gain knowledge of truth? In the biological sense, our brains have no way to directly experience the universe that exists outside of our skulls. In general, learning theories indicate that our journey to knowledge begins when we become aware of objects or events around us. Most sensory information that is funneled into our brains by the nervous system is ignored, but when we choose to pay attention to our senses, we begin to mentally sort and prioritize our perceptions. Using our imagination, we very quickly form mental images—basic ideas—of objects or events in our environment. Some have argued over whether humans can accurately imagine or reliably interpret external reality.

Still, with amazing speed our minds collect, compare, contrast, and evaluate ideas. If we come to accept an idea as true, it becomes a belief. Our minds consciously and subconsciously combine related ideas and beliefs into increasingly complicated concepts. Over time and with reflection, we combine numerous related concepts into themes of knowledge. Eventually, each individual develops an overarching worldview, which is one's basic cognitive orientation or mindset. One's evolving worldview is strongly influenced by the society and culture in which he or she lives. Unfortunately, one's worldview tends to become more rigid with age.

The Boundary Between Belief and Knowledge

Returning to the questions asked earlier, at what point can a collection of ideas and beliefs be called knowledge? How do we know if our knowledge is true? Through the ages, philosophers and scientists have repeatedly attempted to define the boundary between belief and knowledge, but debate continues even today.

There are two general ways that the word knowledge is used. First, in academic arenas an idea must be justified by overwhelming and reliable evidence to be believed, and the nature of the evidence determines the degree of certainty that the belief is true. Many academics hold that if a belief is actually known, then it cannot be false—effectively equating knowledge and truth. But is it possible for an idea to be supported by overwhelming evidence, be universally accepted by all humans to be true, be of enormous practical use, and still manage to be false?

The second general way the word knowledge is used is in the common conversational sense. In everyday usage, the word knowledge means familiarity with ideas, skills, or people. Perhaps the common language usage of the word knowledge reflects a greater degree of common sense than philosophy or science in that no requirement is made that one believe a body of ideas in order to have knowledge of them. Conversely, academic ideas must meet a high degree of certainty to be called knowledge.

Questions That Motivate Our Search

What does any of this have to do with Latter-day Saint Christianity? We challenge you to honestly answer the following questions for yourself: How can we have confidence that God truly exists? How can we have confidence that Jesus Christ was truly more than a man—that He was the very Son of God, even the divine Christ? How can we have confidence that our personal existence continues after death?

These questions motivate our writings. Indeed, these questions have motivated our living search for truth, meaning, and lasting happiness. We continue to keenly feel the driving need to explore both academic and spiritual knowledge. Our hope is that wisdom and peace will be the return on our investment.

The Four Paths to Knowledge

Putting aside arguments over definitions, the search for knowledge of truth must be confronted directly, carefully, and honestly. Most importantly, we must gain wisdom in the process—true wisdom being the correct application of knowledge. There are four general ways we learn. These are called paths to knowledge: Physical Senses—We can gather direct knowledge from our own powers of sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch. Authority—We can gather indirect knowledge from others who claim to possess it with some degree of certainty. Reason—We can gather knowledge from the mental processes involved in the logical consideration of potential truths and the identification of false conclusions. Intuition—We can gather knowledge without any apparent use of the senses or application of reason.

Learning from Experience and Authority

As paths to knowledge, physical senses and authority involve learning after gathering real-world experiences. Through our physical senses we can gain firsthand, practical knowledge by experiencing the consequences of our own personal choices. This can be dangerous, but it is effective. As a more careful approach, by listening to the teachings of authority figures we can gain secondhand, practical knowledge. This is learning from the experiences of others. By the paths of both physical senses and authority, knowledge and wisdom can be gained from hindsight.

Reason and Its Methods

As alternative paths to knowledge, reason and intuition involve learning without having had personal experiences. These are the most cautious approaches to learning. Reason is the conscious use of logic to formulate theoretical knowledge. Reasoning involves analysis of all information available, careful consideration of foreseeable consequences of our choices, and drawing creative conclusions.

Intuition: Academic and Spiritual

Intuition is a more mysterious path to knowledge, which manifests itself in at least two varieties. The first is academic intuition, sometimes called rational intuition. Academic intuition involves subconscious reasoning processes to draw conclusions in novel situations. Examples of such subconscious processes include recognition of sensory information, imaginative problem solving, and memories of emotions and past experience. This all happens without our conscious minds recognizing the source of such theoretical knowledge. Such intuited conclusions just seem to come to us mysteriously, yet this is a rational process.

The second type of intuition is spiritual intuition, sometimes called irrational intuition. No insult is implied here—irrational simply means that human reasoning is not the source of such knowledge. Spiritual intuition involves the direct perception of truth by inspiration or revelation, even to the extent of gaining knowledge of events or foreknowledge of the consequences of our choices that could not come by any other means. Revelation (received consciously) and inspiration (perceived subconsciously) both result in spiritual knowledge. We use the term spiritual to describe this type of intuition in spite of disagreements over the existence of the human spirit. In general, the mechanisms by which knowledge is revealed or perceived by one who spiritually intuits truth are poorly understood. This type of intuition will be explored more fully in the following chapter.

Hindsight, Insight, and Foresight

In the cases of both reasoning and intuition, knowledge and wisdom can be gained from insight, sometimes also called foresight when relating to the future. Academic foresight results in predictions based on logic, whereas spiritual foresight results in prophecies based on revelation or inspiration.

Testing Our Beliefs for Truth

The next important question we should ask is this: What do we do with knowledge when we get it? When we come to have confidence that an idea is true, we must incorporate the new belief into our existing frameworks of knowledge. This can be exhilarating, but it can also be uncomfortable. If a belief will not easily fit existing frameworks of knowledge, we are forced to adjust our collection of knowledge to incorporate the novel idea. Depending on the implications of the new ideas, such adjustments could be minor, or they might be so massive as to alter our entire worldview.

Being open to new ideas is seen as positive, but this requires both honesty and courage. If new ideas are too disruptive or too painful to accept, some reject them in favor of maintaining existing frameworks of knowledge. This can be a fear response. Some do not fearfully reject disruptive ideas outright, but instead adopt a noncommittal "wait and see" approach. Neither of these responses means that the new ideas are false, just that they were too overwhelming for an individual or group to handle at the moment.

Three Tests for Truth

Through the ages, philosophers have developed criteria by which beliefs can be tested. Three primary tests form a system of checks and balances for the mind.

Correspondence asks whether an idea matches external reality. A true idea must accurately describe things as they actually are. If I believe it is raining outside, I can look through the window and verify whether my belief corresponds to the observable facts.

Coherence asks whether an idea remains consistent across all situations. A true idea must be precisely true—not true in one circumstance and false in another. If objects fall toward the center of the Earth in my backyard, they must also fall toward the center in my neighbor's yard.

Pragmatic utility asks whether an idea produces reliable, beneficial results when applied. A true idea should work when put into practice. If a mathematical formula consistently predicts natural phenomena, its utility provides evidence of its truth.

These tests are valuable, but the honest inquirer must practice epistemic humility. Even our most rigorously tested knowledge reaches only the level of "beyond reasonable doubt." Human faculties, however refined, cannot guarantee absolute certainty. Humble scholars are always mindful of the very high probability of human error. Human pursuits that depend upon interpretation of evidence and the application of reason—whether in law or academics—often result in phrases like "the preponderance of evidence," "beyond a reasonable doubt," "truth value," and "degree of certainty."

The Contributions of Human Learning

The many topics explored in our writings deal with the value and relevance of both academic and spiritual approaches to hindsight, insight, and foresight in the pursuit of truth, wisdom, and lasting happiness. Both approaches are of great value, yet each is more or less appropriate for differing circumstances. So how do we develop our talents for hindsight, insight, and foresight?

Over numberless generations, human beings have cultivated sophisticated academic approaches to gaining and sharing knowledge. Discovering interesting and useful patterns in the human experience can be approached academically with philosophies, arts, and sciences. These generate an enormous variety of viewpoints, wonderful questions, and precious information.

Philosophy enlivens the mind with exercises in questioning our existence and identifying alternative approaches to truth. The arts help us to better communicate, to experience the world from different viewpoints, and to more deeply consider both nature and the human condition. Social sciences help us to remember past lessons and to deal with the wide range of current human behaviors. Natural sciences help us to observe our surroundings, perceive patterns, and rapidly develop technologies that can dramatically expand the human experience. Formal sciences such as mathematics give us the ability to accurately measure, analyze, interpret, and predict natural patterns of all varieties with some degree of consistency.

Please do not get the false impression that we place little value on human academics. My brother and I have devoted much time and effort to acquaint ourselves with the learning of humankind. We have received a small collection of degrees and honors from universities. We have gained a sincere appreciation for the advancement of the human mind. The contributions of philosophies, arts, and sciences to the human experience are incalculable. Yet, we are sufficiently acquainted with these to grasp how much human beings have yet to learn and experience. We are painfully aware that there are numerous individuals of greater learning, but we are sufficiently educated to discern frustrating limitations to academic approaches to truth. In addition, we have both often heard the humble admission from within the ranks of the highly educated that the more humans learn, the stronger is the realization that we know very little.

The Limitations of Academic Knowledge

Philosophy! Arts! Sciences! For ages, these have been intellectual altars before which many have chosen to worship human ingenuity. Yet an embarrassing truth is recognized by humble and honest intellectuals: in spite of all our discoveries and greatness, human academics cannot produce or define ultimate truth and meaning with finality. Strangely, humans often react to this embarrassing limitation by trying in vain to define truth by means of democracy or even tyranny. Public sentiment and political actions cannot produce truth. Left to our own devices, we can only slowly and imperfectly approach genuine truth by academic means.

Mature scholars admit that academic knowledge is often based on sweeping, foundational assumptions. What if these academic assumptions are even a little wrong? In spite of our valuable accomplishments in analyzing the human condition and our noble construction of technology, human academics cannot produce ultimate truth. Instead, we often remain trapped in expansive and energetic debate, following an endless pattern of ever learning but never coming to a sure knowledge of truth.

Anyone familiar with the history of science remembers well the lessons of discarded theories and models such as spontaneous generation, classical elements, flat earth, geocentric universe, and static universe. We like to think that we are far more advanced than the "primitive thinkers" who produced such ideas, when the fact is that ancient scholars were at least as brilliant as we are. Like us, they formed their philosophies and theories using the best evidence and tools available at the time. We also like to think that we have vastly superior evidence as well as more perfect tools of science with which to discern truth. It is humbling to consider what scholars of future generations will think of the imperfect theories and primitive tools of our day. Will we ever learn the lessons of simple humility?

The Assumption of an Intelligent Creator

Surveys indicate that most of us believe or suspect that there is intelligence behind the formation of our universe and the precious life it contains. Common experience dictates that every organized structure or system has an architect. An appealing belief is that complex organization is the footprint of intelligence. Many innately suspect that such order and majesty as are found in nature cannot be without cause or effect. The hopeful insist that there must be purpose to life and that our surroundings are a work of art, the result of devoted attention. There are many religions, each with their own doctrines and practices. The simple assumption is made that all of life and existence has come from a source and is moving toward some destiny.

Some view this hopeful assumption as an ignorant and uneducated mindset. "Advanced thought" sometimes leads the mind to question whether there is anything more to our existence than identifiable patterns of physical laws—an empirically identifiable evolution of the organization of matter, energy, and dimension. Paul spoke of this when he wrote: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" . The possibility of genuine spiritual intuition is often rejected. Empiricism is simply an intellectually disguised statement of old: "I will only believe what I can see." Clinging only to humanistic knowledge restricts us to merely observing and manipulating our existence rather than seeking to identify its purpose. At best, this choice is a sore limitation on the human experience.

The Ceiling of the Natural Framework

Think deeply on this world and the universe in which it moves. Change seems to be the only constant of our existence. The challenges and experiences that shape our lives are a kaleidoscope, continuously altering, fresh and new each day. Yet behind this backdrop of change there are simple truths that remain ever constant. Though we often search for truth collectively, the recognition, confirmation, and acceptance of these truths are an intensely personal, even spiritual, experience.

But how are we to begin searching, and what questions ought we to ask? We believe that the following are some of the most rewarding questions: How did all this change begin? Is there a higher intelligence guiding all this change? What are the origin and future of my changing personal existence? Is there a purpose to all this change? Is there help for me as my existence changes?

A more personal question that we must all confront is this: Am I ready, willing, and able to handle the answers to any of these questions? When honestly considering this last question, remember this insightful triplet of proverbs: great ignorance leads to great fear; great knowledge leads to great sorrow; great wisdom leads to great peace.

Questions That Exceed the Framework

This natural framework—the four faculties of senses, authority, reason, and academic intuition—is not defective. It functions precisely as designed for the questions it is equipped to address. Philosophy, arts, and sciences have yielded incalculable benefits to the human experience. Yet certain existential questions exceed its reach: Why is there something rather than nothing? Does a loving God truly exist? Does personal consciousness persist beyond death? What is the ultimate purpose of my existence?

Science can describe how things work, but it cannot explain why we exist. These are not failures of the natural framework—the framework itself predicts these limits. If ultimate truth is "knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come", and our natural faculties perceive only a fraction of that whole, we should expect to reach a ceiling.

Here, the seeker faces a choice: accept permanent ignorance on life's most vital questions, or consider whether there exists a faculty beyond the natural ones.

Our Witness

We, the writers, have come to know with certainty that there is more to humankind than our intellect and flesh. The reality of the human spirit and spiritual intuition may seem foolish to the educated mind. Often, those of great learning view the faithful as blind and deaf to the satisfaction of logic and reasoning. However, to those who have experienced the reality of the human spirit, men and women of exclusively empirical mindset seem blind and deaf to many of the most beautiful and moving experiences of life.

We have come to believe that it is good to seek knowledge, better to seek wisdom, and best to seek enlightenment. It is our experience that, whether through the practice of organized religion or through individual effort, the discerning of ultimate truth depends entirely upon spiritual intuition. During our lives we have learned a measure of spiritual sensitivity sufficient to have discovered some basic and important truths. Please give honest consideration to our writings.

Though we are still challenged by the worries, disappointments, and imperfections of mortal life, we have found profound underlying peace, hope, and joy in the application of the knowledge we wish to share. We have seen the happy effects of hope and faith in the lives of many others. We offer you the following personal witnesses in words of plainness: Ultimate truth can be known, at least in part—a significant and meaningful part. An individual, immortal spirit dwells within the flesh of each person. God lives and wishes to help us. Life has grand purpose and great meaning.

We caution you: do not be persuaded by our words alone! Though there are beautiful and hopeful ideas in this book, their truth can only be known by the power of God and verified through your own personal spiritual experiences . It is our simple hope that our efforts will engender in your heart a desire to search for God—though He has never been far from you—as well as a desire to search for truth, meaning, and lasting happiness . We invite you to experiment on our words .

If the natural faculties have brought you to the ceiling of what they can provide, the following chapter will explore the fifth faculty—the one that completes the others. We testify that God has not left His children without a way to know Him and the truths He has in store for us. This we witness in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Fifth Faculty

There are many pursuits that ennoble and enrich human life: great and moving works of literature, valuable accomplishments in the arts that please the senses and evoke strong emotions, tremendous progress in scientific learning and valuable resultant technologies, noble achievements in mathematics, studies of history and geography that fill us with a sense of our place in the world, awesome feats of engineering, and welcome advances in medicine. However valuable these may be, none of them can give us knowledge of ultimate truth or save us from our mortal condition.

The previous chapter explored the four natural faculties by which all human beings acquire knowledge: senses, authority, reason, and intuition. These faculties are gifts from God, and through them we have built civilizations, cured diseases, and explored the cosmos. Yet we also discovered their ceiling—there are questions that exceed their reach.

As Latter-day Saints, we affirm that a fifth faculty exists, one that completes the other four. This faculty does not contradict natural knowledge; it bridges the gap where senses, authority, reason, and academic intuition reach their limit. We call this faculty revelation, and it operates through the Spirit of God communing with the spirit within each person.

Across centuries and cultures, people of faith have affirmed that our mortal lives are not the sum total of our existence. Latter-day Saints stand with them in this conviction—and add our own witness. There is more. We are witnesses of the existence of a power that can allow us to rise above our current existence into something more pure, more perfect, and more whole—not only in this life, but after. Spirituality is required if you wish to experience this for yourself.

What Spirituality Is Not

Many today define spirituality as merely finding a sense of fulfillment, achieving balance in the various aspects of life, controlling obsessions, maintaining physical health, exploring morality, embracing responsibilities, and managing stress. These things are right and good. They are part of life, but these are not spirituality.

Our physical bodies have an undeniably strong nature. It is so easy and pleasing to follow the many cravings of the flesh. It is not wrong that these desires exist. We believe they were given to us by God. A prophet of God once said, "Men are that they might have joy". But this does not mean that God intended for us to completely submit to our physical natures, making choices out of base instinct alone. Our physical bodies are only one aspect of our complex existence. Self-control is only a beginning to spirituality.

The Human Spirit Within

True spirituality has to do with far more vital and vibrant aspects of our existence than the flesh. Those who are acquainted with spirituality often speak of the human mind and heart. The scriptures only briefly explain the concepts of the human mind and heart, but it is clear by the context that the words mind and heart refer to something other than physical organs of flesh.

The physical human brain is definitely part of the current state of the human mind, but it is not the source of human intelligence; though it seems to be required to join and coordinate intelligence with the physical body. Philosophers and scientists agree that the human mind is one of the most complex, layered systems in existence. Yet there is much debate over what the mind actually is and what it actually does.

In a similar fashion, human emotion is far more than the sum of hormonal and neural mechanisms found in the flesh. Emotions are extensively studied and documented. We are able to influence them by a variety of scientific means. Yet they are as poorly understood as the human brain. Emotions are commonly mentioned in connection with the human heart owing to the often powerful sensations of emotional stirrings deep within one's bosom, near the heart.

The Soul: Spirit and Body United

Latter-day Saints believe that these intangible yet vital and vibrant portions of the human "self"—our minds and emotions—arise from the human spirit within the flesh. Along with many other groups, we also believe that the individual spirits of all humans existed prior to birth into this life and that they will continue to exist after physical death. With regards to spirituality, many speak of the importance of a person's character, which is the only thing that endures beyond the grave. Personal character is the manifestation of the true nature of one's immortal spirit.

The Holy Bible identifies God as the "Father of spirits" . We believe that long before the physical formation of this world, as an act of procreation, God the Father created our spirits. Each spirit is the offspring of God, possessing parts, senses, intelligence, emotion, and an individual identity. As part of our inheritance as spiritual offspring of God, we were promised eternal freedom of choice—personal agency.

Sometime between the moment of physical conception and physical birth into this mortal life, God places an individual spirit inside the growing body of flesh and bone. The physical body becomes an extension of one's spirit, adding new layers of abilities and senses, bringing the individual to a new level of existence. When a spirit child of God is born into a mortal body of flesh, he or she is no longer what he or she was as an individual spirit. The character of an individual evolves and expands with each stage of existence.

Latter-day Saints do not believe in reincarnation. We believe in eternal progression—a forward journey through distinct stages of existence, each adding a purposeful layer to our existence and progression as children of God. Within our theology, the individual spirits of all humans that were created by God lived in His presence before birth. These spirits now inhabit bodies of flesh and will not return to repeat mortality. This life is the one season appointed for this mortal learning environment, which is what gives our life choices their lasting weight and consequence to the course of our eternal development.

Spirituality has to do with the individual spirit that resides within one's physical body (John A. Widtsoe, Program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 63). Our spiritual nature involves individual freedom of mind, limitless potential for greatness, reasoning, learning, emotion, a connection to the flesh, and—most importantly—interaction with other spirits. In mortality our spiritual and physical natures are tied together, but imperfectly and temporarily. Latter-day Saints identify this union of spirit and flesh as the soul.

A note of clarification may serve seekers from other Christian traditions. Many Christians use the word soul to describe what Latter-day Saints would call the spirit—the whole immaterial self. In our understanding, however, the terms are distinct. The spirit is the individual, intelligent personality—a literal offspring of God who existed before birth and will persist after death. The soul is what comes into being when that spirit is joined to a body of flesh: two natures, two creations of God, united into one being for a mortal season. It is the spirit within the flesh that possesses the faculty of revelation—the fifth faculty—through which God communes with His children. This distinction matters because it is not the body alone, nor some vague inner self, but the literal spirit offspring of God within you that can perceive His voice.

These two halves of our personal nature, the spirit and the flesh, compete for dominance of our character. Finding and maintaining a wise and righteous balance between the spirit and the flesh takes a lifetime and more of effort and experience. Latter-day Saints believe in the resurrection from the dead that was promised by Jesus Himself. Following resurrection we will have the capacity to master the perfect balance of our souls through all eternity, but we are expected to begin this process now. We will never become truly whole (holy) unless we learn to bring our spirit and flesh into a righteous and lively state of mutual reverence.

Latter-day Saints not only believe that God is a real and living entity, but we believe that Satan is also a real and living entity. Scriptures state that one of God's spirit offspring became His eternal adversary, leading many angels of heaven in open rebellion against God. This adversary is known as Satan or the Devil. As part of our pre-mortal existence, our spirits were under the influence of God and this adversary for unknown spans of eternity.

We further believe that when we are born in the flesh, God places a kind of veil of forgetfulness over our minds to test us during our stay in mortality. This veil suppresses much of the strength of our pre-mortal knowledge, creating a testing condition in which we make our choices in this life as a product of spiritual and physical desires. In the absence of perfect knowledge, we reveal the true character of our souls.

Our spirits are still actively influenced by both the Spirit of God and the spirit of Satan—good and evil influences respectively. Their spirits communicate directly with our own. Though we are free to choose our path, they influence our thoughts and feelings. As in pre-mortality, we continue to learn in mortality by making choices, experiencing consequences, and gathering wisdom in the process. The hopeful result is that we will grow and progress as children of God, but we are free to choose the direction of our growth.

Three Gifts of the Spirit

God communicates to His children through three distinct manifestations of His Spirit. Understanding the differences between them is essential to developing righteous spirituality.

The Light of Christ

The Light of Christ is the divine energy, power, or influence that shines from the person of God the Father through Christ "to fill the immensity of space—the light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed" . Men, women, and children are born with varying degrees of sensitivity to this light. It serves to allow God's children to know good from evil. This is the voice of our moral conscience.

The Light of Christ guides all those who listen with their heart to further light and knowledge. It is the beginning of wisdom. The prophet Moroni explained: "The Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil… Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ" .

Unfortunately, by personal choice or social traditions one may reject this voice of conscience and, through continued sin against wisdom and righteousness, become insensitive to the Light of Christ. We are commanded, "Quench not the Spirit". Further, one can repeatedly offend the Lord to such an extent that the Lord will withhold His light, "for the Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with man". Yet the Light of Christ must not be confused with the Holy Ghost. The Light of Christ is not a person, but a power.

The Holy Ghost

Like Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost is a distinct personage—a member of the Godhead who exists as a personage of spirit . As do the Father and the Son, the Holy Ghost has an essential role to play in the lives of God's children. He works in perfect unity with the other members of the Godhead. His calling is to witness of the Father and the Son and to reveal the truth of all things. His personal and divine communication to our individual spirits carries far more certainty than any communication we can receive through our physical senses.

All can be blessed by the touch of the Holy Ghost—members and non-members of the Church of Christ, believers and nonbelievers alike. The Holy Ghost can provide a temporary blessing of knowledge and power to mankind. All men, women, and children may feel the momentary sensations of the Holy Ghost. Indeed, God moves nations and individuals by the power of the Holy Ghost.

The whisperings of the Holy Ghost bring to the human heart feelings of deep peace and warmth that accompany the discovery of truth. This blessing is also referred to as the still small voice of God. The Holy Ghost is the Light of Truth. However, this light is only short-lived. These temporary impressions, however precious, are not the same as the Gift of the Holy Ghost. One who wishes to feel such sensations more than once must give effort to repeatedly draw near to the Lord.

The Gift of the Holy Ghost

The most important of the three references to the Spirit is the "Gift of the Holy Ghost." Following baptism by immersion in water, the Gift of the Holy Ghost is given by the laying on of hands in a priesthood ordinance that requires true authority. The necessity of this priesthood ordinance for salvation was plainly understood and practiced in the ancient Church established in Christ's day. The Apostles Peter and John, hearing that Samaria had received the word of God, went to them quickly: "Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: for as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost" .

What does it mean to receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost? When disciples receive this priesthood ordinance from an authorized servant of God and seek to remain worthy, they may enjoy the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost throughout their lives. This sacred priesthood ordinance also serves to confirm the worthy recipient as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ.

The Gift of the Holy Ghost is the Comforter spoken of by Christ—the baptism by fire. One who receives the Gift of the Holy Ghost and remains worthy is continuously worked upon by the power of the Holy Ghost unto salvation and perfection in Christ. We can enjoy the constant guidance, correction, and companionship of the Holy Ghost. Feeling peace, comfort, joy, warmth, and the love of God can be uninterrupted for those who are worthy and possess this blessing. This gift offers a divine endowment of God's power that leads to greater light, knowledge, wisdom, and personal growth than can be obtained through natural faculties alone .

These three gifts represent a progression: the Light of Christ prepares the soul to recognize truth, the Holy Ghost witnesses of that truth, and the Gift of the Holy Ghost enables the soul to be transformed by truth continually.

Righteous and Wicked Spirituality

True spirituality is to become more sensitive to the whisperings and influences of God or Satan. Spirituality can be righteous or evil. Spiritual sensitivity goes beyond our limited physical senses. We all have varying levels of spirituality, though many deny its existence. Those who are less spiritually sensitive seem blind to what many others can see. Still, for many, spirituality takes much desire, diligent effort, and reflection. This is often referred to as contemplation, pondering, or prayerful meditation.

Unfortunately, some see tragedies and the very real existence of evil in the hearts of humans as proof that there is no value to spirituality. This response stems from a lack of understanding. We must not allow anything to deter us from developing spirituality to the degree that we can distinguish truth from error, answer life's important questions, and find meaning in the process.

Righteous spirituality is when we come to love and obey the whisperings of the Spirit of God, which inspire compassion and selflessness in spite of the cravings of the flesh. Wicked spirituality is when we come to love and obey the whisperings of the spirit of Satan, which inspire cruelty and selfishness. Wickedness usually involves surrendering to cravings of the flesh, eventually without restraint. When we stray from the path of wisdom, especially in selfishness or cruelty, we become less worthy vessels of the Spirit of God, reducing our ability to sense His righteous influence and leaving us more susceptible to the malevolent influence of Satan.

Discerning the Source

Many sincere people report spiritual experiences through various traditions and practices—premonitions, profound intuitions, near-death experiences, and other phenomena that seem to transcend ordinary perception. We do not dismiss these experiences. God works wonders among all His children regardless of nationality, religion, or background. So does the adversary. The vital question is not whether spiritual experiences are real, but from what source they originate and toward what end they lead.

Righteous spirituality always leads to humility, selflessness, and compassionate love. Good influences and powers always lead to greater peace, freedom, and unity between the children of God—to protecting and caring for the poor, the weak, and the downtrodden. If any activity leads you to lift yourself up in pride, thinking yourself above your brothers and sisters, it is unrighteous and is not God's work. If any activity leads you to exercise power over others with any degree of selfishness, compulsion, or cruelty, it is certainly evil.

As the adversary to God, Satan is the great deceiver. He has power to appear as an angel of light and to perform miracles, signs, and wonders which are sufficient in many cases to deceive even the very elect of God . So how are we to distinguish powers of light from powers of darkness? The only spiritual sensation that Satan cannot mimic is the divine peace of the Lord, which is described as deep, abiding, cleansing, gentling, uplifting, pervasive, healing, transformative, and saving. Powers of God and righteous spiritual intuition are always accompanied by this divine peace. Most importantly, powers of God and righteous spiritual intuition always lead to faith in God and faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. If any activity leads away from faith in Christ, it is not inspired by God.

Importantly, we need not tremble with fear and uncertainty in the face of evil. We can be comforted by the knowledge that the power and wisdom of God is greater than that of Satan .

How to Develop Righteous Spirituality

Though many feel uncertain about spiritual intuition, we testify that spirituality is a vital part of the human experience. Without it we are blind and deaf to many of the most precious and beautiful aspects of life. Can you feel the truth of these things? If not, can you learn spiritual sensitivity? Can you learn to experience these things for yourself? We proclaim to the world a resounding "YES!" We believe in the declaration of Paul, "The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal". No man, woman, or child is without the ability to sense the spirit and power of God.

To develop healthy and saving spirituality, we must search for truth and nourish our spirits to a lively state of being. Though each person's spirit has different needs and is nourished by different activities, the following are universal ways to develop and exercise the kind of spirituality that allows one to distinguish truth from error:

• Choose humility over stubborn pride.
• Learn to let go of fears and embrace personal growth.
• Thirst for and actively seek truth.
• Build a desire to live right, taking steps to become more righteous.
• Regularly devote time to quiet meditation and prayer. Connecting with and recognizing the sensations of God's Spirit require an effort to reach and maintain a certain state of mind and heart. Relaxation, quieting your mind, reaching out to the higher power of God, and maintaining openness are essential.
• Give honest consideration to the teachings of scriptures, and to the words of prophets and apostles of God.
• As knowledge of God and His plan for us is obtained, experiment on the word of God by obeying His teachings to see whether you find faith, hope, love, and personal peace in spite of the calamities of mortality.
• Never stop feeling after the Spirit of God for the rest of your life, continuing to develop your spirituality.

Experimenting on the Word

Just as the natural faculties allow for testing beliefs through observation and application, so does spiritual knowledge allow for a kind of sacred experiment. The prophet Alma taught this principle to a group of seekers who lacked perfect knowledge:

"If ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words. Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me."

This is a spiritual method: treat a spiritual claim as a hypothesis, plant it through sincere action and obedience, and observe the results in your own soul. Does it produce faith, hope, and love? Does it bring peace to your mind and warmth to your heart? Does it enlarge your understanding and draw you closer to God? If so, you have evidence of its truth—not through external measurement, but through internal transformation.

This does not bypass the intellect; it fulfills its highest purpose. In this holistic framework, faith becomes a rational extension of discovery—a way to perceive the why of our existence with the same clarity that science provides for the how.

How Revelation Comes

It is easy to fail to recognize or even dismiss revelations from God if we do not know for what we are looking. Spiritual manifestations of God can come in a wide variety of ways, including such things as simple mental or emotional inspiration, a swelling of calm assurance, a powerful sense of peace and warmth within, and meaningful dreams. The Lord seems to prefer to work by small and simple means, but upon occasion He has given to some to behold prophetic visions, perform mighty miracles, have literal conversations with heavenly messengers, and even witness the parting of the veil of eternity to behold the face of God.

Some have awakened spiritually to sudden, dramatic, powerful revelations from God. For most of us, however, revelation is a gradual process, like the rising of the sun. With life experiences and personal efforts at spirituality, we receive "line upon line, precept upon precept" in such ways that revelations from God gradually and subtly "distil upon [us] as the dews from heaven". Spiritual intuition is often similar to the almost imperceptible increase in light at the dawning of a new day. We eventually recognize the light and warmth, and we are glad of it.

It is common as we search for God to expect marvelous and dramatic spiritual manifestations to the extent that we fail to appreciate or even recognize the power of God working within us because of the "simpleness of the way". In spite of this, it is possible for us to nurture our spirituality such that we cannot fail to recognize the "light of day" when it is upon us.

Personal revelation to spiritually sensitive people has been the pattern of God since the creation of mankind. Personal revelation is the only way you can know ultimate truth.

Promises to the Seeker

As immortal beings, we have the right to choose our own destiny. God is intimately familiar with each of His children and knows beforehand what choices we will make, but He protects and preserves our freedom to make choices. The prophet Nephi declared, "Cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves". The prophet Joshua challenged us to use our freedom and make a lasting decision without delay. He commanded, "Choose you this day whom ye will serve".

As the New Testament of the Bible says, "We are the offspring of God". We are His children. As part of this royal birthright, we stand to gain a glorious inheritance in the eternities, if we are willing to receive it. Consider what the nature of such an inheritance might be.

Knowledge and power are not what makes one righteous, or even spiritual. We believe that this mortal life is a test of the character of our souls, a means to judge our worthiness as children of God. One's true character is clearly revealed by personal choices, sincere desires, and persistent attitudes manifested in this life. Latter-day Saints believe that, sometime following death, the individual character of each child of God will be judged and an inheritance (or lack thereof) will be given to us in the Eternal Kingdom of God.

Because of our agency and due to our imperfections, we invariably experience personal falls from righteousness in this life. We proclaim, as do other Christians, that God sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, to open the way for us to recover from the tragic effects of sin and to regain an inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven following this life. As ancient prophets and apostles of God have done, "We labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God" . Salvation of our souls is the purpose of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the reason for His life and sacrifice.

It is certain that the eternal judgment of our souls will especially focus on what we do with truth when we find it. We believe that we cannot be saved in ignorance. Whether in this life or the next, all will come to a full knowledge of God's Plan of Redemption. "Every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess" that Jesus Christ is our Savior when we are brought before His judgment seat.

There is an opposition to our finding eternal truth during our mortal testing. Satan uses truth mixed with lies to lead us away from righteousness and knowledge of God. He is happy when we believe partial truths. In this way we can be influenced little by little away from salvation and be led carefully to destruction. It is unfortunate that there is such confusion of religions and diversity of philosophies in the world. Too many are led in frustration from doctrine to doctrine until they give up entirely. It is NOT correct doctrine that will save one's soul. Rather, it is one's faith in God and efforts to follow His Christ.

If we do not give up the pursuit of truth and righteousness, we have promises from the Lord Jesus Christ. He taught: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened" . The resurrected Lord confirmed this promise and added: "Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me" .

Two Paths to Confirmation

How can you know whether these things are true? Are these teachings merely the product of mankind's mortal fears? Are these ideas the result of our hopes and dreams for immortal glory? Or are they real? The answers to such questions can only be received by personal revelation from God, which requires the development of spirituality.

There are two ways to confirm the truth of spiritual knowledge. First, if you endeavor to keep the commandments of God, you will come to know whether they are of human invention or of divine origin by their effect on you. However, the practice of morality is not sufficient to gain full knowledge of the nature of God. To begin to do this, effort must be made to search out God spiritually.

Following the second path to spiritual knowledge, you can learn to reach outside of yourself with your mind and heart, praying with sincerity to perceive truth spiritually. Ask if God is really there. There is no need for memorized phrases or complicated communication. Just speak what is in your mind and heart. He will listen.

If you find our writings to be of interest or of comfort, even if you can only wish that these teachings are true, ask God if these things are of Him. Pay attention to how you feel. Look for peace, hope, warmth in your heart, and a calm but absolute assurance in your mind. When these powerful yet peaceful sensations blossom in your soul, the power of God is testifying to your spirit of the truthfulness of these things.

Our Witness

We return now to a principle taught earlier in this work, because the reader who has come this far stands in a different place than before. Having explored the nature of the human spirit, the gifts of God's Spirit, and the means by which revelation is received and confirmed, you are no longer considering these ideas in the abstract. You are being invited to act—to seek, to ask, to experiment upon the word. The disposition you bring to that invitation matters greatly. And so we offer this counsel once more, now as preparation for the search itself.

We must pause to evaluate ourselves periodically. Embracing extremes of pride, despair, rebellion, and submission can cripple the human soul, and we often seek to excuse these attitudes and behaviors through self-justification. Extremes in general are to be avoided in dealing with life. We feel that in many cases health and wisdom lay somewhere in between extremes. Between pride and despair is humility. At the balancing point between rebellion and submission is the exercising of careful judgment.

We invite you to embrace the search for truth with honest humility and careful judgment. Even when you have found a portion of the whole truth, there is always far more understanding to be gained in this life. We assure you that truth is knowable. There is meaning and purpose to our existence. Enduring happiness can be found in this life. Renew and redouble your search, courageously choosing hope. The search is worthy of every effort, worth any sacrifice.

God has answered the prayers of so many. He has answered us. He will answer you. This we promise in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Soul's Sincere Desire

Prayer is an important way to exercise one's spirituality. More than this, prayer is a commandment of God. During His mortal life, Christ frequently prayed in public and in private, setting the example we should follow. The resurrected Lord commanded, "Pray in your families unto the Father, always in my name, that your wives and your children may be blessed".

So what is prayer? How do we know when we are doing it right? James Montgomery wrote an insightful poem about prayer that has been turned into a beautiful hymn. In it he expresses a simple and poignant truth: "Prayer is the soul's sincere desire" (James Montgomery, "Prayer Is the Soul's Sincere Desire," Hymns, no. 145). Truly, the essence of prayer is desire. There are prayers of praise, thanksgiving, supplication, and confession. Prayer can even come out of the simple need to feel reassured by the love and power of God. All sincere prayers, great and small, come from the longings of the soul. The Lord Jesus Christ taught us the pattern for prayer. His example is known as the Lord's Prayer:

Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth, as it is done in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And suffer us not to be led into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, Amen.

The Lord did not intend for us to repeat memorized prayers. He said plainly, "When ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking". More than this, there is no need for sophisticated language, for "the Lord looketh on the heart". Speak what is in your mind and heart. And speak truthfully, for there can be no deception before God. The words used in prayer change and the circumstances vary from day to day, but prayers often include the following elements, though not necessarily in this order.

A Pattern for Meaningful Prayer

• Speak directly to God, and address Him respectfully (e.g., Father in Heaven).
• Express gratitude for blessings while in a mindset of worship.
• Share your burdens, for He is a Counselor and a Comforter.
• Ask for forgiveness from our sins, and for help to forgive others of their sins against us.
• Plead for desired knowledge and blessings in an attitude of humility and patience.
• Pray for others—for their needs, their struggles, and their salvation.
• Pray all things in the name of Jesus Christ.
• Conclude with the word "Amen," which Christians adopted from the ancient Hebrew אָמֵן ('āmēn), meaning "truth" or "certainty," used as a sincere expression of belief in what has been said.

Latter-day Saints direct their prayers to God the Father, in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is not merely tradition; it is the pattern the Savior Himself established. When the disciples asked Him how to pray, He taught them to begin, "Our Father who art in heaven". Christ is our Mediator and Advocate with the Father, and it is through His name and His atoning sacrifice that we are granted access to the Father's presence in prayer. We pray to the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Forms and Postures of Prayer

Prayer can take many forms. It may be a group effort of an entire congregation of believers. It can be spoken out loud in family, or alone as a personal prayer. It can take place while kneeling, standing, sitting, lying down, working, traveling, and so on. It can even take the form of private thoughts directed to God. No matter the case, the focus of prayer should be on heartfelt and intimate communion with God.

While much of this chapter focuses on personal and family prayer, we should not overlook the power of united prayer among the Saints. Jesus promised, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them". The early Church practiced communal prayer with great effect. In our day, congregational prayers, group fasts, and the practice of placing names on a prayer list reflect the same principle: there is power when the faith of a community is united in petition before God. The prayers of a congregation can bear up an individual in ways that his or her own prayers alone cannot. This is one of the blessings of belonging to the body of Christ.

True Prayer Is Not for Show

True prayer—the soul's sincere desire—is not for show. It displeases God when we try to give the public appearance of righteousness or an open pretense of spiritual piety . Prayer is not a matter of vanity, pride, or competition; yet one can stand no taller in this life than while on bended knees in humble prayer before the Lord.

Preparing for Meaningful Prayer

When we choose to pause and pray, it is important to mentally and physically prepare ourselves beforehand. It is ideal to take time to spiritually meditate and pray over ideas, choices, and responses to the needs of others. Whether we come to prayer composed or desperate, the essential act is the same–we must go inward and then reach upward. Find the innermost part of who we are, and from that place reach out with sincere desire to connect with God the Father.

Enabled by such preparation, there have been disciples described in the scriptures as praying mightily unto God. Such prayer requires real mental effort and the exercising of faith. In addition to spiritual preparation, faithful disciples in all ages have often coupled fasting with prayer. Fasting is a sign of devotion and serves to strengthen our spirits over physical appetites, enhancing our sensitivity to spiritual impressions .

Prayer in Urgent Moments

Under urgent or stressful conditions, we can still pray effectively for help and guidance. These conditions might be dangerous situations, moments of confrontation with others, or even unexpected opportunities to do something good in the world. Under such conditions our thoughts should instantly turn to God in the very moment of dealing with the situation. The spirit is much faster than the flesh. If you carefully develop spirituality prior to an emergency, when you do cast your thoughts and feelings to God in the very moment of need, your mind makes an instant and profound connection with Him. In response, the spirit and power of God will instantly well up in your soul to inspire your thoughts, words, and actions to bring about the greatest good.

Constant Prayer

When not formally and actively praying, we should still maintain a prayerful mindset. We can come to be eternally-minded and learn to nurture a continual prayer in our hearts. We must remember the Lord's command to "pray always."

In all three types of prayer—meditative, urgent, and constant—the most powerful prayers are those in which our intent and words flow from the inspiration of the Spirit of God within us. When we are sensitive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, our prayers and desires can align with God's will. As the Apostle Paul taught, "The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us". When we do these things, the invitation of the Lord is in effect: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you" .

Praying for Others

One of the marks of maturing discipleship is learning to pray not only for ourselves but for others. This is intercessory prayer—the practice of bringing the needs, struggles, and salvation of others before God. The scriptures are rich with examples of this selfless form of prayer. Enos began by praying for himself, but as the Spirit filled him, his heart reached outward—first to his own people, and then even to his enemies . Alma the elder prayed with such faith for his wayward son that an angel was sent to intervene . The Savior Himself, in the most intimate intercessory prayer recorded in scripture, prayed not for Himself alone but for His disciples and for all who would believe on their words .

As our hearts grow in charity, our prayers naturally expand beyond our own concerns to embrace the needs of those around us—our families, our neighbors, those who suffer, those who serve, and even those who have wronged us. The Savior commanded, "Pray for them which despitefully use you". Intercessory prayer is both a sign of spiritual growth and a means by which God accomplishes His work through the faith of His children.

When Prayers Seem Unanswered

It is important to understand that unrighteous, uninspired, or selfish prayers do not bring the blessings we seek. The Apostle James taught this principle in these words: "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts". We must avoid false and vain prayer. The scriptures teach us to pray constantly, sincerely, and wisely .

But what of the righteous prayer that seems to go unanswered? The parent who pleads for a sick child. The faithful believer who prays for years over a wayward loved one. The humble seeker who kneels and hears only silence. These experiences are real, and they can be deeply painful. We must be honest about this: not every sincere prayer receives an immediate or recognizable answer, and this is not evidence that God has rejected the one who prays.

Sometimes God's answer is "no" or "not yet." Sometimes His answer is "I have something better in mind." And sometimes He asks us to continue in faith without explanation, trusting that He sees what we cannot. The Savior Himself, while in agony, prayed to the Father, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt". The Father did not take away his suffering. Yet the Father heard Him, and an angel was sent to strengthen Him . Divine silence is not divine absence. God may not always remove our burdens, but He is always present in them. The patience to wait upon the Lord in seasons of silence is itself a form of faith, and it is precious to God.

We testify that our Heavenly Father is mindful of us and always listens to our prayers. He already knows our needs before we ask. Jesus explained, "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him". However, many blessings seem to be dependent on asking for them in righteousness (supplication). Further, unless we ask Him, we cannot know for sure whether important ideas are true in the ultimate sense or that a choice we are making is in agreement with His will and wisdom.

Balancing Agency and Divine Dependence

Again, prayer is a commandment of God. Though we might not always receive revelation on every detail of our lives, the Lord commanded us clearly, "Pray always". Scriptural proverbs teach us: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths". We are also instructed: "Be not wise in thine own eyes". The Lord clarified this, saying, "Ye are commanded in all things to ask of God... and that which the Spirit testifies unto you... ye should do in all holiness of heart... doing all things with prayer and thanksgiving" . Those who obey this commandment are promised that the "inspiration of the Almighty [will] give them understanding" .

Pray always? Pray about everything? This commandment may seem impractical to some who value self-reliance and fear excessive dependence on others. Humans need freedom and a healthy measure of independence to grow, develop, and thrive. But this reasoning does not hold true when the "other" person is God. A wise balance must be maintained between using our God-given minds and seeking to know the mind of God.

While it is wise to exercise our minds in the search for truth and in meeting the challenges of life, it is reckless to stubbornly refuse to ask for God's help in these endeavors. It is equally unwise to refuse to make choices or take action until God commands us to do so. It is truly foolish to obtain an answer to prayers and then disregard it. Regarding all these cases the Lord revealed His wisdom, explaining, "It is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward. Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; for the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward. But he that doeth not anything until he is commanded, and receiveth a commandment with a doubtful heart, and keepeth it with slothfulness, the same is damned" .

Can one keep commandments of God and still be damned? Searching for answers to this question in the scriptures, one finds that the Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees at the time of Christ were among the most scrupulous in keeping the commandments and laws of Judaism, yet they drew many of Christ's most vehement rebukes for hypocrisy . As the embodiment of perfect justice, Christ's judgment in these matters was without flaw. Doing good is not enough for the Lord. He wants us to be good. Prayer is an important part of becoming good. As we grow in spirituality, we can learn to be eternally-minded and to pray continually.

We ought to weigh every thought, measure every choice, craft every communication, and perform every deed prayerfully so that we might be inspired in all these things; especially when we do not have time to evaluate and consider our actions beforehand.

Humility and Submission Before God

It is a matter of personal character development to sincerely humble one's self and praise another more-deserving soul (especially God), submitting to higher wisdom. We are completely dependent upon God's justice, mercy, and grace . We must not be petulant children, expecting our Father in Heaven to bend to our will at every turn. To do so would be irresponsible parenting on His part. Rather, our prayers ought to be the humble petitions of a submissive child to a righteous Father. It is God's right to choose which blessings to bestow, when it is right to give them, and how to go about it. Like any loving parent with growing children, He holds our best interests in His almighty heart. He makes His choices out of wisdom far greater than our own. God knows what will bring about righteousness and what would bring sorrow.

Grace After All We Can Do

When we plead for a blessing, we must also remember an important principle taught by the Prophet Nephi: "We know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do". This readily applies to prayer. We must be willing to do all in our power to bring about righteousness, while praying for heaven's help. We cannot sit idly, expecting blessings to fall upon us without any effort of our own.

The relationship between grace and faithful obedience is explored more fully in the next chapter. For now, it is enough to understand that this principle applies directly to prayer.

Many unbelievers say that we only bring about our desires by our own strength. Those who practice sincere and faithful prayer know that God takes an active role in guiding us to goodness, inspiring the direction of our labor, strengthening our efforts with the powers of heaven, and blessing us in such ways that all things eventually work together for our good . Trust in God and pray with patient faith, believing that the blessings will come according to God's own will and on God's own terms.

Prayer as Two-Way Communication

Prayer is not only the raising of our voices to God. It can become two-way communication. We can learn to receive answers to our questions, recognize inspiration in our daily lives, and to perceive the will of God. A common theme throughout our writings is this principle of personal revelation. Receiving answers to our prayers is personal revelation, no matter what form those divine answers take. We witness that God is willing to help all seekers find truth and wisdom. As the Psalmist wrote, "The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth" . More than this, as we take questions and concerns to prayer, the power of God's spirit can confirm correct ideas to our souls with such depth that it is as much a physical recognition as it is a spiritual acceptance of a truth. In this way, eternal truths become a vital part of who we are and what we will become.

The means by which God communicates with us is the Holy Ghost. As discussed in the previous chapter on spiritual knowledge, the Holy Ghost is the channel through which divine truth is confirmed to the human soul. Prayer opens the channel; the Holy Ghost carries the message. Understanding this connection is vital, for it means that the same spiritual faculties we develop in seeking knowledge of truth are the very faculties we exercise in prayer. Learning to recognize the voice of God's Spirit and learning to call out with our own spirit to pray with power are not separate skills—they are one discipline, practiced from two directions.

The Prophet Moroni said to those who search for the truth, "I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things" . The Apostle James also taught the principle of personal revelation of truth. He wrote, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him" .

The Lord revealed to a modern Prophet instructions on the subject of obtaining clear answers to prayer: "Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give [the answer] unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me. But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if [your choice] be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right. But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought" .

A word of pastoral counsel regarding this passage: the Lord's description of a "burning in the bosom" has led some to expect a single, dramatic physical sensation as the sole form of divine confirmation. In practice, the Spirit speaks to different souls in different ways. For some, the confirmation comes as a warm feeling of peace and assurance. For others, it is a quiet clarity of mind, an unmistakable sense that a thing is right, or simply the absence of confusion where confusion had been. The Lord said He would speak "in your mind and in your heart"—both intellect and feeling are involved, and the balance between them may differ from person to person and from question to question. Do not dismiss a genuine answer from God because it arrives differently or more quietly than you expected. Learn to recognize His voice in whatever form it takes.

After we pray, we should pause and meditate upon our thoughts and feelings. How can we hear God's voice if we do not listen?

Prayer as a Covenant Practice

For those who have entered into covenants with God through baptism and temple ordinances, prayer takes on an added dimension. It is not merely a devotional habit or a technique for receiving answers. Prayer is a covenant practice—a vital expression of the ongoing relationship between a disciple and the God to whom he or she has made binding promises. When we covenant with God, we promise to "always remember him" . Prayer is the most direct way we fulfill that promise each day. In return, He promises that we may "always have his Spirit" to be with us. The covenant and the prayer are inseparable: to cease praying is, in a very real sense, to turn away from the covenant itself.

God's Unchanging Nature

As do many other Christians, Latter-day Saints believe that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever . In spite of this common belief, many scoff or recoil at the thought of prayer leading to personal revelation from God in this modern day and age. God said of Himself, "I am the Lord, I change not".

Through personal revelation, God has spoken to Prophets and righteous men and women in the past in ways both great and small. This has not changed. If His work was finished in the days of Adam, He would not have revealed His will to the rest of the great patriarchs. If God's work was finished in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He would not have revealed His will to Moses. If His work was finished in the days of Moses, He would not have revealed His will to later Prophets of Israel. If His work was finished upon the completion of the collected books of the Old Testament, Christ would not have come in the flesh. If God's work was finished upon the perfection of Christ's sacrifice, He would not have revealed His will to the Apostles following Christ's death and resurrection. God's work is never finished. He yet speaks to those who both ask and listen. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The ninth article of faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints states, "We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God." Prayer leads to personal revelation: when we pray right, when we pray always, when we pray for the right reasons, and when we listen to God's answers.

A Witness of the Power of Prayer

We testify with all our strength of the power of prayer. God knows our needs and listens as we pray to Him. We all desperately need the strength of a personal relationship with God that only prayer can provide. Reach out to God with your heart and mind. Pray with a sincere heart to know Him and to know truth. He will answer. We promise this to you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

You Have Come This Far on the Journey

If you have made it to this chapter, then you have searched in plainness. You have asked honest questions about the purpose of your existence. You have considered the limits of human knowledge and explored the possibility of spiritual knowledge and wisdom. You have learned to pray—to speak to God and listen for His voice.

And now? Have you attempted prayer and listening for God's still small voice? Have you planted the seed of the gospel within yourself? Has the seed begun to swell within you ? Have you tasted something sweet—a warmth in your heart, a clarity in your mind, a peace you cannot quite explain? Do you stand at the threshold, willing to believe but not yet certain, hoping that what you have heard is true?

Lyric: "I have tasted the Light, Grace of the Living Son of God, and my heart is full."

Then you are ready for what comes next. This chapter is not about convincing you to search. You are already searching. It is about what faith in Jesus Christ actually is—and what it does to those who embrace it.

More Than Belief

Faith is not mere belief. The scriptures are clear on this point: "The devils also believe, and tremble". Satan and his servants know that God exists. They know Jesus is the Christ. Satan's knowledge of this fact is perfect—and it brings him only misery. So then, what separates saving faith from the belief of devils? What more is there?

Surrender. Trust. Willingness to be changed by the power of God.

Belief says, "I acknowledge this is true." Faith says, "I will stake my life on it. I will let it reshape me. And I will make the sacrifices necessary to follow where it leads."

Faith is not passive. It is an action word in a variety of languages—English, Spanish, Italian, French, Latin, German, Greek, Hebrew—and it has meant throughout the ages "to be persuaded to the point of trust, reliance, and loyalty; to highly value and truly love; and to make a strong commitment."

Scripture describes faith as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". Faith is also defined as hope for things "which are not seen, which are true"—emphasis on "true." It is trusting in what is real before we have full proof of it. Surprisingly, God often chooses not to reveal Himself or confirm our faith through the witness of His Spirit "until after the trial of [our] faith". Spiritual experiences and divine evidence come to those who step forward, not to those who demand proof before they will move.

Faith is also the principle of change—the force that moves us from knowing to becoming. Joseph Smith taught that faith is "the moving cause of all action" and "the principle of power also, in all intelligent beings, whether in heaven or on earth" (Lectures on Faith 1:13, 15).

Scriptures indicate that God's power to create and destroy stems not only from His wisdom, understanding, and knowledge but also from His own spiritual faith; the same kind of faith that Christ taught. Faith is the real principle of power in heaven.

When we exercise faith—though small and imperfect—we take hold of that same principle that called light out of darkness, that formed the Earth and life upon it. It is that potent faculty that caused the blind to receive their sight, and the lame to walk, the lepers to be cleansed, the deaf to hear, and the dead to be raised up.

And here is the beautiful paradox: faith begins as we reach toward God, but it becomes His gift to us as He reaches back. We extend a particle of hope, and He returns it multiplied into knowledge. We offer a desire to believe; He transforms it into testimony. Faith combines our willingness and His grace. The two become entangled, eventually so woven together that we cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. Faith is best described as one's relationship with God.

Lyric: "His truth rises in me like the morning sun, and it calls me to move."

Born Again

Jesus taught that unless we are born again, we cannot see the kingdom of God. This is not just a metaphor. It is the Good Physician's prescription for salvation.

Those who have experienced the promised "rebirth" speak of a mighty change of heart—not self-improvement through one's own will and works but a transformation of the whole soul by the miraculous power of God. We do not reach personal perfection in this mortal life, but we receive a glimpse of God's perfect and eternal love for us.

In words of plainness, being born again is a divine miracle—the most powerful display of godly might—resulting in a conversion of character. What does it feel like? It is finding freedom from the burden of guilt of past sins following sincere repentance. It is a new beginning, an abiding sense of freshness and purity, a spiritual renewal. The world is still the same, but you are different, and so you see all of creation through new eyes.

For some, the new birth arrives like lightning—sudden, unmistakable, unforgettable. For others, it comes like dawn—so gradual they cannot name the moment the light became unmistakable. Both experiences are authentic. God works uniquely with each soul. What matters is whether the tree of faith is growing within us, not how dramatically the seed of salvation first sprouted.

Remember how Alma compared the word of God to a seed? This soul-enriching transformation is what the seed becomes when it takes root. He promised: the word would "enlarge your soul" and "enlighten your understanding" and become "delicious" to you. The swelling within, the growing inner light, the sweetness of spiritual freedom—these are signs of the new birth beginning. It is the light of Christ entering your life not as a concept or subtle influence but as a living, divine presence.

We cannot spiritually save ourselves. We can only say yes to the One who offers to make us new. And when His Spirit moves through our spirit, when we feel the old self falling away, we then begin to understand why Jesus used the language of birth. It is profound. It is real.

Lyric: "Now I'm reborn. Now I'm free."

Surrender as Strength

The world teaches that surrender is weakness. To yield is to lose. To submit is to be conquered.

But surrender to Christ is victory. It is the only true freedom in this world. When we try to hold our lives together through force of will alone, we forge chains of pride that weigh us down. The illusion of control—the fear we think is keeping us safe—becomes a prison cell with bars we refuse to see.

When we let go and then fall into His arms, we discover He was not waiting to diminish us but to enlarge our souls—to fill us with His light, His love, and even His own life.

This is why those who have surrendered to Christ do not speak of loss but of gain. They speak not of bondage but of liberation. Serving Him is not a grim duty. It is a homecoming for the travel-worn heart, a new vocation for restless hands. It is the song a once-quiet voice cannot stop singing—and the dance of feet that will not be still before the Lord.

Lyric: "I will dance before the Lord with all the life He's given me."

Grace, Faith, and Works

Are we saved by what God does for us? Or are we saved by what we do for God? The answer to both questions is yes.

There was great debate about this in Paul's time. The cause was lingering loyalties of the early Christians to the Jewish practices under the Mosaic Law. Many had faith in Christ, but continued to believe that they could only be saved by observing the traditions and rituals of the Law of Moses. Paul explained, "A man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ... for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified". Paul was not saying faith is superior to obedience to Christ's commandments. Rather, he was dissuading the Saints from observance of the Law of Moses, whose prophecies and ordinances had at long last been fulfilled by the atonement of Jesus Christ, who was God's promised Messiah to the people of Israel.

Returning to the question at hand, does salvation come by grace or works? Again, we answer: Both! Paul wrote, "By grace are ye saved through faith". But the Apostle James wrote, "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?" He then answered his own question, saying, "Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone". Both Apostles of Jesus Christ were right. There is no opposition between faith and works. These two elements of salvation are companions in a godly relationship.

Grace is God reaching toward us—unearned, undeserved, freely offered. It completes what we cannot complete on our own. But grace that is truly received changes us. It does not leave us where it found us. When God's love enters a heart, that heart beats differently. Hands once closed into fists begin to open. Feet that were still begin to move.

Lyric: "I'll use these hands to bear His light."

Good works are not payment in exchange for salvation. The strong desire to do good in the world is a natural byproduct of receiving saving grace and experiencing the transformation of one's spirit, the fruit of the Spirit of God.

"We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do". A tree does not bear fruit to prove it deserves sunlight but because that is what living trees do with light.

Perfection in Christ

Scriptures have good news on this subject. "By one sacrifice He has perfected forever those who are being made holy". We can also be confident of this: "He that began a good work in you will carry it on to completion". But we cannot allow ourselves to get cocky. This is not a license to sin.

We do not believe that reaching perfection in this mortal lifetime is required to be saved in Heaven, though we are commanded to be perfect. For now, perfection is the persistent direction of the journey, not the price of admission to the Kingdom of God; Christ's grace has already paid that price. Christ commands us to aim at the Father's wholeness, and grace carries us forward when we fall short. The consistent direction of our growth matters far more than any level of attainment. Genuine faith produces genuine change. If nothing is growing, we might ask whether the seed was ever truly planted, protected, nourished, and encouraged to produce fruit.

Fellowship with Disciples

Faith in Christ is personal, but it is not private. From the beginning, the Lord has gathered His followers into communities of covenant and care. He calls us not only to Himself but to one another.

Lyric: "We are not called to walk alone. There's a family... there's a home."

There are things that can only be learned in fellowship. Patience is forged when we must bear with one another's weaknesses. Forgiveness is practiced when brothers and sisters disappoint us—as we inevitably disappoint them. Love is perfected not in solitude but in the daily friction and grace of life together.

The early Christians "continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers". They understood that discipleship is communal. We need teachers to instruct us, elders to guide us, peers to walk beside us, and younger souls to serve. We need the sacraments that can only be administered in gathered worship. We need the correction that comes from those who know us well enough to speak truth in love.

Do not try to follow Christ alone. Find His people. Join them. Bear their burdens as they bear yours. "Where two or three are gathered together in my name," Jesus promised, "there am I in the midst of them". His presence is found in the fellowship as surely as in the private places of prayer.

The body of Christ is not a metaphor. It is a description of how His living work is done in the world—through hands and feet and voices joined together in His service.

Core Principles of Salvation

True discipleship to Christ cannot be judged by mortals. Though important to institutionalized religion, human councils cannot determine the nature of spiritual matters with the same wisdom and divine authority possessed by the Savior and Judge of our souls! The purity of one's faith can neither be measured nor diminished by ecumenical creeds, formal catechisms, articles of faith, or ecclesiastical courts. Being a Christian has little to do with doctrines or theologies of religious institutions. A true Christian—a sincere disciple of Christ—is one who has faith enough in Jesus to try to become more like Him. This being said, there are a few basic beliefs and practices held by most disciples of Christ.

The Cross of Christ

Jesus said that if anyone wishes to follow Him he should "deny himself, and take up his cross". The prophet Jacob described followers of the Holy One of Israel as those "who have endured the crosses of the world". Simon of Cyrene was compelled to literally bear the cross of Christ.

Paul wrote of the saving effect of the cross of Christ. He also wrote of the saving blood of the cross. Does this mean that we cannot be saved unless we adorn ourselves, our homes, and our places of worship with crosses?

Truly consider, was it the physical wooden cross that is of saving effect and which bled for our sins, or was it the unparalleled suffering, sacrifice, death, and resurrection of God's own Son that can save us? For the early Apostles the cross became a powerful symbol of bearing great burdens or making great sacrifices, but they did not worship the cross; they worshiped the One who was crucified.

Taking the Name of Christ Upon Us

We believe that all who call themselves Christians have taken the name of Christ upon themselves to some degree. Any who deny this lack understanding or simple Christlike charity. It is a sorrowful thing that surely displeases the Father of our spirits to see Christians denying the Christianity of other Christians, like some form of tribal warfare. However, no one can be justified by merely taking the name of Christ on their lips. To be worthy to be called Christians we must take Him into our heart, and then take up His cross in conforming our lives, thoughts, and attitudes to His teachings.

Lyric: "How do I explain this healing to a heart that's never broken?"

Bearing Testimony

Faith that remains hidden is faith that remains incomplete. The natural response to encountering the living Christ is to speak of Him—to bear testimony.

Consider the woman at the well. She had lived a complicated life—five husbands, and the man she was with was not her husband. Yet when she encountered Christ, she did not wait until her life was in order to speak of Him. She left her waterpot and ran to the city: "Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?". Her testimony was simple, honest, and immediate. And many believed because of her word. She did not argue theology. She simply said, "Come and see." That is testimony.

A testimony is not an argument. It is not proof designed to compel agreement. It is a witness shared: a personal declaration of what you have experienced, what you have come to know, what has changed in you because of Him. "I was blind, but now I see." "I was lost, but He found me." "I planted the seed, and it grew." No one can argue with your experience. They can only hear it and feel the Spirit confirm its truth (or not) to their own hearts. We are not the Savior; we cannot change others by force of will or with compelling arguments and proofs.

Further, testimony is borne in more than words. It is borne in how you live—in the kindness you show, the integrity you keep, the peace you carry into anxious rooms. Every act of Christlike love is testimony. We bear plain witness of His love and express discipleship with every choice to forgive when the world says we should retaliate. The life you live preaches sermons that never end.

Jesus said, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven". This is testimony in action—light borne into darkness, not for your own glory but for His.

Lyric: "It calls me to move. Oh, it calls me to move."

Do not wait until your faith is perfect to share it. Testimony grows stronger in the telling. As you speak what you know—however small it seems—the Spirit confirms it to you even as it reaches toward others. The seed you plant in another's heart waters the growing tree of faith in your own.

When Faith Is Tested

There will be seasons when the light of faith dims. The world grows loud and distracting: teachings and philosophies of the world, hardships and loss, betrayal by friends, and even by brothers and sisters in Christ. Hardship can obscure what once seemed clear. Doubt sometimes creeps in where certainty lives.

Lyric: "When shadows press their questions, and the doubts claw their way..."

Know this: doubt is not the opposite of faith. Fear and despair are. Doubt that keeps seeking is still faith, just dressed in different clothes.

The Lord counseled a struggling disciple: "Cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart. Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?".

Remind yourself that you have felt the Spirit of God before. The seed has swelled within. The light tasted sweet then. Return to that memory. Let it anchor you until the sun rises again within you. Faith is both a gift and a choice—God gives the witness; we choose whether to remember it. Return to the wellspring of living waters often.

The Invitation

Faith offers to us: a heart made full, a life made new, a purpose that outlasts death.

Faith asks of us: surrender, trust, willingness to be changed and to let that change overflow into how you live and love and serve.

Faith grows into: testimony borne in word and deed, fellowship with other disciples, light carried into every room you enter, joy that cannot be contained.

Lyric: "Now I'm reborn. Now I'm free."

۞ Come unto Him.

۞ Learn of Him.

۞ Believe in Him.

۞ Follow Him.

۞ Remember Him.

We promise you, in the name of Jesus Christ, that if you do these things your faith will be made unshakable by the power of the Spirit of God. "Then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God". You will know—not merely believe, but know—that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of all who receive Him, and that embracing Him is not loss but gain, not bondage but freedom, not the end of your journey but its true beginning.

In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Ancient Promise

Countless myths, legends, and folktales across the full breadth of human civilizations relate chosen one narratives. The story arc is always similar: prophecy or destiny, humble beginnings, mentorship, the burden of fate, unique power or lineage, impossible tasks that will defeat a great evil and restore peace and hope. These stories seem to serve an important purpose in the lives of people. But can such a story be true?

Disciples of Jesus Christ witness that this narrative is more than myth—it is a true manifestation of divinity and hope for all humankind.

What is a Messiah? What is a Christ? The first is Hebrew, and the second is Greek. Both mean "Anointed One"—set apart, marked out, chosen for a sacred mission or calling. In the ancient world, anointing was the ceremony that made a king. Oil was poured over the top of the head, and the act declared: this one, and not another.

But the Messiah was not chosen by men. He was chosen by God the Father before the foundations of the earth were laid—appointed to an atoning mission so singular that every age of human history, every covenant and sacrifice and prayer ever uttered by a believing heart, would bend toward it. He would deliver God's children from death and hell. He would become the answer to the deepest thing humanity has ever longed for.

This is not mythology, not legend, not folktale. Disciples of Jesus Christ believe this is the true story of the God of all creation.

From the moment humankind left paradise, God began revealing His plan to redeem us from our necessary journey through mortality.

The Lord did not wait for Israel. He did not wait for Isaiah. He began with Adam—with an altar, with the blood of an animal, and with an angel's voice explaining what the offering meant. "This thing," the angel said, "is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth. Wherefore, thou shalt do all that thou doest in the name of the Son" (). Adam obeyed without fully understanding, and the Holy Ghost fell upon him and bore witness: "I am the Only Begotten of the Father from the beginning, henceforth and forever, that as thou hast fallen thou mayest be redeemed, and all mankind, even as many as will" ().

Every lamb that bled on every altar from that morning forward was a living prophecy, a symbolic promise that would take thousands of years to be fulfilled. A promise that every generation of seekers and saints has sought to understand since that first sacrifice.

The chain of witness grew longer with every generation. The Prophet Enoch received the name—Jesus, Yehoshua, "Jehovah is Salvation"—long before the nation of Israel existed. Noah preached repentance and baptism in that same name centuries before Abraham walked out of Ur. Jacob, dying, said the scepter would not leave the tribe of Judah until Shiloh came—a name scholars translate as "the one to whom it belongs" (). Moses, face to face with God, was told plainly: "Mine Only Begotten is and shall be the Savior" (). And then Moses gave an entire nation a Law whose whole purpose was not to save them through their keeping of it, but to keep pointing their eyes in one direction—forward, toward the One the Law was always about.

I try to imagine what it meant to live before the coming of the Messiah—to wonder what Israel would feel when her King finally arrived. Would I have understood His true mission from the prophecies? Would I have heard His teachings and felt the Spirit fill me with recognition of the promised Messiah?

The feasts. The sacrifices. The Law. The Temple in its glory. All of it a vast, elaborate, centuries-long schoolmaster—God preparing a people, in the only language they could yet receive, reminding them that He was coming. Faithful men and women kept those feasts and said those prayers and offered those sacrifices and died without having seen the promise fulfilled. Their hunger was real. Their waiting was not passive. It was an act of faith performed across centuries, each generation passing the flame of hope and the traditions of remembrance to the next.

What Was Promised

As the centuries passed, the collected prophetic knowledge of the coming Chosen One grew in volume and detail. The prophecies were not vague spiritual impressions. They were specific. And they converged on a growing portrait of the Messiah, so He would be recognized.

Isaiah wrote that a virgin would conceive and bear a son, and that his name would be called Immanuel—God with us (). Micah named the town: not Jerusalem, not the great city, but Bethlehem—a small one, obscure even among the villages of Judah ().

His nature and mission exceeded every imagining Israel had conceived of for a deliverer: "Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace" ().

Isaiah also described what His divine mission would cost Him: "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed" ().

That passage was written seven centuries before His sacrifice. Read it again slowly. Wounded for our transgressions. He did it for us. The prophet saw the suffering servant before the servant had been born, and described him well enough that when it happened, those who had eyes to see could recognize it.

And after the suffering— promised that God would not leave His Holy One to see corruption in the grave. He would rise. This prophecy was also written far in advance of the events.

Voices from the Other Side of the World

On the other side of the earth, separated from Israel by an ocean and six centuries of time, God was not silent.

A family had left Jerusalem around 600 BC, led by a prophet named Lehi. They crossed the wilderness, built a ship, and sailed to a land they had never seen. And in that new world, the same Spirit that moved on the waters of creation continued to speak. Lehi taught his children that "a Prophet would the Lord God raise up among the Jews—even a Messiah, or, in other words, a Savior of the world. And he also spake concerning the Prophets, how great a number had testified of these things."

Another prophet named Nephi taught that Abraham had seen the Messiah's coming and was filled with gladness, and that thousands of years before His birth, prophets had already been called according to the order of His Son (). A king named Mosiah received a revelation more than a hundred years before His birth. He prophesied: "He shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and Earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary" ().

Not a title. Not a symbol. A name. A woman's name. Given a century early, to a prophet on the other side of the earth. I have never been able to read that passage casually. There is something in that specificity—his mother shall be called Mary—that lands differently for me every time. The divine promise was moving toward a particular woman in a particular village, and God named her to prophets who would never meet her.

About five years before the birth of the Messiah, a man named Samuel climbed the wall of a city filled with people who wanted him dead and told the people what to watch for (). He said there would be a night that did not go dark. The sun would set, and the darkness would not come—the night before the Savior's birth would be as bright as day. One day and one night and another day, as if there were no night between them. And a new star would appear—one no one had ever seen. He described the sign that would be seen the whole world over.

Holy Family

In the hill country of Galilee, in a town that no one of importance came from, a young woman named Mary was going about her ordinary life when the world changed.

She was not a figure of public importance. She was a girl, probably in her early teens, betrothed to a craftsman named Joseph—a man of quiet faithfulness who worked with his hands and held the legal inheritance of a royal bloodline that the Roman occupation had suppressed, along with every other reminder that Israel had once been a kingdom. As a child of a devout Jewish household, Mary had been raised to look forward with faith for the coming of God's Messiah. She was a daughter of Abraham through the tribe of Judah. She was a royal descendant of David himself, though that mattered very little in a village under occupation.

Prophets described her hundreds of years before she was born. A Book of Mormon prophet saw her in vision and called her "most beautiful and fair above all other virgins" (). Another called her "a precious and chosen vessel" (). Heaven had been watching her for a long time.

And then she was visited by the angel Gabriel (). I don't think we give enough thought to what that moment must have felt like. An angel of God, in her home, telling her she had been chosen to be the mother of the Messiah—the One all those sacrifices had pointed to, the One Enoch had named, the One Samuel had predicted with a night without darkness. The One Israel had waited for across forty generations.

The text says she was troubled. Of course she was. But then it says joy came. And then she said yes. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word" ().

That sentence is one of the great acts of faith in all of scripture. She did not know what it would cost her. She did not know about Herod, or Egypt, or the sorrow that Simeon would say would pierce her own soul. She knew she had been chosen, and she accepted. Everything that follows in this chapter, and the next, and the one after that—everything comes from that moment of faithful consent.

Joseph

When word reached Joseph in Nazareth that Mary was pregnant, he had no way to understand what had happened (). In a small community where everyone knew everyone, the sting of this shocking news would have been devastating—hurt and embarrassment are the natural human response, and the scripture does not pretend it was otherwise.

But Joseph was a just and righteous man. He knew what the Law required of him—it required him to bring her before the judges of Israel, who would very likely have condemned her to being stoned to death for adultery committed during betrothal. He could not do it. He would end the engagement privately, quietly, sparing her whatever shame and harm he could.

Mercifully, God intervened. The angel Gabriel came to Joseph too (). He was told not to fear, that the child was the Son of God, that He would "be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David" (). Joseph received this witness and accepted Mary as his wife—a woman several months pregnant, in a small town where nothing was private, at great social cost to himself.

That act deserves more than a footnote. Joseph's willingness to absorb shame he did not deserve, to protect a woman carrying a child that was not his, to step into a story bigger than himself without fully understanding it—that is a portrait of a man worth knowing. James E. Talmage wrote that had Judah been a free nation ruled by her rightful sovereign, Joseph the carpenter would have been her crowned king; and his lawful successor to the throne would have been Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Joseph, the rightful king of Israel, was humbly building things with his hands in a Roman-occupied province. And he willingly spent his best years raising the Son of God as his own.

Both Mary and Joseph were of the royal house of David. Both were living modest lives under occupation, their inheritance unrecognized by any earthly authority. Only a few people on earth had any idea of the weight they were carrying.

Bethlehem

Near the end of Mary's pregnancy, Caesar Augustus required a census (). Every Jewish family was obligated to register in the city of their ancestral origin. For Joseph, that meant Bethlehem—Micah's town, David's town, the town the prophets had named.

We know only scattered details of their journey. The text says only that she went with Joseph, that they arrived, that there was no room at the inn. What we know is that the Son of God was born in a stable—in the company of animals, in the smell of hay and earth, with a feeding trough for His first bed. There was no midwife named in the record. No gathered family. No dignitary. Just the two of them, and then the three of them.

That little child in the borrowed trough was the great Jehovah, the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Let that sit for a moment. The Being who had spoken worlds into existence was now small enough to be held in one person's arms. The One the whole ancient world had been pointed toward had arrived—and almost no one noticed.

Except that the night was full of light that caused the nations to wonder and chosen holy men to wander.

The First Witnesses

In the fields outside Bethlehem, shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks (). They were not important men. They were not the kind of people to whom announcements were made, in any normal order of things. And then the angel came, and the glory of God shone around them, and they were terrified—a reasonable response—and the angel said: "Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord" (). And then the sky filled with more of them, a host of angels, and they were singing.

The Lord Jesus would be known as the Good Shepherd. It is no accident that the first people to worship Him were shepherds. They found the child exactly as they had been told. After worshiping, they went and told everyone they could find. Shepherds became evangelists decades before fishermen became apostles.

Forty days later, Mary and Joseph brought the infant to Jerusalem to be presented at the Temple as the Law of Moses required (). An old man named Simeon had been waiting in the Temple his whole life—the Holy Ghost had promised him he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ (). Day after day, year after year, he had come to the Temple.

On that day, Simeon saw them come in and the Spirit moved him to take the baby into his arms and say: "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel" ().

A prophetess named Anna was also there that day—eighty-four years old, who had been fasting and praying in the Temple for decades (). Being in the Spirit, she recognized the child as the promised Messiah. She told everyone who would listen that the redemption of Israel had arrived.

Outside, a star was burning that the world had never seen. Wise men from the east had seen it rise and followed it (). They came bearing gifts for a king—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—and they found the King of Kings in the last place earthly wisdom would have looked.

Herod and Egypt

King Herod heard about the wise men's errand and understood what it meant (). A prophesied king of the Jews was a threat to his throne. He ordered the massacre of every male child under two years of age in Bethlehem. Joseph was warned in a dream and fled before the soldiers came, taking his family south through the Nile delta into Egypt. They lived there as refugees for several years, until Herod died and it was safe to return.

The Son of God spent His early childhood in exile. He would have been a brown-skinned child of refugee parents, speaking Aramaic in a foreign country, entirely dependent on the faithfulness of two young people who understood only in part what they were carrying.

God the Father was watching all of it. Of His Son, the ancient scripture promised: "He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up" (). That protection was real. It was also exercised through the courage and obedience of ordinary people—a man who listened to dreams, a woman who said yes in the dark.

Nazareth and the Years of Formation

When Herod died, the family returned—not to Bethlehem, but to Nazareth, the town in Galilee where Joseph and Mary had lived. Joseph resumed his work as a tekton—a craftsman in stone and wood, the kind of builder a growing region needed. The family settled into the rhythms of Galilean village life, and Jesus grew up inside them.

Nazareth in the first century was a small agricultural village—just a few hundred people, everyone knowing everyone else's business. It was not a prosperous place, and it was not an important one. When Philip later told Nathanael that the Messiah had come from Nazareth, Nathanael said what anyone would have said: "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" The question was not malicious. It was just geography.

The Jewish world Jesus grew up in was saturated with the things of God in a way that is difficult for modern secular readers to fully imagine. The washing of hands before meals, the dietary laws of kashrut, the weekly Sabbath rest—these were not burdens for a devout family. They were the texture of daily life. From his earliest years, Mary had been teaching her son the Shema—"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord"—the first prayer of the morning, the last prayer of the night, the covenant declaration at the center of Israel's identity.

At five, Jesus would have begun formal study at the synagogue school. The content was Scripture—Torah, Prophets, Psalms—read, copied, and memorized until it became part of the student's inner life. The evidence of the Gospels suggests Jesus went well beyond the village average.

He was not a monolingual villager. His mother tongue was Galilean Aramaic—the language of his home, his friendships, his prayers with his family, most of his later teaching. His name in that tongue is "Yeshua." Hebrew was the sacred language of the synagogue, where he would have been called the more formal "Yehoshua," and he was literate in it—Luke records him reading publicly from the Isaiah scroll. Greek, the trade language of the region, was almost certainly part of his working life as he grew older.

Three times each year—at Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles—observant Jews were commanded to present themselves before God at the Temple in Jerusalem (). Luke tells us the family made the Passover journey every year (). These were not casual trips. They were caravan journeys—extended family, neighbors, the whole village moving together, days of walking and sleeping outdoors, arriving at Jerusalem with thousands of pilgrims from across the Jewish world, the city swelling beyond its walls. The Temple itself: its courts, its sacrifices, the smoke of the offerings, the sound of the shofar at the great festivals. These were the defining experiences of Jewish childhood.

Jesus absorbed all of it. Every word of Torah he memorized, every sacrifice he watched, every Sabbath his family kept, every Passover he celebrated—all of it was shaping the One who would one day say "I am the resurrection and the life" and mean it literally.

He also worked. Jewish tradition was explicit on this point: a father was obligated to teach his son a trade. The saying ran that a man who failed to do so was teaching his son to steal. Alongside Joseph, Jesus cut stone and shaped wood in a region where limestone was plentiful and timber was not. When Herod Antipas began rebuilding the city of Sepphoris four miles away—a major construction project that went on for years—Jesus almost certainly worked those sites with Joseph. He would have hauled rock and shaped timber. He would have watched wealthy patrons negotiate contracts. He would have seen day laborers gather in the market square, anxious for work. He would have seen what happened to the ones who were not chosen by day's end.

The parables he would later tell were not invented illustrations. They were memories.

At twelve, Jesus was approaching the threshold of bar mitzvah—the age at which a Jewish boy was considered old enough to begin assuming adult religious responsibilities. Luke records a Passover journey to Jerusalem that year, and what happened when the family turned for home: Jesus stayed behind, and they did not discover this for a full day of travel (). When they came back and found him, he was in the Temple courts—sitting among the teachers, listening to them, asking questions. And the text says everyone who heard him was astonished at his understanding and his answers.

His mother said what any mother would say after three days of searching: "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing" ().

He looked at her and said, with the calm directness that would characterize him for the rest of his life: "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" () His awareness of his divine identity was not something he broadcast. It was something he carried quietly, maturing in him, showing itself in moments like this one—and then, apparently, he went home to Nazareth and was subject to his parents for another eighteen years, and the Gospels say nothing more about it.

"And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" ().

The Hidden Years

For eighteen years after that moment in the Temple courts, we have no record. The Gospels are silent. Historical sources are silent.

I want to say something about that silence, because I think we sometimes treat it as a gap—an unfortunate absence of information we wish we had. But I think the silence is the point. Jesus was not a wandering mystic during those years. He was not performing quiet miracles or gathering secret disciples. There is no evidence of that. The silence in the record is consistent with a man living an ordinary life: working his trade, caring for his family, observing the Law, attending the synagogue, going to the Temple for Passover. Being a neighbor. Being a son.

Part of the life He lived was to see His holy family lose father Joseph. Joseph disappears from the Gospel record entirely after the Temple episode—no mention of him at the wedding in Cana, no mention of him during the ministry, and Jesus' act of committing his mother's care to John from the cross makes no sense if Joseph were still living. Before his public ministry began, Jesus would have assumed responsibility for his mother and his younger siblings—the provider and head of a household, carrying an ordinary man's ordinary weight.

That is not nothing. It is, in fact, the whole point of the hidden years.

The Jesus who walks to the Jordan River to be baptized by John at the age of thirty is not a figure arriving from somewhere else. He is the product of those thirty years—formed by the family that raised him, the Scripture that saturated him, the labor that calloused his hands, the grief that came with losing Joseph, the prayers said morning and evening his whole life. He knows what it is to be tired. He knows what it is to work hard for pay. He knows what it costs to bury someone you love. He knows the smell of a synagogue, the sound of the Passover seder, the feel of Jerusalem under his feet after days of walking.

He is ready. Not because thirty years were required to complete him—he was always the Messiah. But the preparation was the point. His humanity was real. When he says "I know your sorrows"—he knows them from the inside.

In the year that John the Baptist stood in the Jordan and called all of Israel to repentance—to turn back, to make straight what had been crooked, because the Kingdom of God was at hand—a man from Nazareth came down from Galilee and waded into the water. He had been a craftsman's apprentice, a carpenter, a son, a neighbor. And he was about to become everything the ancient world had been waiting for since the first lamb bled on Adam's altar.

We testify that the Star of Bethlehem shed its light for His birth. Wise men from surrounding countries, shepherds in the field, generations of prophets, and even kings and choirs of angels recognized the time of His birth. It was not a surprise. It was not a folktale. Yeshua of Nazareth, Yehoshua the Son of God in the Highest, was born to save us from sin and death.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Voice Crying in the Wilderness

There is a man you need to meet before we go any further. A cousin to Jesus, John the Baptist. He was the son of a priest named Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth, who had prayed in their old age for a child until hope itself seemed fleeting. The blessing of conception was granted, but was only the beginning. While still within the womb of Elizabeth, John recognized the presence of the Messiah within the womb of Mary, and the babe leaped for joy.

As an adult, John was not what you would expect. He wore clothing made of camel's hair, ate locusts and wild honey, and carried in his chest a burning knowledge that he had to share with anyone and everyone around him. Rather than teaching in the Temple or in synagogues, or even in the streets of cities, John lived and preached in the wilderness---not as a hermit hiding from the world---as a prophet to whom God had given a specific mission: prepare the way of the Lord!

The people of Judea went out to him in the desert margins by the hundreds---farmers, tax collectors, soldiers, Pharisees in their long robes. Something in his voice drew them forth.

His message was not complicated: "Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." It was the message the prophets had always carried, compressed now to a single sentence, urgent in the way a man is urgent when he knows the hour has nearly come.

Matthew paused to tell his readers who this was: "This is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." Seven hundred years before John's birth, Isaiah had seen him. He had written him down. And here he was---exactly where the prophecy said he would be, calling Israel to the river, calling them to the threshold they had been approaching for four thousand years.

I think about what it must have meant to stand in that crowd. To live under Roman occupation, to carry the long memory of a people who had been promised something they had nearly stopped believing would come---and to hear this man speak with that kind of certainty. Not the certainty of argument. The certainty of someone who had already seen what was coming and could not find words sufficient to prepare you for it.

John himself said: "He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear."

He was pointing. That was all he was doing. He was pointing, and burning, and preparing the ground.

Entering the River

Around the age of thirty, Jesus left Galilee and walked south to the Jordan.

He was not coming to John as a seeker comes to a teacher. He was coming to fulfill a commandment of His Father---not for His own sake but for ours. He had no sin requiring forgiveness, no old life needing to be washed away. He came because God had asked Him to, and because everything required of His children was required of Him also. He would not stand apart from us even at the water's edge.

When John saw Him coming, something happened in that righteous man. He had been baptizing crowds all morning. Then he looked up---and he knew. The Spirit bore witness to him before a single word was spoken. He said, "I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?"

Jesus answered simply: "Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness."

There is a whole theology in that exchange, and I am not going to unfold it here. What I want you to see is the posture. The Son of God---the Creator of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in mortal flesh---standing in a river in first-century Judea, submitting to the hands of a mortal man, because His Father asked Him to. In His economy, humility is never weakness. It is always the doorway to something larger.

John baptized Him.

"And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

The Father spoke. I do not know what that sounded like---whether the crowd heard words or only felt something shift in the air, whether the sound was the kind that enters through the ears or the kind that enters through the chest. What I know is that something was declared that day over the water, in front of witnesses, for the record: This is my Son. I am pleased with Him.

Thousands of years of waiting. Forty years of wandering in Egypt's shadow. Seventy years in Babylon. Centuries of silence after Malachi. And then a voice---not from a burning bush, not through a prophet's trembling mouth---but from the Father Himself, speaking directly into the world He had made, claiming the Son He had sent.

He came. As promised, He came.

Strength in the Desert

He did not go to Jerusalem. He did not begin to preach. The Spirit led Him immediately into the wilderness---and Satan was waiting.

Forty days. Fasting. Alone.

The three temptations that followed were not random assaults. They were a precise examination---each one aimed at the same nerve, each one asking the same question under a different disguise: Are you actually who you think you are? And if you are, why are you doing it this way?

The first came when His hunger had reached its sharpest edge. Satan pointed to the stones and said, in effect: You have the power. Use it. Feed yourself. Jesus answered with scripture: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." He did not debate. He did not negotiate. He reached for the word of God the way a man reaches for it who knows what he believes---not as a weapon, but as a fact that will not move.

The second came at the pinnacle of the temple. Satan, remarkably, also reached for scripture: Surely the angels will catch you. Jump. Show everyone what you are. Jesus answered: "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." There is something worth sitting with here. Satan knows the text. He can quote it. This was never a test of biblical knowledge. It was a test of whether Jesus would make His identity into a spectacle---whether He would perform Messiahship for an audience rather than fulfill it through sacrifice. He would not.

The third came on a high mountain, where Jesus was shown all the kingdoms of the earth in a single vision. Bow down to me, Satan said, and I will give you all of it. This was the most unguarded offer of all---a way to win without the cross. The kingdoms were real. The shortcut was real. Jesus could have had everything He came to establish---dominion over every nation---without Gethsemane, without Golgotha, without any of what was coming. All He had to do was bow. His firm answer was, "Get thee hence, Satan."

This was not a temptation because power is evil. Not because the nations were not worth having. But because He had not come for dominion. He had come for redemption---and redemption requires sacrifice, not a spectacle; a cross, not a shortcut.

I have often thought about these temptations in my own life. Each one is aimed at something real---the body's need, the soul's longing to be seen and valued, the impatient desire for the outcome without the cost. He refused them all, not with arguments but with a settled certainty about who He was and why He had come.

Luke added a detail that should be recognized: the devil "departed from him for a season." Not forever. He would return---at Gethsemane, at the cross, everywhere in between, pressing at the same identity again and again. But the wilderness settled something that would not be moved. Jesus knew who He was and what He had come to do. He had been tested at the point of His deepest hunger, His deepest longing for an easier way---and He had not flinched. Angels came and ministered to Him after.

The Ministry

He returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit. Word of Him began to spread before His arrival anywhere.

That phrase in Luke deserves a moment: in the power of the Spirit. This was not a man who had survived an ordeal and needed time to recover. This was a man who had come through fire clarified---who knew exactly what He was carrying, and it showed everywhere He went. "There went out a fame of him through all the region round about." He taught in the synagogues. He was glorified of all.

His message was the same John had carried, now spoken by the One John had been pointing toward: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel."

He walked the shores of Galilee and found fishermen---not scholars, not priests, not the people anyone would have assembled for a movement of this magnitude. Simon and Andrew casting nets. James and John mending theirs in a boat with their father. He said, "Follow me"---and they came up out of the water and left everything behind them on the shore. They did not know precisely what they were following. But something in the way He said it made remaining impossible.

What the ministry felt like from the outside was a stormfront---the kind that moves across a whole region and changes the quality of the air. Crowds gathered wherever He went, pressing in from every direction. People who had been carrying their conditions in silence for years---the sick, the frightened, the ones the religious establishment had quietly written off---kept finding themselves in front of Him. And He kept stopping. He kept seeing the person the crowd had turned into an obstacle. He reached toward what the law said was untouchable. He asked the names of people everyone else stepped around.

Something was happening that was larger than any individual healing. The world was getting a prolonged look at what God is actually like---not God explained or argued for, but God moving through Galilean villages at the pace of a man who has time to stop.

This Scripture Is Fulfilled

He went home to Nazareth.

He had been away---months now, perhaps longer. Word had reached them: healings in Capernaum, crowds following Him everywhere, things happening that defied explanation. The people in that synagogue knew Him. They had known His father. They had watched Him grow up on those streets, learn that trade, walk to this building every Sabbath since He was old enough to walk at all.

He stood up to read, as was the custom. The attendant handed Him the scroll of Isaiah. He unrolled it to a place that seemed to find itself under His hand, and He read:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."

He rolled up the scroll. He handed it back to the attendant. He sat down.

"And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him."

That is Luke's way of telling us the room had gone absolutely still. No one was clearing his throat. No one was shifting in his seat. Every person in that synagogue knew what passage had just been read. They had heard it their whole lives---the great servant poem of Isaiah, the anointed one who would come, the year of the Lord's favor, the liberation of the captive and the broken. It was among the most beloved texts in Jewish worship. And the man who had just read it was sitting in the teacher's seat, looking at them.

Then He said: "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your hearing."

Not: this scripture describes what I am trying to do. Not: I hope to embody something of this spirit. Not a metaphor, not an aspiration, not a program.

This day. This scripture. Fulfilled. In your hearing.

The room where He had grown up. The people who had seen Him every Sabbath from the time He was old enough to walk through that door. The town that knew the smell of His father's workshop. And He was telling them---through them, telling everyone---that the ancient promise had a face, and they were looking at it.

I want you to imagine standing in that room. In that silence. The question in the minds of everyone in that congregation is the same one that has been building through everything we have read together---the long human search across the centuries, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, the whole arc of preparation that has brought us to this moment.

Who is this man?

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Invocation

By the time the first sandals scuff dust into the air above ancient dirt roads, every household is already in motion, each person drawn forward by the same quiet force that still moves us today in our modern age of shoes and pavement: the need to eat, to provide, to compete, to endure another day. The dust and duty of life cannot be ignored. And it can become all-consuming if we allow it.

She did not think of herself as distracted. She thought of herself as responsible. The fire needed tending, the guests needed feeding, and no one else seemed to notice. She had no idea that one day the whole world would know her name. Martha, sister to Mary, both sisters of Lazarus of Bethany. Their home in Judea—conveniently near Jerusalem—was a favorite resting place for God who walked among humans.

Mary and Martha labored daily within this pressing reality of "dust and duty," especially when He visited their home. They had heard the stories, considered the gospel message of the long awaited Messiah. They had prayed, experimented upon the word, embraced Him and His teachings, and bent their lives to His service. This is the question explored in chapter six: How would you know the truth of Him? If He were introduced to you as the Christ, how would you know it's true?

This chapter presents a very different question from chapter six. How would you know Him personally? Not just the truth of His identity. How would you relate to Him socially? How would your soul respond to His personality and bearing? Would you be in the right frame of mind to feel His spiritual presence? Ready to see Him for who He is, rather than who you might expect based on two thousand year old records, traditions, and creeds? Would you be comfortable in His presence, or would you feel awkward?

We know that children ran toward Him. Men untrained in theology responded instantly to His call. Crowds listening to Him forgot to eat. The powerful among Israel came to speak to Him in secret. Desperate souls pressed through walls of people and tore through rooftops to obtain His personal blessing. His enemies were confused by Him and often failed to execute their own orders. A tax collector climbed a tree just to catch a glimpse of Him.

If He walked into a church meeting dressed as a parishioner, but by His will your eyes were kept from recognizing Him—like the disciples on the road to Emmaus—would we be too distracted by hymns, and prayers, and wiggling children, and the normal business and gossip of congregational life? Would we know Him? How would we know Him?

You have a Mary and Martha decision to make. You can be like Mary, recognizing the value of His character and kneeling at His feet to learn from Him. You can be like Martha, honorably busy serving the needs of others, but not recognizing the special moment for what it was.

This isn't to say that we stop tending to the mortal essentials, but that we must be ready whenever He calls to stop, listen, and obey. We must also learn to be in the firm habit of setting down our cares and concerns regularly to make moments for Him.

The prophet Joshua also presented to the world this same challenge: "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve".

This is not all—not for a disciple. This isn't a one-and-done choice. Choose today. And then tomorrow, choose again. If you ever fail to make the same choice, then get back up, shake the dust off of your sandals and make the choice once again to serve the Lord.

What would it be like for Yehoshua to enter a room today or walk into a busy marketplace? Would He be noticed, or would He blend in? What would it be like to be near Him as just another member of a community? What would His presence say of Him to any that took notice? His attitude, His posture, His behavior? Before He ever opened His mouth, what would you learn of Him?

The value of this chapter is in the sincere character study of Jesus Christ, the human personality of the Word Made Flesh. This topic is the centerpiece of our effort to respond to His command, "Learn of Me".

Let us feast upon the scriptures to learn of our God Made Flesh. Don't delegate this task to others—not even to preachers or teachers. It is as much your responsibility to learn of Jesus Christ as to personally confess Him as your Lord and Savior or to follow Him as an expression of your love for Him. Our purpose here is contemplative: sit with Yehoshua the Man, study Him honestly. Who is He? What kind of person is He?

This chapter asks: "What is He like—what manner of man is this"?

The portrait that follows is organized around a single claim: that grace and truth are the most defining character traits of the Son of God—and that every other attribute, action, and reaction of Yehoshua flows from this foundation.

His character is not the absence of human feeling but the perfection of it: every impulse governed by love, every response shaped by wisdom, every choice submitted to the Father. He is the mirror we hold up to see ourselves honestly.

Mastery of Humility: Grace Embodied

Yehoshua spent roughly thirty years doing manual labor and only three years in ministry. That ratio itself is a testament to His humility. God in the flesh chose to quietly shape wood and stone in the privacy of an insignificant village before He ever shaped souls and performed miracles publicly.

Shortly before His triumphant reception in the city, Yehoshua had left Galilee to walk the road to Jerusalem when a young man came running to meet Him along the way, falling to his knees before the Master. The young man said, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Of course, Yehoshua knew the answer better than anyone. He had taught the gospel of salvation in many forms to many people. Still, rather than answering directly, Yehoshua reacted with graceful humility. "Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone". He did then teach the answer, but first redirected glory to the Father.

From His early years, He could have enjoyed the same celebrity status that welcomed Him to Jerusalem on the day of His triumphal entry—when a vast throng of believers accepted Him as their Messiah and King of the Jews. Even on that glorious day, when all seemed to be going well, He rode into the adoring masses riding a humble donkey instead of a warhorse.

Paul taught us to emulate Yehoshua's humility in his letter to the people of Philippi. "In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness".

Yehoshua's example is what grace looks like in the form of humility. He did not have to proclaim His mastery of humility. He lived it in His everyday relationships.

My mother used to remind me that one does not announce one's own humility. Throughout my life, I have never felt safer than when I am with genuinely humble people. Sensing no competition, no threat, it allows me to let down my guard. Humility in others allows us to see deeper than the facade of ego to real depth of character. This is what it must have felt like to be near Yehoshua. To some it may have been frightening or suspicious; to disciples it feels like coming home.

Mastery of Obedience: Grace Received

Many Christians identify Christ's ultimate act of obedience to the Father by the words of surrender in Gethsemane: "Not my will, but thine, be done". This moment will be studied in another chapter. Here, let us observe His daily examples of obedience as evidence of His character.

As a dutiful son, Yehoshua obeyed His mortal parents and respected His elders. Both obedience and discipline were required to learn the artisan skills of carpentry and stonework from Joseph. Mary would have benefited from His obedience in performing chores around the house, and running errands to neighbors and the market. He willingly obeyed the laws and traditions of attending to regular studies and worship at synagogue.

The concept of "roots before fruits" applies to this study of Christ's trait of obedience. Yehoshua's mortal character was not whole and complete from birth. His development was molded by perfect submission to the Father. He received grace from the Father as He "learned obedience" from suffering, sacrifice, and the day-to-day choices needed to submit to the will of the Father. He grew in wisdom, stature, and favor with both God and man.

He learned mortal obedience the same way God teaches from heaven: "line upon line, precept upon precept". His obedience was not automatic; it was chosen, costly, and deepened through mortal experience. His natural character was developed further by His mortal experience. This informs us about our own capacity to progress.

After the miracle of feeding the five thousand from a single boy's lunch, the crowd was astonished to the point that they were ready to make Him ruler of Israel immediately. "When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone". He walked away from the easy path to kingship—offered freely. The people wanted Him for their earthly king. But the Father's plan was not a political throne in Galilee. The Son knew the path and obeyed. He traded the "easy crown" for Gethsemane, a betrayal, a trial, a cross, and a borrowed tomb in Jerusalem. He did not turn from the path. This is what obedience looks like in its highest form—not only the refusal of evil, but the refusal of good that is not God's will.

I remember sitting with paychecks in hand while watching my young children play around me. For years as a young father, I worried about how it would affect them each time I chose to pay tithes and make charitable offerings. The widow's mite reminded me that God sees the cost of small obedience. And the Lord's challenge in Malachi 3:10 sustained my resolve: "Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." I was not perfect in this, but each time I chose obedience He kept His promise.

There are some who stand at the edge of this story and feel something other than inspiration. They hear of obedience and they hear constraint. They think of the covenant life of discipleship and they see doors closing—freedoms surrendered, individuality submerged, the self handed over to an institution or a set of rules that will define and diminish them. Rebellion is marketed as courage. Submission is marketed as weakness. And somewhere in the noise, the actual invitation of Yehoshua gets buried under the fears about whether it is safe to accept it.

It is worth pausing here and saying plainly: that is not what obedience to the Lord is. It is not the surrender of the true self—it is the rescue of the self from everything that was diminishing it. The disciples who followed Him did not become less; they became more than they had imagined they could be. The fishermen became apostles. The tax collector became an evangelist. The greatest persecutor of disciples became the greatest missionary the early Church produced. Obedience to the invitation of Yehoshua does not erase the person. It reveals the person—the truest, deepest, most fully realized version of who they were always meant to become.

The Lord does not stand at the gate of discipleship as a foreman with a longer list of tasks. He stands there as the one who has already borne the heaviest load in the history of creation—and who is offering, with open hands, to take yours. He is not asking you to carry what He has not already carried. He is asking you to stop carrying it alone.

There is a freedom on the other side of that surrender that the world cannot manufacture and cannot explain. The freedom the Savior offers is the freedom of the person who knows what they are, and why they are here, and to whom they belong—a knowledge that settles in one's heart like ballast in a storm.

And then God says within your heart, "Let there be light!"

The covenant life is lit from within in a way that the life of self-directed striving simply is not. There is a quality of joy available to the obedient disciple—not the surface happiness of favorable circumstances, but something deeper and steadier, a luminosity that persists even when circumstances are hard.

The yoke of Yehoshua is miraculously light upon the shoulders—fitting far better than any device or philosophy the world can fashion without God.

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light".

Easy. Light. These are not the words of a taskmaster. They are the words of the One who designed the yoke so that it will not chafe, who knows exactly what it was made for, and who has been wearing it since before the world was formed. The burden is light because He is pulling at the same beam, and He does not tire.

You do not lose yourself in Him. You find yourself—lit up, set free, and finally moving in the direction you were built to travel.

Mastery of Compassion: Grace Encountering

In Mark 1:40–42, Yehoshua's grace encountered a broken man. A leper—a man whose skin was rotting from a disfiguring disease—a man who searched for the Rabbi who could perform miracles. When he found the Master, he fell to his knees to confess, "If you are willing, you can make me clean". Yehoshua didn't hesitate in disgust. Instead, He was so moved with compassion for the man that He reached out His hand to touch him. The contact made Yehoshua ritually unclean under the Law. And then, He healed him.

This is what grace looks like when it encounters the broken—not pity from a safe distance, but a compassionate Savior choosing contact.

In the eleventh chapter of John, Yehoshua learned of the dire illness of His close personal friend, Lazarus. He didn't depart immediately to heal the friend, though He could have. He waited on purpose until after Lazarus had died.

Learning that the Master approached their home in Bethany, Martha and Mary both ran to Him, in turns, to fall down at His feet to sob, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." Surrounded by the mourning sisters and a crowd of grieving Jews, He "groaned in the spirit and was troubled". This is not the reaction of a distant and unrelatable deity.

He then asked, "Where have you laid him?"—and that question is extraordinary, because He already knew what He was about to do. He was about to raise Lazarus.

What happened next may be the most revealing moment in all of scripture.

*Jesus wept.*

This tender moment of compassion wasn't because Yehoshua felt sad about the death of His friend. Rather, it demonstrates His fully-developed compassion in the moment He chose to walk the full distance of human grief with a family in mourning, sharing in their pain. He didn't have to. He could have spoken the command at a distance as with the Roman centurion's dying servant. But He knew the value of entering the grief of the grieving—touch and presence—rather than healing from a distance.

Throughout His mortal ministry, the Lord was filled with compassion for souls who "fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd".

This trait did not lessen or end with His death. In the Eastern Hemisphere, the resurrected Master comforted the weeping Mary at His empty tomb. He reassured the fearful disciples. He removed Peter's shame by allowing him to declare his love three times, once for each time he had previously denied Him. He walked with the grieving disciples on the road to Emmaus. He personally made a warm fire at a campsite and hand cooked a meal for His disciples who were returning from a frustrating day of fishing.

The resurrected Yehoshua also gloriously appeared to a multitude of disciples in the Western Hemisphere who had been waiting for Him. After delivering His gospel message, He cast His eyes round about again on the multitude, and beheld they were in tears, and did look steadfastly upon Him as if they would ask Him to tarry a little longer with them. "Behold, my bowels are filled with compassion towards you". He chose out of grace to stay for a while longer to visit and to heal the sick and afflicted. He blessed their children and prayed for them.

The word "compassion" in the Bible is translated from the Greek *splagchnizomai* (σπλαγχνίζομαι). It signifies a profound "gut-feeling" of love and mercy that motivates actions to save and atone. It describes the visceral upheaval of seeing suffering—being shaken to the core by it, and then moving to act.

I have known what it is to be broken and in need of compassion—the instability and isolation of homelessness, the devastation of a broken marriage and being a single parent to three teenage daughters, the helpless feeling of being on the verge of losing everything, and the dark night of the soul when God seemed distant. But I have also known the healing relief of Christlike compassion of others who reached out to me in those dark days. I can name one pair of hands that reached for me. They belong to my dear wife, Michelle, who was brave enough to love me, generous enough to be a mother to my three daughters. I also gained a precious new daughter in the blending, and I was healed in the process.

When someone is in crisis beyond their own capacity to survive, sympathy is insufficient. The leper didn't need someone to quote Levitical laws. He needed someone to touch him with grace. There is a wide difference between knowing about the suffering of others and entering into it to support them. Grace at its most Christlike is compassion combined with the wisdom to know when and how to get involved.

Mastery of Teaching: Grace Communicated

A solitary Samaritan woman came to draw water at midday—an hour when no one else would be at the well—perhaps avoiding her peers. Yehoshua saw her and waited there. He greeted her with neither doctrine nor authority. He asked her for a drink, which would have seemed inappropriate within that cultural setting. Beginning with that simple request, He led her step by step, at exactly the pace she could follow. Water turned to worship. He resolved her past and shaped her future. He led her from natural curiosity to a confession of faith. She recognized the promised Messiah. And what did she do? She left her water pot and ran to tell her village, "Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?". Grace received became grace shared in a matter of minutes. And it transformed her, from an isolated soul to student, and then from student to teacher.

This is His pattern. How Yehoshua taught reveals who He was. He didn't simply pour out truth—He calibrated it to the hearer. Parables for crowds who needed to discover truth at their own pace. Direct doctrine for disciples ready to receive it. Piercing questions for Pharisees hiding behind their authority. Silence as a teaching tool to instruct a Roman governor who had no interest in the answer. Every choice of method was an act of respectful grace for the person standing before Him.

Why did He teach at all? Because "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh". A heart full of grace overflows. Restoration scripture confirms this in an account of Lehi, an elderly prophet. In a vision, he tasted the fruit of the tree of life and his first impulse was not to analyze it but to turn to his family. "I began to be desirous that my household should partake of it also". The desire to share what is precious is the natural fruit of having received it. This is grace communicated.

I remember a moment when a teenage special education student said something so disrespectful in my science laboratory that every instinct told me to respond by "matching his energy." Instead I bit my tongue, threw a desperate prayer heavenward, and waited. The Spirit softened my heart and opened my eyes—not just to find compassion for the student, but to see how to reach him. The unmet need motivating his behavior became the focus for the teaching moment. I learned that day what the Master practiced perfectly: truth that reaches a soul must first be calibrated to the soul it is reaching. This is not just a teaching technique; it flows from habits of grace that we learn from Yehoshua the man.

Mastery of Meekness and Courage: Grace and Truth in Tension

The same hands that overturned tables in the temple at Jerusalem also washed feet in the prepared upper room. Why? It bears repeating: Yehoshua was "full of grace and truth".

On the evening before His crucifixion, Yehoshua rose from His place at the last supper table to perform a task that had been neglected by others. He laid aside His outer garment, wrapped a towel around His waist, and poured water into a basin. The Master then knelt before His servants.

Washing of guests' feet was a degrading task assigned to the lowest household slave—work that Jewish law forbade compelling of a Hebrew servant. It was also an act of affectionate personal service that a wife would perform for her husband. The paradox is not that degradation equals affection, but that love can stoop to perform what status would despise.

Peter's horrified reaction reveals the depth of meaning in watching his Master do this task.

Yehoshua washed Peter's feet—who would deny Him. He washed the feet of Judas, who already had made plans to betray Him. The Master was not ignorant of these things, yet He knelt to serve, taking the posture and position of one that no one notices.

Earlier that same Passover week, Yehoshua entered the temple and saw that the Court of the Gentiles—the only part of the temple where people of all faiths and nationalities could worship the God of Israel—had been converted into a bustling marketplace filled with vendors, moneychangers, animals and the chaos, filth, and greed that go with these things. He found a place where He could sit down and make a whip of cords. His reaction was not sudden. It was measured and premeditated.

Those gentle hands—those that washed feet, broke bread with the hungry, healed lepers, shaped the world, and gestured to all to "come and see"—overturned the vendor tables, scattered their wares, cracked His whip in deliberate fury and His voice thundered quoted scriptures.

His anger was not aimed solely at the merchants, but its scope included the corrupt priests that profited from the corruption of the "house of prayer." He courageously took a stand to confront an abusive system, not just functionaries. His anger focused on anything that came between souls and the Kingdom of Heaven. And no one could stop Him. The chief priests feared Him and could not act.

Meekness is not weakness, and courage is not rage. Both are manifestations of the same character trait, one that flows in different directions from the same source—the grace and truth at the core of His personality. The meek serve when dignity says "don't bother." The courageous serve when safety says "don't dare." Both require the same inner conquest—the surrender of ego before the work of love begins.

Yehoshua did not kneel because He was timid. He did not overturn tables because He lost control. He mastered His natural impulses and then acted from what remained: grace directed by truth. When truth called for gentleness, He was gentle without being weak. When truth called for confrontation, He confronted without being cruel. This is what mastery looks like—not the absence of strong emotion, but the governance of it by wisdom and love.

I recall several moments of conflict in which I said something I thought sounded righteous but wound up being self-righteous and hurtful. I repent humbly before God. I ask those I harmed for forgiveness.

I pray that I am developing a measure of Christlike character as His grace and truth work upon my spirit. I imitate Him imperfectly, but it is my covenant duty to try. There is comfort for me in holding up the character of Christ as a mirror to examine my soul. I remind myself often not to focus on how far I fall short of Him, but to hold to my faith that His grace sees me as I hope to be, and that His spirit works tirelessly upon me daily to close the gap.

Mastery of Justice and Mercy: Grace and Truth Adjudicating

The Pharisees and their entourage of Scribes dragged her into the temple courts on a morning when Yehoshua sat teaching a gathering of the people. They interrupted His teaching and thrust her in the middle of His gathering.

They weren't interested in redeeming her soul at all. They were trying to build a case against Yehoshua. Their challenge: "Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?". She must have been shaking with fear and shame before the crowd.

The Master stooped to write on the ground with a finger. We don't know what He wrote. We do know that Yehoshua refused to answer on their terms.

When they pressed the Master, He rose and delivered one sentence that shattered their trap without breaking the law: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her". They departed one by one, eldest first—stung by their own conscience. When only the woman remained, He delivered a powerful sermon in divine brevity: "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more".

Mercy without justice is indulgence that leaves a sinner unchanged. Justice without mercy is cruelty that crushes the soul of the sinner. In Yehoshua, we find that the grace and truth in Him courageously names what must change while meekly protecting the soul that must make the change.

"I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life". The context for this verse is Yehoshua's demonstration of the dynamic between justice and mercy—and more importantly, how this affected the life of the woman whom He did not condemn.

Again I hear the voice of my saintly mother: "Aaron, you never know what sorrow lies behind a smile; you never know how someone who has mistreated you was personally greeted and then treated in this life. Be like Jesus." Her voice echoes in my heart like that of Yehoshua, teaching me to neither announce my own virtues nor to assume another's vices.

In all our spiritual journeys, when faced with the opportunities to judge one another, let us walk in the grace of His light. Anything else is walking in the dark.

Mastery of Joy: Grace Rejoicing

Contrasting His own lifestyle to that of His cousin who taught in the wilderness "neither eating nor drinking," Yehoshua described Himself as "eating and drinking" with His followers.

His enemies claimed He took this to excess as "a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners". They meant this as an insult. Read it again. Think: what kind of person draws that accusation? Not a broody stoic. Not the pale, sorrowful figure captured in medieval stained glass. His enemies saw a man who showed up at feasts, who turned water into wine at a wedding—His first recorded miracle was performed to keep a celebration going at the request of His own mother. Yehoshua was the kind of man that people wanted as a friend and companion. His presence made rooms feel different, better.

The man Yehoshua had joy.

This wasn't a shallow happiness—it was the deep kind of gladness that survives grief and sustains inner purpose. Luke named His emotion: "In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit". The occasion of such joy had nothing to do with miracles or outsmarting enemies. The seventy had just returned from their missions, and the Father had revealed truth to the hearts of the faithful. Yehoshua's joy was in the Father's work; in the lost sheep's safety; in the return of the prodigal. In one tender account, the resurrected Lord knelt among the children, blessed them one by one, and wept—not from sorrow but from joy so full it overflowed.

This is the nature of grace rejoicing. It is not the absence of sorrow nor a paradise of pleasure. Joy that comes from Christlike grace cannot be extinguished by opposition. Joy and sorrow live side by side in every honest life. The writer of Hebrews understood: Jesus, "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross". Joy was His motive, not the reward.

"These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full". This is His invitation for you to receive the same grace that fueled His own gladness—and to let it overflow into the lives of others.

I remember a full day of shoveling manure with fellow saints for neighborhood gardens. We didn't dare hug or even shake hands, smiling brightly despite being thoroughly covered in muck. How odd it is that we can be covered in filth while filled with joy in the service of the Master and while caring for one another. This truly is the abundant life He promised.

Beatitudes as His Own Self-Portrait: Grace and Truth Revealed

This chapter could not possibly detail all the marvelous personality traits that flow from Yehoshua's core of grace and truth. The Apostle John also felt the need to explain: "There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written".

My purpose here is to introduce Yehoshua—the man behind the ministry—as a relatable person that we would be delighted to have as a friend. Better than being introduced by servants, the Master of grace and truth shared His own character portrait in the form of the Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes are instructions—and they are also something more. The first words of His first recorded sermon were a character sketch of Himself.

We gain marvelous confirmation of the nature of His own character by assuming that the Teacher practiced what He taught. He not only described what His disciples should become, He described what He already was—and what His grace makes possible in every willing heart.

That same grace that is the living core of His character is a power at work in every willing disciple. Studying His character is not meant to measure the distance between Him and us—it is meant to show us what we can become as His grace works its refining purpose in our mortal lives. Beholding the truth of His grace as the mechanism of our own transformation is the whole point of this chapter.

Benediction

You've sat with Yehoshua. You have studied the Man who is God. You've observed that His great heart—full of grace—beats with His life-giving truth throughout all parts of His character. We hear the phrase "He died for us" often, but let us not forget that He also lives for us. "He is the Lord of both the dead and the living". His heart still beats for you.

Now is an important moment for your own heart. Will it begin to beat for Him as well?

John recorded a profound prayer of Jesus—a prayer that is called The Great Intercessor's Prayer.

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message".

You are inside His prayer. Jesus prayed for the person reading this chapter, by name in the eternal sense. This is not a simple metaphor. He saw you.

His heart still beats for you.

"I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one…that they may be brought to complete unity". That same graceful character you just studied—the humility, the compassion, the mastery of every human impulse—is not to be held at a distance for admiration. It is a gift that has been freely given. Will it be received? The glory of Christ's character is the gift of grace to the willing disciple. But it must be received through the beholding.

His arms are open wide.

Christ prayed that we would behold His glory. And we are taught that beholding transforms the beholder into the same image, "from glory to glory". It has already begun in you.

His hands will bless you.

Christ prayed that His disciples may become "one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us…that they may be made perfect in one". The heart of Christ is not just for the individual—it is the bonding agent that makes us one with Him, one with the Father, and one with the heart of every other disciple.

His voice calls you home.

Christ closed His prayer with His most sincere longing for us: "that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them". The Great Intercessor's Prayer doesn't end with a desire for nearness—His great heart desires a true "oneness" with you in spirit and in truth.

This "oneness" does not just happen. It is a journey—an epic story arc. As we learn of Him and follow, His grace transforms us, refines our own character over time.

God is calling: "Come to Zion."

His grace is sufficient for you.

The next chapter will show you what it cost Him. We will behold His mastery tested to its absolute limit as we follow Him to Gethsemane and to Golgotha.

We testify that the character of the person we have studied here is the Son of God in the Highest. "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved".

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

For the Joy Set Before Him

His prayer was still in the air when Jesus rose from the table and led His disciples out into the night.

He had just given them everything He had to give in words---the gift of His glory, the promise of oneness with the Father, the intercession on behalf of every soul who would ever come to believe. He had prayed over them with a tenderness the disciples would spend the rest of their lives trying to describe. And then He stood, and He led them through the eastern gate, down into the Kidron Valley, and toward an olive grove where He had often gone to pray.

He knew exactly what waited there for Him.

The letter to the Hebrews offers a single line that unlocks the entire night: "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross." () Joy was not the reward for what He was about to do. Joy was the reason He did it.

The prophet Isaiah glimpsed the full weight of this moment centuries before it arrived. In vision, he saw Jehovah searching the whole sweep of creation---the divine council of heaven, the covenant community on earth---and finding no one capable of stepping into the gap between a broken humanity and the demands of eternal justice. His mighty spirit was appalled by the emptiness. Not one soul among all the heavenly host, not one person in all the generations of Israel, could accomplish what was needed. So the Lord's own arm brought salvation. () He rejoiced in knowing that He would be able to do this thing for us.

What It Cost Him to Know Us

The Aramaic word Gethsemane means "oil press." As the olives from a vineyard must be crushed to produce the same precious oil used to anoint kings, the Anointed Son of God was crushed to produce something infinitely more precious.

Gethsemane was not where He accepted the task of saving us. The garden was where He honored His commitment and fulfilled His anointing. But honoring a decision made in eternity does not make the heavy cost less real in mortality.

In Gethsemane, He asked three disciples to stay near Him---"Watch with me." () This request is extraordinary. He who had created the worlds, who needed nothing from any creature, asked three tired fishermen to simply be nearby. He wanted human company in the hardest moment of His mortal life. They fell asleep.

Three times He went to pray. Three times He returned to find them sleeping. And three times He prayed the same essential prayer to God the Father, refining it from "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me" () to "if this cup may not pass away from me except I drink it, thy will be done." () This progression is not weakness. It is the most honest prayer ever prayed. It began with the natural human plea for relief. And it arrived---through the actual cost of suffering---at full surrender. He did not begin with perfect resignation. He arrived there, after His knees settled into the dirt in a grove, surrounded by an orchard of olive trees. It is the same way every disciple learns surrender to wisdom and righteousness: by choosing it in the dark when the cost is real.

There, on His knees, His pure mind and tender heart began to span all of time and space to perceive each of God's children with miraculous spiritual intimacy. (; ; ; )

Christ's spirit has been present for every moment of the human experience for every human who has ever lived or will ever live upon all of His creations. In the short span of time He spent in Gethsemane, He completed an act of divine empathy, feeling everything we feel, knowing our hearts, feeling our joys and fears, our guilt and pains. Mark used a Greek word to describe the Lord's experience in the garden---ekthambeō. This word is typically translated as "sore amazed" or "greatly distressed." () It is a word used for profound shock, horror, or being frightened---the kind that stops a person in their tracks.

Wait. God was amazed and distressed while on His knees in Gethsemane?

He who had existed before time, who had organized this world and spoken it into order, who walked the streets of Israel healing the sick and raising the dead---this Divine Person was staggered. Not by the simple fear of physical suffering and death yet to come, though that was surely real.

What staggered the Son of God was the recognition of the weight of what sin actually is from the inside of sinners---the guilt, the anguish, the torment that had been utterly foreign to His sinless soul. He had known about human darkness the way a surgeon knows about pain---with precision, from outside the wound. In Gethsemane, He took our wounds within His own spirit.

He was not performing a script. He was encountering something that exceeded even His premortal comprehension. And He endured it anyway, for the joy of saving us all.

An angel appeared to strengthen Him. () Even this is striking---that the Son of God, in the moment of maximum cost, was ministered to rather than simply sustained by divine power alone. The Father sent help. Still, the physical stress of such immortal actions within His mortal flesh was real. Jesus sweat great drops of blood from the pores of His skin, (; ) suffering the full measure of justice for every transgression of every soul from every world He had created as the premortal Jehovah. () His mortal body should have died from the strain, but He chose to live through it. He paid the price for you, specifically, in that garden---your sorrows, your guilt, your accumulated weight---while three disciples slept thirty feet away and had no idea what was happening.

With the Gethsemane portion of the atonement complete, the Lord staggered back to look upon His sleeping disciples with new understanding. Jesus said "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." () He woke them gently. "Rise up," He said, "let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand." ()

In Gethsemane He paid the first and most precious part of the atoning sacrifice---the cost of knowing us---and then He walked toward enemy torchlight coming through the trees.

It was Judas who led them. A kiss to identify Him. Betrayal by affection---a bitter irony.

Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of one of the arresting party. And here, in the instant of His own arrest, the man Yehoshua performed His last miracle before the Resurrection: He healed the ear of the man who had come to take Him captive. () This is not a footnote. This is the clearest single demonstration of His character in the entire Passion narrative. Arrested, betrayed, facing death---and His first instinct was to heal suffering. The disciples fled, and He did not ask them to stay.

What followed was, in legal terms, an abomination. The Sanhedrin trial was conducted in secret at night, both violations of Jewish law. Witnesses were called whose stories contradicted one another. He was struck in the face while standing before the high priest. He was mocked. He was spat upon. Through it all He answered when the truth required it and went silent when His words would only be weaponized.

The Roman governor over Judea, Pontius Pilate then examined Him privately and came away convinced of His innocence---and said so officially and publicly three times. (; ; ) He offered the crowd the choice to release Him. They asked for Barabbas instead. A murderer went free. The innocent one was scourged.

The soldiers dressed Him in a purple robe and pressed a crown of thorns onto His head and mocked Him as a king. What they meant as degradation was, without their knowing it, the truth. They were dressing the actual King of the universe in the symbols of His own office, offering their contempt as an accidental coronation.

He bore it all. He could have called legions of destroying angels to pour righteous anger upon His enemies in a display of justice that would have been a stark reminder of the plagues of Egypt and the total destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. He chose a different path.

He Paid the Rest of the Price Alone

They led Him through the streets of Jerusalem carrying the crossbeam, so physically exhausted from the night's ordeal that He could not sustain the weight. Simon of Cyrene was pulled from the crowd to carry it for Him---the only moment in the entire Passion of Christ where a mere mortal bore any portion of His divine burden. The Savior understands what it is to lack strength to bear His cross alone.

Positioned by rough hand upon the timbers of the cross at Golgotha, He refused the wine mixed with gall that the soldiers offered as a painkiller. He needed to face what was coming with full awareness. He let them open His hands---the hands that had touched lepers, broken bread, blessed children, washed feet---and drive the nails.

Pilate ordered an inscription above His head: "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Pilate had found no fault in Him. Romans gave Him back His kingly title when His own people would not. It was the only act of justice the Romans offered, and they placed it in wood above His crucified body. In contrast, the chief priests, scribes, and elders of Israel came personally to the foot of the cross to mock Him. He experienced the sting of betrayal, the hurt of false judgment, and rejection by those who should have known better.

From the cross He spoke seven times.

"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." () He was already in the act of being killed when He prayed this---not later, not after the worst was past, but from within it. He had, in Gethsemane, already spanned all of human history and borne what He bore. Now, dying, He interceded for the people killing Him. This is not heroic stoicism. This is the natural speech of someone whose character does not change under pressure---because the pressure of Gethsemane had already confirmed what He was made of.

Upon three crosses that day were hanging three men: one a repentant thief, one the Lamb of God, and one an unrepentant sinner who mocked God. To the repentant thief He said, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." ()

To His mother, He looked down upon her and made practical arrangements. "Woman, behold thy son" and to John "behold your mother"---entrusting her to the beloved Apostle's care. () Even in dying, He noticed the specific human need of one person standing at His feet and acted to meet it.

Then darkness. Near the end, thick darkness gathered---not the darkness of an eclipse, but something felt by the creation itself, lasting for hours. Enoch prophesied that at the very moment of Christ's suffering, the heavens were veiled and all creation mourned. ()

Within the terrifying darkness and silence, Jesus suddenly cried with a loud voice: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" () Do not explain this away. Sit in it for a moment before moving on. This is the being who, from before the foundations of the world, had never been separated from His Father. Who had said "I and my Father are one." () Who had prayed, only hours before, "that they also may be one in us"---a unity He knew from the inside, the most fundamental reality of His existence. And now, at the moment of maximum need, in the depths of bearing the full accumulated cost of every human soul's darkness---He heard nothing. He experienced what abandonment feels like. Not as an observer. Not as a comforter from a distance. From inside it. He went to the place of desolation so that no soul who ever cries out in the dark needs to cry out alone. Someone has already been there. Someone knows exactly how loud silence can be---and chose to remain in it until the work was finished.

When it was finished, He did not simply drift into death. He acknowledged His physical suffering: "I thirst." () He recognized that the full price of the atonement had been paid: "It is finished." () The Greek word is tetelestai---a single word that means accomplished, fulfilled, completed. It is the word a craftsman uses when the work is done. Not defeat. Not relief. Completion. Then He turned His voice again to His Father, who only moments before had left Him utterly alone to finish the work: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." () His last words before death invoke the Father by name.

The veil of the temple tore from top to bottom---not from the bottom, as human hands would have torn it, but from the top, as if the hand of God reached down and opened what had been closed since Sinai. The way into the presence of the Father had been opened.

Then the ground shook powerfully, rocks were split into pieces, the Earth changed. In the Western Hemisphere, a continent convulsed: earthquakes, fires, storms, darkness so complete it could be felt. () The creation responded to what was happening on a hill in Jerusalem in ways that cowering humans crowded around the cross could not fully understand. But when a Roman soldier at the feet of the crucified Jesus saw these things, he said, "Surely this man was the Son of God!" ()

The Seal That Cannot Be Broken

Matthew 27:66 records that Pilate's soldiers sealed the tomb with a Roman seal---the official mark of imperial authority---and set a guard. By Sunday morning, the seal was broken, the guard had fled, and the stone was rolled away. The most powerful empire in the world had pressed its mark upon His death and declared it final. He walked out anyway.

The irony is exact and beautiful: the seal of Rome could not hold Him. But the seal of divinity He pressed upon the work of salvation cannot be broken by any power in heaven or earth.

Another breathtaking turn is to realize that the stone was not rolled away from the tomb to let Him out. It was rolled away to let witnesses in. He was already gone.

The first person the resurrected Lord appeared to was Mary Magdalene---alone, weeping outside the tomb in the dark. () The disciples had come and gone. The angels had spoken to her, trying to reassure her broken heart. And still she wept, because explanation was not what she needed. He appeared to her as a gardener---unrecognized, unhurried, asking her a question rather than making a declaration: "Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?" () And when she turned, still not recognizing Him, He said one word.

"Mary."

She knew His voice. She had always known His voice, not just in her ears but in her heart. And in that single word---her own name, spoken in that voice, on that morning---every promise He had ever made collapsed into the present tense. He was alive. He knew her name. He had always known her name. The relationship formed in mortality had not been dissolved by death. The specific, unrepeatable bond between this person and this man had outlasted the tomb.

This is what the Resurrection looks like from the ground: not a theological proposition, but a name spoken by someone you thought you would never hear again.

He came next to travelers on the road to Emmaus---two disciples walking away, in grief and confusion, not knowing what to do with their great hope, now broken and dead. () The Lord joined them without revealing Himself. He asked what they were discussing. He let them tell Him everything---their confusion, their crushed expectation that He had been the one who would redeem Israel. He listened. And then, beginning with Moses and working through all the prophets, He opened the scriptures to them. Their hearts burned while He spoke. They didn't know why until they sat down to eat together and He broke bread---the same gesture, the same hands, the same blessing---and their eyes were opened.

"Did not our heart burn within us?" () They had been with Him for hours on the road, and they had not known it. Grace was present the whole time. They had just not recognized the form it was wearing.

To Thomas, who had missed the first appearance and refused to believe without direct evidence, He came again specifically. () He did not rebuke Thomas for his honest doubt. He offered exactly what Thomas had asked for---the wounds in His hands and side. He invited Thomas to touch them. Thomas, the doubter, the one who had demanded proof---collapsed into the most direct declaration of Christ's divinity in all of John's Gospel: "My Lord and my God." The confession that confirmed everything came from the man who had been most honest about his uncertainty.

He restored Peter. Three denials answered by three invitations: "Lovest thou me? Feed my sheep." () He did not allow Peter's shame to be the last word between them. He made Peter say it three times---not to humiliate him, but to displace each denial with a declaration of love. He was thorough in His mercy.

He appeared over forty days. He ate with them. He walked with them. He was not a ghostly vision or a memory. He had a body that could be touched and a voice that could be heard. He must have smiled as He reassured them of this reality.

"Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them." ()

The last miracle of the Atonement was not the empty tomb. It was that He came back to the people who had abandoned Him, denied Him, doubted Him, and wept over Him---and He made a fire on the beach and cooked them breakfast. () He fed His own sheep.

He did not simply survive death. As the God of both the dead and the living, He personally broke the bands of death and miraculously rejoined His flesh to His spirit as an immortal being of power and glory. There is a vast difference between these two things. He was, as He had declared, "the resurrection and the life." () He proved it by exercising that power Himself.

He is the God of Salvation. Not because He survived what no one else could survive---though He did. Because having survived it, He came looking for His disciples. He still comes looking for you.

Saved, and Then What?

Among Christians, a common question asks whether you have been saved. It is a good question---but only the beginning of spiritual life.

The second big question is, "Have you been changed by being saved?"

Grace that is truly received does not leave a person where it found them. It cannot. When the love of God enters a wounded heart, that heart beats differently. Hands that were closed begin to open. Feet that were still begin to move. Paul understood this so well that he answered the question before anyone thought to ask it. In the same passage where he declared that salvation is the gift of God---not of works, lest any man should boast---he continued without pause: "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." () The gift of verse eight carries the purpose of verse ten inside it.

The third big question is, "What have you been saved for?" Not heaven as a destination, but as a direction and an enduring lifestyle. Not relief from the burden of sin alone, but transformation into the kind of person who bears the burdens of others. He did not say, "If you love me, hold correct opinions about me." He said, "If you love me, keep my commandments." () And then He named the commandments He cared most about: feed my sheep, love one another, serve the least of these, go and make disciples. (; ; ; ) These are not the conditions of salvation. They are the shape of a saved life.

Think of it this way. A tree does not bear fruit to prove it deserves sunlight. It bears fruit because that is what living things do with light. The chapters that follow will ask you to consider what fruit you wish to bear---not to earn what He gave you in that garden, at that cross, on that resurrection morning---but because you have received salvation and His grace is working in you. He did not accomplish all of this so that you would simply believe it. He accomplished it so that you could fulfill the purpose of your creation as a child of God.

These questions are not rhetorical. They are a bridge between everything this chapter has shown and everything the chapters ahead will ask of you.

You have now followed Jesus Christ from the prayer He prayed for you in an upper room in Jerusalem, through the garden where the cost of that prayer became real, through the silence of a cross where He finished paying the price alone, to the morning when He sealed the legitimacy of it all by rising from death and appearing to his followers to comfort and teach them of the promise of resurrection for God's children. Every step was chosen. Every step He took was for the joy of what it would accomplish in you.

The disciples who were changed most completely by what they had witnessed were not the ones who understood it the fastest. They were the ones who let it change the way they lived. Mary went and told what she had seen. The Emmaus disciples went back to Jerusalem immediately and found the others. Peter fed the sheep. Thomas bore witness for the rest of his life to the one declaration that traded his doubts for hope eternal.

The chapters ahead will ask what it looks like to live as someone for whom He did this. Not as a performance or act to put on for show. Not as debt-payment. But as an irrepressible response---the natural fruit of a heart that has actually sat with these events and let them mean something.

He prayed for this moment with you. He still prays for you. He is waiting to see what you will do with it all. More firmly than any disciple can believe in Him, He finished His atoning work to express His eternal belief in you.

In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

He Is Not Gone

They stood on a hillside in Galilee and watched Him go.

He was gone from their sight. And they stood there, necks craned, staring at the place in the sky where He had been — until two men dressed in white appeared next to them and asked them why they were still looking up. "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven".

Theirs was the most human response imaginable. You would have done the same. So would I. When someone you love disappears from sight, you stand in the last place you saw them and you hold tight, you hardly breathe, because moving on feels like admitting they are gone — and then the grief begins.

But the angels were not being unkind. They were redirecting sorrow that had no place in their hearts. Because what had just happened was not loss. It was part of something larger than any of them understood yet.

When He ascended — when the cloud received Him — something changed. The promise He had made in that upper room could now be kept: "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever".

The Ascension was not departure. It was the fulfillment of His promise that they would not be left as orphans.

He lives. That is not a theological proposition — it is a present-tense fact. "He ever liveth to make intercession". Right now, in whatever moment you are reading this, He is not resting from the work He finished at Calvary. He is actively interceding for you. The writer of Hebrews uses a single Greek word that has no satisfying English equivalent: panteles — to the uttermost, completely, for all time, for anyone. No exceptions written into the text. No institutional gatekeepers implied. He receives ANYONE who comes to God through Him.

The disciples on that road to Emmaus had been walking with Him for miles — hearts heavy, hope extinguished. They did not recognize Him; not until He broke the bread. And when He vanished from their sight they turned to one another and said: "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way?" They had been in His presence and not known it. The burning was real before the recognition came.

That burning is not a historical artifact. It is available today, in whatever road you are walking, in whatever conversation you did not expect to find Him in. He is not gone. He is present always, everywhere, for everyone.

The chapters ahead of us are designed to develop the capacity to recognize and follow Him.

Clear Warning to the Self-Righteous

One thing must be stated in words of plainness before we move on to the study of discipleship.

There are too many Christians and theologians who spend more energy arguing about who has the right access to Christ than actually seeking Him. Disputes over baptism, membership, creeds, Christology, theology, bibliolatry, traditions, and denominations consume energy that belongs to the things that actually matter. This ministry is not in the business of adjudicating those arguments. We refuse to participate in them. And we will tell you plainly why.

Remember the Lord's condemnation of Scribes — the experts in scriptures — and Pharisees — the religious leaders — who strained at doctrines and debated the fine details of God's law yet ignored the weightier spiritual things that matter most to the Lord: justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

They were meticulous about being right, but they were catastrophically wrong about what mattered. What is the point of this topic?

God's fury was and still is multiplied toward those who attempt to stand between Him and the people who seek Him — the same fury that burned against the Pharisees who stood as gatekeepers of heaven, shutting up the kingdom against others. Christ said of them: "For ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in". Read that again. They were not merely failing to see the kingdom of God for what it is, they were blocking the entrance for people who were trying to get in. And Christ named them for what they were: blind guides, pretenders, fools, full of extortion and excess and iniquity, righteous in appearance but inwardly unclean, children of hell, vipers, persecutors of the faithful, spiritually desolate. These are not our words or doctrines. They are His. We would quake at the thought of earning a single one of those judgements of God.

But this was not only the Scribes and Pharisees. Christ corrected this same impulse in His own disciples — in the men who loved Him most.

When the Apostles encountered a man casting out devils in the name of Jesus, they tried to stop him — because he was not one of them. He was outside their circle. He was not credentialed. He did not follow with them. Christ rebuked them: "Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is on our part". The man was doing the work of God, and the disciples wanted to shut him down because he did not carry their same membership. Christ would not allow it.

On another occasion, when a Samaritan village refused to receive Him, the Apostles James and John wanted to call fire down from heaven to consume them. The Lord turned and rebuked His own beloved disciples fiercely: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them". Think carefully about what He said. He did not rebuke the Samaritans for their rejection. He rebuked His disciples for their response to it. The impulse to exclude, to punish, to destroy those who do not receive Christ the way we think they should — that impulse is not from Him. He named it. He rejected it powerfully. And He told them they did not even understand the evil spirit they were operating under.

The Restoration confirms this in language so sharp it cannot be misunderstood: "He that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention". Not merely unwise. Not merely unkind. The spirit of contention is identified by its source. It comes from the adversary of God. Any minister, teacher, theologian, or believer who carries that spirit into the work of Christ is carrying the wrong fire into the temple.

Paul commanded Timothy in the plainest terms: "The servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient". And to the saints in Rome, who were fracturing over matters of practice and conscience, he asked the question that should silence every self-appointed gatekeeper in every generation: "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand". That person you are judging does not answer to you. They answer to Christ. And Christ is able to hold them up without your impotent permission.

Thankfully — mercifully — Christ is able to save to the uttermost anyone who comes to God through Him. That is the doctrine that matters. The Greek word Panteles — completely, for all time, for anyone. No exceptions written into the text. No institutional gatekeepers implied. If He can save to the uttermost, then no human institution and no teacher and no creed and no tradition has the authority to narrow that door. The door is His. The judgment is His. The salvation is His. We must stand aside or face God's wrath.

Stop looking sideways at other Christians. Stop being adversaries to the work of God.

The best example of Christlike humility in these matters was given by the Apostles themselves at the Last Supper. When the Lord told them that one among them would betray Him, they did not narrow their eyes and look suspiciously at one another. They did not point fingers. They did not begin the work of accusation. Instead, each of them — sorrowful, searching, humbled — asked the Lord, "Is it I?"

That is the question. Not "is it him?" Not "is it that denomination?" Not "is it those people whose theology I find deficient?" The righteous example was this: "Lord, is it I?" Their righteous instinct was self-examination rather than accusation. That instinct is the mark of a true disciple. And the absence of that instinct — the readiness to judge others rather than examine yourself — is the mark of the Pharisees whom Christ condemned.

Look to Christ. And look to yourself as His disciple. Do not dare to judge the beliefs or sincerity or quality of faith of others. Let God judge. Leave salvation and condemnation in His righteous hands — hands that still bear the marks of what it cost Him to save you as well as the people you foolishly reject.

Do not dare to interfere with another's spiritual journey. Every soul who seeks Christ is under His protection. Every one of them is precious to Him. Christ expressed His fierce protective nature over all who seek Him, and His warning to those who would harm seekers is the most terrifying sentence He ever spoke: "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea".

If any part of this warning offends you in the least degree, good! It was intended as a call to Christlike love, a call to repentance from contention and judgment that would not offend the pure in heart.

Again, in the name of Jesus Christ, I call to you with an intensity borne of the Spirit of God that causes me to tremble as I write this.

Do not stand between the Shepherd and His lambs. You will not survive the encounter.

How to Know He Is Present

Okay, now breathe. Pray for God's Spirit to be with you.

You have followed Christ this far. That matters. The search itself is evidence of something alive in you — a hunger the world cannot satisfy and that you have not been willing to ignore. That is the beginning of faith, and it is not nothing.

But beginnings are not endings. The scriptures are honest about what a faith that stops at the beginning eventually produces, and to leave that unspoken here would be a kindness that harms.

There are people who carry the name of Christ without carrying His cross. Who profess Him with their mouths and contradict Him with their lives. This is what it means to take His name in vain.

Paul's words for this are not gentle: detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. The Savior's image is equally direct — the hand on the plow, the eyes looking backward. That person, He says, is not fit for the Kingdom of God. Not because He refuses them, but because they have refused the work.

The most sobering verse on this subject does not describe an atheist. It describes a believer. "The devils also believe — and tremble".

Belief alone, without the transformation genuine faith produces, is not a safe place to stand. A mind and conscience shaped over time by unbelief gradually loses its capacity to perceive truth clearly. That mind becomes, in Paul's word, defiled. To profess Christ without the commitment to become Christlike is not a mild shortcoming. It is a trajectory, and trajectories have destinations.

This is where grace enters — not as a way around the warning, but as the answer to it. The grace of Christ is not a legal declaration that leaves a person unchanged. It is a power for transformation, available to anyone who cooperates with it. "If a man therefore purge himself from [sins], he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work". The vessel must be cleansed to be fit for honorable use. That cleansing is not something done to you once. It is something done in you, ongoing, through the daily choices of a soul that is actually trying and repentant whenever falling short of the glory of God.

The practice that makes this possible is not complicated. It is a lamp kept trimmed. Not "has my lamp ever been lit?" but "is my lamp still burning today?"

The question is not whether you had a conversion experience years ago. It is whether the Comforter is present in your living right now. "He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance". "Let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God... The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion". The promise of His constant companionship is real. But it is conditional — not on perfection, but on the direction of a life that is genuinely, daily, turning toward Him.

What does His presence feel like in a life that is attending to it? Warmth of heart. Clarity of conscience. A pull toward goodness and away from darkness. A growing capacity to recognize the true value of others. When those things are absent — that is the signal. Not for despair, but time for a return.

This ministry exists so that no one leaves it trembling. The warning above is not the destination — it is the diagnosis that makes the remedy urgent. He ever lives to make intercession. The door is not closed. The plow is still in the field. Whatever looking-backward has happened, the choice to turn forward is available today. The goal of this ministry is to build momentum in choosing how to walk uprightly before God and all the world — practice, recommitment, renewal each day — enduring in faith.

The card chapters ahead are that momentum, made concrete.

The Record You Are Building

Okay, now just breathe.

Pray for the Spirit of God to comfort and encourage you. Let us turn again to the peaceable things of God's Kingdom.

The disciples kept records. The early church kept records. The scriptures themselves are the accumulated record of souls who entered into covenants with God — their prayers, their witnesses, their failures, their restorations. "Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him". Also, "We talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies".

We invite you to keep the same kind of record. This website was created as a tool for doing so. Not for publication, not to prove anything to anyone — but because a life examined is a life that grows, and because the record you make today will speak to you years from now with a clarity that memory alone cannot provide.

The card chapters ahead are not a curriculum for people who have already arrived at perfection. They are designed to support the daily work of people who have decided to keep moving forward in faith. Each card teaches one practice of discipleship — what it looks like, what it produces, and what it asks of you. Each commitment tab invites you to make a specific declaration: not what you believe in the abstract, but what you will actually do, in the week ahead, with what you have received. Each reflection prompt is a question worth sitting with honestly.

As you work through them, the Words of Plainness app system builds a personal account of where you are in your discipleship — your choices, your goals, your witnesses, your honest questions. You can save it to your free registered account, or download it, share it with your religious leaders or the people who matter most to you, or hold it privately. It is your record, your discipleship tool. What you do with it is between you and God.

When Peter stood on a shoreline after the resurrection and Christ asked him three times whether he loved Him, the answer Christ gave to each declaration was not a blessing — it was an assignment. Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep. A saved life is not a life that has been declared clean and left to sit. It is a life put to work. The card chapters ahead are the natural work that accompanies faith.

You have followed Him this far. It is time to self-assess. What do you feel?

All seekers arrive at this threshold from different places. There are now three doorways before you with one destination. The record you build is yours regardless of which door you enter.

Self-Assessment Before Moving On