tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7470536077683229440.post3447149266527184980..comments2023-11-02T09:09:22.129-04:00Comments on Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord: When Obedience Trumps Revelation: A Controversial Personal Missionary Experience involving Healing the SickDr. Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18061544604584544836noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7470536077683229440.post-43297046537433601992009-12-30T23:12:08.719-05:002009-12-30T23:12:08.719-05:00Two things became apparant to me. The first thing...Two things became apparant to me. The first thing was that relationships need obedience in order for there to be trust. My companion and I could never truly love eachother, despite the success we had, without obedience. I never felt completly comfortable with her, because she felt guilty. Also I couldn't trust her authority on making calls to drop investigators to spend 5 hours with the one because I didn't know if her intentions were self-serving or for the greater good. That's the power of common rules and expectations in relationships, they allow you to have one mind and one heart because you know what to expect from yourself and the other and it gives you proof of one another's intentions of working towards the good of the whole, not just the good of the self. Secondly, in reflecting on this experience and studing the question WHY is obedience important I learned something that changed my life. Obedience is impossible, and unnecessary; yet you only will know this by actually trying to be 100% obedient. The truth is that really nothing we do qualifies us for the spirit, or perfects us. The only thing that has the power for the important blessings that we seek from obedience is the atonement. However, it is impossible to truly understand our reliance and the magnitude of our weakness on the atonement unless we try to be perfect. I had no idea how much I needed a Savior until I tried to obey the commandments with my whole heart and realized with my own power I could never do it. So in this was obedience produces faith. You are only ready to disregard the "letter" and live by the "spirit" when you have sufficiently changed from trying to live the letter, then you really can understand why Nephi could kill Laban. This is very abstract and only useful if the spirit teaches you this lesson, it otherwise is Satan's greatest tool of justification of why the letter doesn't apply to me.Genevievenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7470536077683229440.post-51221299986003216112009-12-30T23:11:49.897-05:002009-12-30T23:11:49.897-05:00For me there were two things on my mission that re...For me there were two things on my mission that really shaped my concept of obedience. The first thing was an experience that I had with a disobedient companion. This companion almost never woke up on time and was always "sick" in the mornings. We spent most days inside except when we went to see this one investigator that she really liked, in which case we would stay at her house for sometimes up to 5 hours then on the way home she would remember something she needed and make sure we stoped by a store and spent another hour there instead of proselyting. This really bugged me. In response, it became easier for me than at anytime in my mission to wake up, to exercise (I would run the stairs of our apartment), and follow the morning schedule. I was fueled by "righteous indignation". When interviews came around I shared with my mission president how I felt about the whole thing. His response was not what I expected (although I don't really know what I expected) He told me that my relationship with my companion was more important than being obedient. I stewed on that for the rest of the transfer. I really started to question why obedience was important. I had always heard that you had to be 100% obedient to feel the spirit and have success as a missionary but something strange happened in that transfer. We had 6 baptisms, people just called us up and said they wanted to be baptized, or their fiancee or sister or wife wanted to be baptized. The investigator that we spent all those hours with got baptized. I was miserable alot, but in being miserable I finally received a confirmation that I was suppose to be on a mission (something I hadn't been sure of) and I also recieved alot of confirmation that my life up until that point had been directed by God and I had had specific experiences for particular reasons that helped me be able to explain the gospel to certain people in a way I wouldn't have been able to, and I could tell my companion was feeling the spirit at times too....so what was the deal with obedience...why could we be blessed when we were the most dis-obedient companionship I had been in?Genevievenoreply@blogger.com