Approve, Approved

A common concept that leads people to have problems with religion is the concept of faithful obedience. The idea that we follow blindly, because to do otherwise would be to show a lack of faith in God and in his appointed leaders, brings many people to be turned off in the belief that their free-will is being taken away. Though we do stress obedience as the way to get to heaven (much like an airplane pilot or a heavy machine operator would stress obedience to do a job safely), we do not believe in blindly following someone without putting any effort into finding out if they are worth following.

This does not mean that if someone isn't perfect or qualified by the world's standards that they are not approved of by the Lord. The qualifications for having a leadership role in God's church in spiritual guidance is described by the following criteria in Romans 14:18:

18 For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men.

In other words, are they doing their best to be in tune with the Holy Ghost and to follow the commandments. However, there is also a stipulation that once we have been given a job to do in God's Kingdom that we don't slack off. In Doctrine and Covenants 107:100 it reads:

100 He that is slothful shall not be counted worthy to stand, and he that learns not his duty and shows himself not approved shall not be counted worthy to stand. Even so. Amen.

I once knew someone who left the church because she got offended by how a church leader treated her sister. I don't know the particulars, but the sister was leaving the church and her bishop had tried to talk to her, and I guess he wasn't blessed with the best social communicative skills and came off harsh. The sister got offended, and then my friend got offended along with her, declaring that the church couldn't be true because it says we have to follow guys that come off as "jerks." I don't know what happened to this friend, but it was really depressing for me to watch this happen. Leaders come and leaders go, and I hold onto the belief that I didn't join this church because my leader at the time happened to be really great people person, so I'm not going to leave it because I happened to have for a couple of years a bishop that was rude.

When someone is called in our church to a leadership position, their names are presented during church to the congregation for a "sustaining vote," and we all raise our hands to accept them and support them in this job. When we raise our hands we aren't saying that they will do a great job exactly to our specifications, like we would in an election, but we are pledging ourselves to help and support them as well as accept their responsibility and authority over us. We are "approving" them, and approving our belief in God's ability to give revelation in our day.

Appoint

There are a lot of things in this life that we have control over and can determine if and when they will happen. We can control when we brush our teeth, what we will eat for breakfast, who we will talk to, and when we think we've done enough work for the day. There will be consequence for these choices, but we do have control over the initial actions.

Things we don't have control over may be how quickly our teeth will decay, if our breakfast will upset our stomach, what the mood of the people we talk to will be, and the amount of work that we should do every day. Some of these things are determined by the choices of others, but some of these may simply be the result of being part of the universe.

These scriptures talk about these two types of events, those we have control over and those we don't. The first one is about us being appointed for specific callings by God to do specific things. God has a plan that involves us (in actuality it really is all about us), but he has also made it very clear that our involvement in that plan is completely up to us. Just like with an appointment at work, we can choose not to show up one day, to do a sloppy job, or even turn down the appointment to begin with.

Something that makes our church different than any other church I've come into contact with is how member driven it is. Every single member of every single congregation has a job to do, and we believe it is a reflection of our faith to accept these appointments when they come. Why it is a reflection on our faith is because of two facts that we as members of our church accept - that these appointments come by revelation just like it was in the New Testament (so it really is God calling you to these jobs), and because we believe in order to become like Christ and truly be his disciples we have to learn how to serve selflessly and constantly where the need is, not just where we would like to.

The other type of appointment these scriptures talk about are things that are like check points in God's plan. Huge ones like The Creation, The Fall, The Atonement, and The Second Coming, are ones that have/will effect everyone on the planet in a very obvious way.

But there are also smaller ones that are more individual. The one that comes to mind is everyone's appointment to death. It says in Doctrine and Covenants 42:48:

48 And again, it shall come to pass that he that hath faith in me to be healed, and is not appointed unto death, shall be healed.

and again in Hebrews 9:27:

27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

These scriptures say to me that people don't just die - that one day they are fine and walking around and the next they are taken from us. These scriptures tell me that it was all part of the plan, that God wanted them home, that they were done here and were then able to move forward. We get angry about it because of the separation, because we don't want to be alone, and I can't even conceive of how hard it would be to even try to have an eternal perspective in these cases - but I know that God has a plan for us, that our lives and the days that we have on this Earth are meticulously counted in Heaven, and that He would not separate us from our loved ones for the short time between their death and ours unless it was absolutely necessary. I believe in a loving God, who really is not in the business of making us hurt unless it was ultimately for our eternal happiness.

Apple

Topics without scriptures: Appetite.

Did you know that the phrase "apple of my eye" comes from the scriptures? I didn't until I read this topic. There are three scriptures that use this phrase. I guess it means what the familiar usage of the phrase means, that to be the apple of someone's eye means that you are looked at with great favor and specific attention. For an example here is Deuteronomy 32:10:

10 He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

God is paying attention to us. He is blessing us even if we can't see it. Sometimes I lay awake at night and think about how blessed I am, to have my husband and I in good health, to have a nice apartment, and the list goes on and on. I don't have to have all these things. They can be taken away so easily, and the vulnerability I then feel leads me to be grateful for another moment and day of peace and happiness in my life. It really is a gift.

Appearing

Today the sun went away. Actually, it went away about three days ago - and I'm having a hard time dealing with it. Fall is upon us, and with it the long, blue-sky days of summer are now beginning to be replaced with gray over cast, earlier sunsets, and cold air seeping through the windows.

I had a bit of hope brought to me in the mail yesterday in the form of a Christmas catalogue for cute little gifts. Normally I would be annoyed that they are starting to sell Christmas stuff in September, but in this case I felt like it was a gift from heaven. Why, would you ask, was I so grateful to look at fiber optic snowflakes and snowman cookie jars? Because it reminded me that when it gets darker outside that means that Christmas is coming!

Today it was dark outside again, and even though I had the catalogue I still felt very blue. Though I'm looking into getting a light box or something to help with my strong emotional reaction to light, I wanted to bring up what came to my mind while I was reading this morning through the scriptures for this topic.

They are all about the second coming of Christ, how he will appear and how glorious that appearance will be. But there were two scripture in particular that stuck out to me. The first was 2 Timothy 1:10 which says:

10 But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel:

With my introduction to this topic I'm sure you can guess why this one stuck out to me. It speaks of light, and how that light will be immortal and everlasting. To never have to wake up and feel your insides come crashing down at how dark it is outside. But it isn't just natural light that this scripture is talking about, it is talking about all light. All knowledge and wisdom and hope and faith, and everything else in the world that is desirable because it is good and uplifting will come with Christ when he appears and we will get to be part of that.

Sometimes people say religion was made up by people to make them feel better with wishful hoping for all their dreams to come true. I say that these people needs to stop and think about when they were last feeling down, and what it was that brought them back up. It usually was a feeling, a loving word from a friend, a song telling them to hang in there, or just the sun coming through the clouds. If they could only realize that all this "wishful hoping" was based on the reality of these small, little up lifts, then maybe they would not be so cynical in our hope that one days we can feel those good, bright feelings all the time.

This is all great to see written down, and looking at my computer screen I feel better already. But then I look away towards the window, and though those feelings of hope are still there, I can feel them rapidly disappearing. This is where 1 Peter 1:7 comes in:

7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:

The glorious appearance of Christ in the second coming is true and wonderful, but it is also only something I can look forward to in my mind. This scripture brings hope into the reality of what I'm feeling right now - a trial of my faith. That when I'm feeling low, I can take a small bit of hope that what I'm going through will bring me closer to Christ, and that even though angels are not singing with the clouds parted, I can know that Christ is making his own personal appearance in my heart.

Appearance

My fashion sense throughout the years has gone through some very interesting phases. When I was little, I was all into leggings with the socks on the outside along with the amazing "I don't brush my hair" hairstyle. In middle school my fashion evolved to baggy cotton pants, white socks, running shoes, and sweaters that were a size or two too big. Could I shout insecure with my body any louder?

High school is when I realized that how you dress could also be an art form. I went to skirts with scarves, experimented with different styles of make-up (including a very goth-like phase), and took much better care of myself with the end goal of expressing myself through my clothes.

College was my final evolution. There were defiantly some days that reverted to the "I just want to survive this day and really don't care how I look, you all see me every day anyways" style, but over all found the happy medium of "All I want you to be able to tell about me from how I look is that I'm a nice, put together young lady that you would like to get to know better."

I didn't want to look like a movie star or a nerd, I instead wanted to express the inner me that doesn't change with whatever phase of life I'm going through. I wanted the real me, the eternal me, to be represented. Oh, I still wear skirts and scarves, but I don't dress in all black in mourning of my "lost soul" (oh high school...).

What I'm now trying to do is to make how I look more like what the Lord commanded everyone to see in 1 Samuel 16:7:

7 But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

According to this scripture, who I am is not surface deep. There is a lot of talk about "it doesn't matter how you look, what matters is what is inside," and while that is true is some situations (like poverty, a stressed/hectic life, or me in middle school), I think that this scripture is also talking about bringing out what God sees inside you onto the surface.

However it is important to remember that all these goals and views for your appearance are just that, YOUR goals and views. There is another scripture in 2 Corinthians 10:7 which reads:

7 Do ye look on things after the outward appearance? If any man trust to himself that he is Christ’s, let him of himself think this again, that, as he is Christ’s, even so are we Christ’s.

This is saying that every person is Christ's, and that as Christ's disciple we are to look at others how he looks at them - bypassing the outward and searching for the real person inside their hearts.

No matter what, we are all going to have opinions that jump into our minds whenever we look in the mirror or see a stranger on the street. What matters isn't so much that we have these thoughts, but what we choose to do with them. Whether we choose to honestly believe that we can gain 20 pounds over night (because it really does look that way in the mirror), or to believe that the best way to make ourselves and others beautiful starts with our own ability to smile.

Appear

Grand and exciting news, the Topical Guide page got fixed! All the topics are the same font size instead of shrinking half way down the page! I think I will allow this to make my day.

The scriptures for this topic tend to have two themes: one of Christ appearing, and the other of us appearing to Christ. Both have to do with a judgement of sorts. In the first case, Christ appeared in his resurrected state to his followers. He had looked into them and judge of them that they had enough faith to see him. They had reached a state where they could behold his glory, and have their faith completed with the knowledge given by a first hand witness.

I've been reading lately about faith and thinking about what it means to have faith. My definition tends to get tweaked every few years as I learn more, but right now my definition of faith is that it is a type of belief. Hope is also a type of belief, but where they differ is in how this belief plays into our lives. Faith is the action of our belief, it is what makes a farmer plant grain and what makes us ask someone out on a date. Some might call it "taking a risk," but it isn't reckless with no grounding, it is the intelligent decision that we believe something that hasn't happened yet is going to happen so we're going to move forward like it did happen. Once the event takes place (like seeing God face to face) we no longer can have faith in it, as that faith has been replaced with concrete knowledge.

Seeing Christ back then, or now, would mean a lot to me in this uncertain world. There is peace and fulfillment we're all trying to achieve, but there is also a need to find truth and what is real. I guess that's what the amazing thing is about faith, that is can give us just as much comfort and assurance as knowledge can give even though all we have to go off of is what we can feel with our hearts. But isn't that what all those books and movies are about? To find something that is true that can only be confirmed within our hearts?