How a belief in God has blessed my life

Every fall when school starts again my life gets crazy. I know I'm not the only one that this applies to...everyone gets busy with school, work, social life, etc. It sometimes seems like life will never slow down and that everything has to be done at about 900 MPH.

With everything happening so fast, I have become more and more grateful for the fact that I believe in a God. I'm grateful to believe in a Supreme Being who, amid all the chaos that life brings, knows who I am and knows how to best help me. Maybe that sounds funny. But I think it would be incredibly difficult to navigate through life if I didn't have this belief.

Being a college student is a really interesting time of life for a lot of reasons. It's a time of lots of uncertainty--where will we end up in a few years? What should we major in? What degrees should we pursue? The list seems like it goes on forever.

While admittedly there are a lot of things that are uncertain right now, there's one thing that we don't have to wonder about: God is real, He loves us, and He knows all of us individually. He knows who He wants us to become, and He knows how we can get there.

I've studied about prayer and how we can communicate with God. It's a pretty incredible concept to me--that we can communicate with an all-knowing Being who knows us perfectly. We can tell Him our feelings, emotions, and aspirations. We can ask for divine help and He'll help us. I appreciate that although I'm pretty limited as far as my ability to fully express my feelings, God knows what I'm talking about and knows how to bless me. 


To pray to God is one thing, to TRUST Him is another. Google says that To TRUST someone means to "believe in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of..." that person. I'm grateful to believe in and trust in a God who knows me and knows what He wants me to become. I'm obviously not a perfect example of any of these things, but I am trying my best to trust in God and His plan for me and my life. For me, it relieves so much anxiety and stress to think that a higher power is in charge of my life. If we just do what's right and try our best to improve every day, God will take care of us. It might not be in the way or timetable we'd expect, but He is looking our for our best interests and will take care of us. 
I know that if we put our trust in God and pray with a real desire to learn and receive guidance, He will bless us beyond our ability to comprehend. I've seen it happen in my life. I've received comfort, peace, and a sense of motivation for the future as I've reached out to my Heavenly Father. If you don't feel like you have a relationship with God, I invite you to try praying. Try talking to Him. He wants to talk to you and everyone else. Express your feelings, and see if He doesn't respond. 

Trials

It's been a long time since I've posted on here! 

If you're in my ward, sorry that you just heard me say most of this in a talk a couple of weeks ago. But, as I was getting ready to speak, I learned a lot from my studying and thought I should share it. Here are some of the things I learned about trials: 

Some trials come from our poor choices, but others come for other reasons that may only be fully understood--at least at the time--by our Heavenly Father. Life isn't easy, and I don’t think it was ever supposed to be. But as we pass through trials we have the opportunity to become better and learn important lessons that will help us later.

Everyone has unique circumstances, abilities, and weaknesses. People reading this, including myself, are worrying about school, work, money, family members, friends, dating, marriage, weaknesses, wrong things others have done to them, and lots of other things. I don't know who reads this blog, but if you're reading this and you're going through a hard time right now, please don't give up. Seek God and ask Him for His help. He will help you like He's helped me so many times!

Life’s hard, but we don’t have to--nor should we--face it alone. We need divine help. In my life I've learned that through God’s grace we can overcome or at least learn how to cope with our challenges and trials. However, this requires work and faith and dedication on our part. There are things we need to do in order to faithfully face and overcome our trials.

One that I'm working on it prayer. Prayer is not a passive principle. It takes time and consistent effort to develop a relationship with God through prayer.

One of the leaders of my Church, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said, “God is anxiously waiting for the chance to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, just as He always has. But He can’t if you don’t pray, and He can’t if you don’t dream. In short, He can’t if you don’t believe.”

So, sometimes God is just waiting for us to ask for what we need. 

Earlier in the year, I was feeling a lot of pressure in my life. I was in an interesting situation that I didn't really understand or know how to feel comfort. I remember praying harder than I had in a long time, and over time, I felt God answer my prayer and help me with the things I needed. I didn't feel an immediate answer to the prayers I had offered, but eventually they came and I was given the help I was looking for.

From that experience, I learned a few things about trials. First, we can’t always expect answers to prayers or solutions to trials to come instantly. God doesn't want us to curl up in a ball and stay in our rooms and wait for our trials to pass us by, although some days that might be tempting. We aren't beings that were created with that intent. He expects us to get up, work hard, pray hard, serve others, and have faith. We all have hope--which is found through the Savior Jesus Christ. We need to keep our focus solely on Him and His Atonement. As we do this, we will be supported through our trials.

Another Church leader, David A. Bednar said, “You and I in a moment of weakness may cry out, ‘No one understands. No one knows.’ No human being, perhaps, knows. But the Son of God perfectly knows and understands, for He felt and bore our burdens before we ever did. And because He paid the ultimate price and bore that burden, He has perfect empathy and can extend to us His arm of mercy in so many phases of our life. He can reach out, touch, succor—literally run to us—and strengthen us to be more than we could ever be and help us to do that which we could never do through relying upon only our own power.”

Jesus Christ understands and can empathize with our trials and weaknesses. If you feel like you’re the only one who is going through a hard time, please know that everyone, no matter how perfect their life may seem, and how many advantages they may seem to have, is on the same journey as you and I, and they face many of the same difficulties that you and I face. I know that the Savior lives and that He will reach out, succor, and heal us as we will let Him into our lives.

Here are where the quotes come from:

Elder Holland: https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-holland_terror-triumph-wedding-feast/

Elder Bednar: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/04/bear-up-their-burdens-with-ease?lang=eng

Learning Experiences

One of the things I've thought about over the last few months is the concept of going through "learning experiences." In my life I've hated that phrase because usually I've looked at it in a negative light. I've hated "learning experiences" because they've usually meant that I've been going through a hard time or making a lot of mistakes...but at least learning from them. Just like no great coach is happy when his team just has a moral victory (but still loses), none of us are usually initially happy when we fail or struggle. However, I have learned that these learning experiences can be a positive thing for us in our lives and they end up helping us in the long run. Just like a coach can look at the positives from his team's loss and use them to help his team improve, we can find positives in our lives, even when we make mistakes. 
I've found that the times when I've struggled the most has taught me the most about life and helped me to thrive in the future. Sometimes our mistakes help us learn what will really make us happy and successful in the future.
I appreciated a speech given by our new President at BYU about a month ago. He said, "...all failures are changeable and temporary- except for the one that occurs when we give up." When we mess up, we can ALWAYS make it right and get a fresh start.
Some of the most influential people to ever live have, at one point in their lives, been "failures." (If you need more proof of that - look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLYECIjmnQs)
We can't always control what happens to us in life, and we can't control what others think about us. But we can try to always be found doing what's right and always trying to improve.
Near the end of his talk, President Worthen said, "Too often we ask the wrong question when we fail. We ask, “Am I good enough?” But the real question is, “Is God good enough?” Is He as good as He says He is? Can He really deliver on His promise...if we will trust Him and strive to do the best we can and keep going whenever we fall short?"
I know that God IS good enough. He can make up for our failures and help us see how we can improve and be truly happy. He can help us be forgiven from our mistakes and become better people. He's definitely done that for me, and He can do that for everyone. I'm trying to be grateful for my learning experiences and to improve from them.

President Worthen's full talk: http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=2218