Saturday, April 20, 2002

2 Nephi 27:23

"For behold, I am God; and I am a God of miracles; and I will show unto the world that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and I work not among the children of men save it be according to their faith."
2 Nephi 27:23


It's nice to know that something in life is consistent. :)  God is consistent, always loving us... always dealing with us in a positive way.  Interesting too, about faith.  That God only works with us according to our faith.  This makes sense to me, only because if we didn't have any faith or belief at all, then the power of God would just frighten us.  God has to adjust what he does in our lives to our level of belief and understanding.  The things that God can do in my life are very different from what he could do in the Brother of Jared's life, because we have different levels of faith.  God can help me find my keys, because I am at that level of understanding and acceptance.  He could help the Brother of Jared move mountains, because the Brother of Jared was at that level of understanding and acceptance. :)  ... I think that it also has to do with our free agency.  God isn't going to walk into our lives and perform some miracles without some level of permission or invitation.  Christ didn't heal anyone who didn't want to be healed... and though it might seem like a silly thing to not want to be healed, there are many times, even in our own lives, where we hang tightly to things that limit and hurt us.  Until we are able to let them go, and want to be free of them, God won't take them away... because he allows us our choices, and knows that if those things get taken away before we are ready to let them go then we won't learn what we need to learn.  Instead of relief at being free we will only be resentful and bitter.  Additionally, we have to believe that they can be taken away.  Sometimes we grow to believe that our limitations are part of our identity.  For instance, if I lost my sight I might start thinking of myself as a blind woman rather than just a woman... and I would join the blind women of america advocacy board, and all my friends would be blind, and I would get a job teaching the blind... and my whole life would be wrapped up in my limitation.  And if that were true, it would be hard to let go of that entire life so that I could be healed.  That isn't a perfect analogy, but that just to say that sometimes to be healed we have to change our perspective and the way we think about ourselves.  And when we can accept healing, then God heals us.  I think that if we were able to believe in great and wondrous things, then our lives would be great and wondrous... unfortunately, too often we blind ourselves to great things and all we can believe in is limited to what we are used to, and what we have seen in the past.  Our lives are limited by our imaginations.

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