Mormon Musings

 "The Word was made flesh in order that the whole human being would become God, deified by the grace of God become man --whole man, soul and body, by nature, and becoming whole God, soul and body, by grace."  Maximus the Confessor (580-662 A.D.)

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. Don't find fault, find a remedy. Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. Henry Ford 

A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he knows it. I find that doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans. A man's real belief is that which he lives by.  What a man believes is the thing that he does, not the thing that he thinks. George McDonald

When asked why Abraham was commanded to go to Mount Moriah and offer his only hope of posterity, President Hugh B. Brown, an Apostle, said, ‘Abraham needed to learn something about Abraham.’ The Lord already knew what Abraham would do, but Abraham didn’t know the depth of his own faith in God until he was actually stopped from making the sacrifice in the very act of performing it. It was then that Abraham realized how far he was willing to go in the service of his God. This was a growth lesson for Abraham.

If I have a fear, it is that the principle of sacrifice may be slipping away from us. This principle is a law of God. We are obliged to understand it and practice it. If being a member of this Church becomes too easy, testimonies will become shallow, and the roots of testimony will not go down into the soil of faith as they did with our pioneer forefathers.   Elder M. Russell Ballard

The real trouble about the duty of forgiveness is that you do it with all your might on Monday and then find on Wednesday that it hasn't stayed put and all has to be done over again.   C.S. Lewis  

A humorous but instructive account of an experience of Elder Matthew Cowley illustrates the spiritual power that accompanies an earnest expression of belief in and loyalty toward the Restoration, which of course began with the First Vision. "I was called on a mission.  And I will never forget the prayers of my father the day that I left...his last words to me at the railroad station [were], 'My boy, you will go out on that mission; you will study; you will try to prepare your sermons; and sometimes when you are called upon, you will think that you are wonderfully prepared, but when you stand up, your mind will go completely blank.' I have had that experience more than once.' Elder Cowley then asked his father what he should do in such instances.  His father replied, 'you stand up there and with all the fever of your soul, you bear witness that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the living God, and thoughts will flood into your mind and words to your mouth, to round out