Mama says….. always read your scriptures

I picked up a kid up in the avenues and was taking him to a 7-Eleven. It was 12:30 at night and there’s only one reason kids go to 7-Eleven at 12:30 at night and it has nothing to do with hotdogs.

He got in the car and we started to drive. We started talking about our day and how things were going. He said that he was doing great. I looked in his eyes and saw a beaten, bewildered, tired and lost soul. The look in his eye was almost vacant,l and there was no light.

The prompting came to me that this is the kind of guy that could really use the light of the gospel. And then I had the prompting, that said, guess why you are here! I started talking to him about how he was really doing. I had a few spiritual impressions at this point, and I decided to go with them.

I told him that I believe he had been a member of the church but that a lot of things were getting in the way right now. I mentioned to him that we are all children of our father in heaven and that he loves us. I told him we had spent thousands of years with our father and that relationship is central to everything we are. I told him that sometimes we get involved too deeply in other causes and endeavors other than the kingdom of God, it’s easy to lose track of the thing that’s important. That is our father in heaven and his love for us.

The spirit was strong in the car and I could tell he was feeling it. I asked him how long it had been since he felt the spirit and he said a long time. I felt like he had been a really active member and I asked him if he had been married the temple. This is something I’ve never asked a person on their way to buy beer but I did.

He lowered his eyes as he said, yes. He said, I was married in the temple and that didn’t go very well. He said, at first when I left the church I felt like I was an atheist and I went around trying to destroy people’s testimonies. He said, I was no good at it because it didn’t make sense to me. So now I consider myself more of an agnostic. There’s something out there, but I’m not sure what it is yet.

I said, well, that spirit you felt right then when I was talking about your father in heaven should tell you what’s out there. It’s your father in heaven! I asked him, did you feel that spirit? He said yes. I told him that this was the spirit of God testifying of the truth of what I was saying and that it wasn’t a game. God wanted him back.

He said that he was enjoying feeling the spirit and that he assumed that the spirit is how I knew all of those things about him.

I told him that Satan had been in his head, calling people and church leaders hypocrites. I told him that was a lie. I told him when he heard that now he knew where it came from. I told him that he had been very judgmental of some people in his ward and that made it hard for him to go to church. He said yes, all of this is true.

He said there are some of his church leaders and other members that have said things in the past that really didn’t seem to him to be Christlike. They didn’t seem to him to be the things that Heavenly Father would have them say. He said that he wondered how they could represent God.

He said there was a group of people in his ward that always said things politically that made him angry. He just couldn’t get past that and their judgment of people.

I said, you thought that they had judged you and we’re not tolerant of you and your friend’s sins. I said, this made you angry because you didn’t like being judged.

Then you turned around and judged them right back with the same lack of love and justice with which you felt like you had been judged. How are you any better? He thought for a second and then said, oh my gosh! I did the same thing to them that they did to me. That’s horrible!

I told him that we do things like this because we’ve got Satan in our ear telling us that we’re right and he is justifying it. He gets us to turn from Jesus.

I told him that God would have us look to Jesus when we have any persecution, injustices, pains, infirmities, or sins. God will have us turn to Jesus so that he can save us. Satan wants us to blame God. I told him that’s exactly what he did.

I told him it was like the bronze serpent in the time of Moses. He knew the story and he finished it for me. He said, they wouldn’t look, and they died. I said, that’s right. We need to look to Christ. He said, I need to work on that judgmental thing.

Then he decided to change course and talk about suicide. He said, how can I believe in a church that would say that my friend who committed suicide due to all the stress and problems in his life was going to go to hell? He said, my friend was a great guy. He just had a lot of problems, a lot of stress, and he wasn’t able to deal. How can I believe in a God that could not understand that?

I told him that he sells the atonement short. I told him the Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane felt every pain, injustice, sickness and sin. I told him that this is why Jesus bled from every pore and because of this he has the ability to lift us and lift our burdens. I talked to him about the people of Alma in the Book of Mormon and about how their burdens were made light, so light they could barely feel them.

I told him about my situation, having gone three years without a paycheck from my job. I told him I worked 65 to 70 hours a week with only Sundays off just to get by but I was still happy. I told him I felt joy and I don’t feel depressed and this is because Christ has lifted that burden. I still have to do the thing, but he sustains me and gives me strength and gives me power and provides opportunities for me to share his word. Christ is lifting my burdens.

I told him the Jesus also understands what the people who are mentally ill deal with. I told him that having a heart attack or a stroke is something that we readily understand and we give allowances for people who have that happen. I told him that someone who commits suicide is no different than somebody who had a heart attack. I told him that this person has an illness and that illness killed him.

I told him that he should look up Elder Jeffrey R Holland’s talk on this. I said, this is where I learned that. He bristled and said, Elder Holland? He talked at BYU and said some very anti-LGBTQAI stuff. He would never understand or say something loving like that.

I said, he does understand and he did say that. I said, furthermore, he didn’t say anything hateful towards the LGBTQAI people. He told them that members of the church, pay tithing and send their children to the school and that they should be able to expect that the professors at that school don’t teach doctrine contrary to what the church believes. I told him that they should be able to send their children to that school and not have them propagandized against the word of God.

He said, well, I guess that’s right. I didn’t actually listen to his talk but other people talked about it. I told him that the talk was perfectly fine with no hatred. I told him that he should look up that talk now and that there was nothing but love in that talk about mental illness. I told him that this talk about mental illness had opened my eyes and changed my way of thinking.

I mentioned to him that he had used a hasty and false judgment against Elder Holland. He thought about it for a second and said, I need to do better. I bet I do that a lot.

He told me that he was bipolar and that this issue meant a lot to him. He looked up the talk and promised me that he would read it.

At this point he started submitting to the spirit a little bit and his countenance had begun to change. I also felt the additional presence of his mom in the car and I asked him if he felt it and he said yes. I said, we felt the presence of God and now I feel like your mom’s here.

I feel like when she passed away quickly it took you by surprise and wrecked your life. He got very emotional. He asked how I could know this. I told him that through the power of the Holy Ghost God can tell us things we need to know and he needed to know this.

I asked him how she passed and he said that she had brain cancer. I asked him if he was close with her. I told him that it felt to me like he was very close to his mother and that there was a great affection that I could feel. He said, yes.

I told him that Heavenly Father had sent his spirit and his mother’s presence. I asked, why would God make that happen? Why would God make that happen if the things I was saying weren’t true and God didn’t want him back?. He thought about it and said “he wouldn’t”. By this time he was becoming very emotional and you could see the tears rolling down his cheeks. He was feeling the Spirit of God and his mother at the same time. He seemed pretty emotional before but now things have changed. I was beginning to see a noticeable light in his countenance.

I decided that this was the time to work in bearing my testimony of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith so I did. I told him that the Book of Mormon was true. I told him that reading the Book of Mormon would bring him closer to God. I felt impressed to tell him that his mother had always stressed the reading of the Book of Mormon.

He said, that’s true! He and his mother had also gone to Central America on several Book of Mormon tours, and they loved it. I told him that the book is true.

He then started talking about the different leaders of the church and judging them by today’s standards with regards to things they said on family and marriage, race, etc. it felt almost like a counterpunch to the spirit in the car.

I said, there’s that judgment thing again. I told him that I know Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I know that Brigham Young was a prophet of God too. I told him I know those things because I prayed and God revealed to me that they were prophets.

I told him that God never once revealed to me the Joseph Smith was perfect or that Brigham Young was perfect or that Jeffrey R Holland was perfect or that Russell M Nelson was perfect. I told him that God never revealed that his prophets were perfect but that their callings were holy and he made them more than they were so that they could fulfill them.

He said, how can we be so arrogant as to say we are the only true church? I said, well, first you have to pray and God will tell you that and second, you have to realize that there’s a difference in what you’re saying and what you think you’re saying.

You’re saying that there’s truth in every church. Isn’t that what you’re saying? There’s truth no matter what church you go to. You can find truth preached from the pulpit in all of them. He said, yes. I told him that I never disputed that but that we are the only church that has all of the truth, all of the temple ordinances, all of the knowledge on how to save God’s children and bring everyone back, no matter when they were born or where they were born. We are the only ones that have the whole plan.

I told him that if we all taught the exact same thing, in every religion, the fact that we have the priesthood and the authority from God and a prophet are the things that make us different. Those are the things that make us the church of Jesus Christ. I told him that these are the things that we need to be saved in God’s kingdom.

He said, oh, OK

It was like he hadn’t even considered that. It was like he thought we were saying that no one else had any truths. He was thinking that we believe that God didn’t answer the prayers of other people from other religions. I put that to rest! I told him that God loves all of his children who reach out to him and he has placed a great responsibility on our shoulders, because we have the authority to act in his name. We need to do everything we can to get those ordinances and those blessings to all of our brothers and sisters.

I felt inspired to tell him that if his mother were here right now, she would tell him to pray, read the Book of Mormon, go to church, and serve others and that this wouldn’t be the first time she said those things. He lit up. His countenance was shining and the tears were flowing. He said that’s what she said to him all of the time, those exact words. That was the last thing she told him. He asked me how I knew that, and I said, the spirit whispered it to me. He said, my mom whispered it to you! I smiled.

I told him God would like to walk with him and to have that happen he needed to do what his mother said. I asked him if he wanted to see his mother and be with her again and he said, “that would be a dream”. I told him to do that he’s got to quit being rebellious. I told him he’s got to look to Jesus and be saved.

I asked him one more time if he could feel the spirit and he said, I know it’s here. I asked him what that meant. He said it means that I need to do the things we’ve talked about. I asked him if he would go to church even though it would be very hard for him. He said, I’ll go to church. I told him if there were people that offended him when he went to church rather than hide from them, he should go up and put his arm around them and learn to love them. I told him that this would change them more than him just leaving and hiding from them.

We were at his destination and he got out of the car to go in and buy his beer. He came back out after about five minutes with Diet Coke. He said, I just couldn’t buy that right now. I laughed and said, I can’t blame you! The spirit is working you over. We started back to his house.

I told him about my great grandfather and how he left the church because he was offended and the negative affects on our family because of that. I told him that he should not let that happen to his mother’s posterity. He clearly hadn’t considered his mother’s posterity as it reflected on her and he bowed his head in silence.

He committed to do all of these things, go to church, read the scriptures, and say prayers. He said, I can do this.

I asked him if he had ever had a ride like this and he said, no! I’ve never felt the spirit like this either. I told him that God put him in my car so that he could get that message and it’s time for him to sit up, pay attention and get his life turned around.

He re-committed to read and listen to the Elder Holland talk, go to church, say his prayers and give service because he knew that’s what he should do.

He said he had a lot to work on. He promised me he would start going to church. He reiterated how impactful his epiphany and the spirit had been regarding him being judgmental. He said, I’ve never realized how judgmental and harshly judgmental I have been. He told me he would do better.

He said, I don’t think I can be perfect. There are some things that I have to work on. I told him that was just like every single person but that the most important thing is that he start. I told him he needs to start walking that path and his father in heaven and his mother will be there with him. Just like they were in the car today they will be with him whenever he is trying to do the best he can.

He said, that’s what I’ll do then. Then he got out of the car with his Diet Coke .