Becoming One with Christ

Christ, Recovery

When you become one with Jesus Christ, you become the highest and most Christ-like version of yourself that you could ever imagine. How do we become one with Christ? By trying to be like Him? No. We’re not talking about “trying to be like.” By trying to emulate Him?...

Addiction or Atonement—There Are Only Two Choices

Addiction, Christ, Mortality, Recovery

When you boil life down to the basics, you only have two choices for dealing with the discomforts of mortality. Either you choose addiction to dull the pain or you choose the peace of God and live (Alma 37:47). You can choose to become and/or remain an addict to...

Keeping the Twelve Steps of Recovery Focused on Christ (Part 5)

Christ, Recovery, Twelve Steps

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5   An Open Letter to My Fellow Mortals, Caught in Addiction or not: May I conclude by sharing with you the text of a letter originally composed and shared with a fellow mortal concerning your true nature—what you were...

Keeping the Twelve Steps of Recovery Focused on Christ (Part 4)

Christ, Recovery, Twelve Steps

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5   Looking to Jesus to Live = Miraculously Doing Right On days that I humble myself in these twelve ways, and do my best to look to Jesus to live, I find myself miraculously doing right, doing well, without striving to do...

Keeping the Twelve Steps of Recovery Focused on Christ (Part 3)

Christ, Recovery, Twelve Steps

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Being Consumed in Christ In the Ensign, July 1989, President Ezra Taft Benson, published a First Presidency Message entitled Born of God. We are told that First Presidency Messages should hold the weight of scripture to us....

Keeping the Twelve Steps of Recovery Focused on Christ (Part 2)

Christ, Recovery, Twelve Steps

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Seeing Each Step as Testimony of My Need to Anchor My Life in Christ Not long after beginning to study the Book of Mormon to discover if the principles in the Twelve Steps were found there, I began to see that every step...

Keeping the Twelve Steps of Recovery Focused on Christ (Part 1)

Addiction, Christ, Recovery, Twelve Steps

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5   Many years ago, I read for the very first time, the words of the Prophet Joseph Smith, [Latter-day Saints] should gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up. (Teachings of the Prophet...

Becoming Zion: An Easter Message

Christ, Personal Revelation

Yesterday, at the Thursday noon phone meeting of Heart t’ Heart, we had five sisters there from five different states. What an amazing blessing that was! To picture that we five were connecting across so many miles, all of one heart and one mind, admitting our...

With God, Nothing Is Impossible

abstinence, Addiction, Change of Heart, Recovery

Doing abstinence with God—putting Him in charge of defining it, letting Him guide us in applying it, relying on His strength to live it—elevates abstinence to a holy sacrament. With God, the spirit of abstinence becomes one of joyful surrender, as our willingness to...

Practicing Abstinence

abstinence, Change of Heart, Led by Spirit, Recovery

And thus mercy . . . encircles them in the arms of safety. (Alma 34:16) Learning how to be abstinent is like learning how to walk on a balance beam. At first, you are very, very clumsy.  You gain your balance for a moment, take a couple of shuffling steps, and then...

What Great Things the Lord Hath Done

Change of Heart, Christ, Humility

This morning, as I was gleaning and capturing quotes from the Title Page of the Book of Mormon, I came across the phrase, “what great things the Lord hath done.” I desire with all my heart to do all that the Lord opens the way for me to do to invite and...

May We Always Remember Him

Christ

And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. (Luke 2:49-50) This verse, if translated correctly, would seem to indicate that Mary and...

The Dichotomy of Worthiness

Christ, Recovery

How can the truth be both blunt and sharp at the same time? How can it be the hardest thing to hear and yet the only thing that is going to save your life? And how do you get the courage to admit that kind of two-edged truth to yourself and to others? Only from God,...

We Are All Special Needs Children

God's In Charge

While in mortality, we are all special needs children. We are babies. We all have our unique set of quirks and flaws and disabilities. We are the equivalent of children who are temporarily handicapped, blinded as we are by the veil—blinded and muffled—wrapped in...

The Pain or the Purpose

God's In Charge

We have to accept that life is a battle between two forces—the Truth and the Lie; Christ and the Liar. That’s just the way it is. The tug and pull, the on-again-off-again phenomenon is inevitable. We must also accept that we have no ability to determine the ratio of...