It's Not About Us

Matthew 7:21-23

²¹"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²²Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' ²³Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'"

These people tell God, "Look what we did for you!"
But it is what He did for us that truly matters.
(something Greg, a member of the Smoovies' Bible Study, said today)


This excerpt has always reminded me of Mormonism, and it may be the passage I cling to the most when I wonder what the heck I'm doing trying to evangelize to these people with such seemingly pristine lives.  I mean, what's the point?  What more do they need?  Are they even lost to begin with?

I guess it's not up to me to judge their salvation... my job is to simply obey God's calling (assuming of course, that I am sure this is what He's calling me to do).

Back at the end of May, this passage became even more charged with significance for me.  When I was visiting Jackson's LDS church, the first Sunday School class we went to was actually led by Principal Comfort (the principal of my high school), and he was going over the parables of Jesus.  After going through the ones he'd wanted to cover, with the last bit of time, he decided we could talk about one last parable, so he asked me what my favorite one was, and I instantly thought about this passage.

Of course, it would rather awkward and could be taken as rude if I were to say that was my favorite parable (and it's not even really a parable), so I simply said that I didn't know what my favorite one was (I then thought of the Prodigal Son, and what I'd learned at Smoovies' Bible study and SCL... it'd probably be my favorite, but it was rather long and I didn't think we had enough time).

Ironically, Principal Comfort then went to this exact passage... (well, maybe from verse 15-23)  He commented briefly about it, and then moved on to an actual parable, verses 24-29, talking about building your house on rock instead of sand.

Was he hinting something to me when he went to verses 21-23?

I wouldn't blame him; I was just about ready to do the same.  ;)

Anyway, the mental wrestling of the difficulty of deciding how far along Jackson--or any other Mormon... or really, any other person--is to being saved will be for another post.  However, that post will probably just be a whole ton of questions... =\  eh, whatever!

Invasive Measures

I owe my salvation to Mormonism.

But I am not, and never will be, LDS.

Long background info cut short, I had a "guy crush" for about two-and-a-half years (homosexuality is a whole 'nother topic by itself), and got out of it in Jan. 2007, just in time to rebound with my Mormon friend, Jackson.  I felt like I should lead him to Christianity after I realized that Mormonism was radically different from evangelical Christianity.  So I bought multiple books about Mormonism, and through one of the Christian bookstore websites, I bought I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Although it wasn't directly related to Mormonism, I thought it sounded really interesting.  Afterwards, I was looking at the Amazon page of the Atheist, and found out about this random book called Furious Pursuit: Why God Will Never Let You Go.  It also sounded interesting, so I decided to buy that book too (talk about a book-buying splurge...).  While Furious Pursuit had quite a bit of feel-good Christianity, it really spoke to me, and for the first time, I got the Gospel message.

For years I had thought that salvation was a conglomerate of faith and works, similar to the LDS view.  In reality, I found that everything had already been done for us--we just had to accept the sacrifice.  Like a Christmas present with our name on it, Jesus is already there in front of us.  All we need to do is accept His gift of grace.

Beautiful.
Everything seemed so much lovelier during those first few moments of realization.

And I'll always find it ironic that I would be doing much of my reading about the LDS and other Christian books while I was lifeguarding (our boss let us do our homework or whatever else while we were lifeguarding), since the gym was owned by an LDS family.


So during and after Urbana, I've felt a stronger calling to the Mormon population.  Even just reflecting on this past month at Rice, I've already had several encounters with Mormonism:

The two times I went to HK Mall, Mormon missionaries were there.  The second time, three of them came and talked to my friends and me while we were waiting for the bus.  One of them happened to be from Grandridge, WA, and they said that one of the missionaries, who wasn't there with them at the time, was from Pasco, WA, one of the three cities that make up the Tri-Cities, where I'm from (actually the same city where my guy-crush was from too).

My grad student comes from a "very Mormon family," she says.  I found out because she was going home one weekend to see her brother come home from his mission.  She's not Mormon herself (I think she's atheist), though.
(I was freaking out earlier, however, because I noticed that someone had been on lds.org at our lab computer, and I was really curious to know who it was.  Glad that got cleared up.  xD  )
The incredibleness of it all made me walk out of my lab in tears, simply amazed at God.  =)

Last Thursday, Jackson called me and told me he was going to Argentina on June 2nd for his mission.  Sunday, the pastor mentioned Mormonism briefly.  Tuesday one of my fb friends that I made from Packrat/MouseHunt talked about how her dog was barking at the door, and after hushing her dog, she opened it to see who it was.  When she realized it was two Mormon missionaries, she told her dog that they were morons and didn't know any better and to keep barking.  I told her they could still use Jesus' love.

Treatment of the LDS will have to be a future post too.  I get really frustrated at the people who look down on Mormons and callously throw them aside as idiots.  But anyway, I digress.

Yesterday, Jon from stuffchristianslike.net for #706 (awesome blog.  I found out about it again through Mormonism, in a rather roundabout way), referenced his post: "Stuff Christians Like: Being slightly less nice than Mormons." which the second comment really changed the whole aim of his site and made him focus on being honest with the site and what he had to say.

Haha, so before I get on too many tangents, the point is that God has been working Mormonism into a lot of my life, and I owe so much to it. It's really quite amusing/amazing.  On the plane ride to Owl Days from Salt Lake to Houston, I sat by an LDS member, and we talked briefly about our faiths.

Where to go from here, though, I have yet to see.