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Work in Us What is Pleasing in God’s Sight
Drawing near to God is what qualifies us for the eternal saving work of our High Priest. God’s gifts are precious beyond words, and we will sing of them forever. The most precious gifts lead to God himself. Ultimately, that is what all his gifts are for. The unique and absolute infinity of God is the attribute that best distinguishes him from creatures and constitutes his absolute perfection. Life and the World around us is a painted veil, an illusion through which we must penetrate to the reality behind (this reality being the one that remains when the many change and pass). We see life as if through a veil—the veil of our own prejudices, which are imposed by social institutions. Humans must transcend these prejudices in order to understand their love of fellow humans. Once the veil is removed, the World will be seen as a unity—both in the sense in which science may be said to be a unity (the truth about one field of study cohering with an illuminating the truth about another), and in the sense that a true understanding of our fellow people will give rise to virtuous behavior. This is what we have in mind when we speak of the indestructible order. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
It is the function of coupling poetry and religion to provide humans with a coherent view of the World that will help them to understand both themselves and their fellow beings, and to provide it in a form that will kindle the imagination as well as the intellect. There is a natural order in the Universe, which science and philosophy reveal; there is also a moral order, which humans themselves must impose. When Christ became our servant as a ransom, he took away the curse of the law and the threat of punishment for all who believe. However, to what end? That we might enjoy sin with impunity? No. That we might enjoy God for eternity! Forgiveness is precious because it brings us home to God. Why does anyone want to be forgiven? If the answer is just for psychological relief, or just for escape from Hell, or just to have more physical pleasure, then God is not honored. The selfish picture of human nature cannot be the whole story, for if selfishness were the only natural feeling, there would be no society. The rise of a nation, the pressing forward of a social class, means a bitter struggle, a hard and soul-sickening battle with the World such as few of the more favored classes know or appreciate. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
What is more, since the existence of a social feeling is sufficient to account for the origin of society, appeals to the religious sanctions for society are necessarily subsequent to the actual foundation of society and are therefore of secondary importance. Romans 15.9 reports: The aim of Christ’s serving us is the glorifying of God for his mercy. However, if we exploit God’s mercy as a ticket to enjoy sin—or even just to enjoy innocent things—God gets no glory from that. God gets glory for showing his mercy when his mercy frees us to see him as the best gift of his love —as the most enjoyable person in the Universe. It is good for us that Christ came on behalf of the truth of God, because his coming this way shows that God is true first and foremost to himself; and he confirms the promises of God, and that the promises are promises of love; and he shows that the essence of the love he promised is himself. Virtue is the pursuit of the public interest. There is no real love of virtue without the knowledge of a good public. We are disposed to act virtuously by our affection for God. Virtue is called the moral sense. Moral sense is like a sense of harmony in music and a sense of proportion in architect and art. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
The voice of the Lord is unto the ends of the Earth, that all that are willing to listen will hear, and the day will come that they who will not hear the voice of the Lord, neither the voice of his children, neither give heed to the words of the prophets and apostles, shall be cut off from among the people; for they have strayed from their ordinances, and have broken God’s everlasting covenant. People who knowingly and willfully do wrong seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every one of them walks in their own way, and after the image of their own God, whose image is in the likeness of the World. If you seek him, God will waken your heart to your deep need for mercy as a sinner! And then ravish your heart with a great Savior, Jesus Christ. And then release your tongue to praise him and your hands to make his mercy shine in yours. A Vietnam Veteran called Roger Harris just knew that he was going to die and would never make it home from the war. And his mother told him that he would make it back alive, but he did not believe her. In fact, many of the veterans thought they would never see America again. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Roger Harris considered himself a sinner and saw many young men who had never had an adult relationship, were honest, Christian, and did not swear get killed right before his face. However, the day came for Roger Harris and his team to come back to America, and as they were getting ready to board the helicopter, an attack broke out and it he just knew he would never make it home and that he attracted the calamity because he was supposed to die and so many good people lived and died, but he made it back to America safely and was able to tell his story. Perhaps Roger Harris made it come because someone loved him and kept him in their prayers and God knew he had more to learn about the miracles of God. And maybe the other guys passed away because they were pure and God wanted them to come home to Heaven because they learned all they needed to know and their mission was complete. Furthermore, it is possible other good people also stayed alive so they could testify and share the gospel of God with others and help to save their souls. God has a purpose for all of us and he employees our talents and abilities for different reasons. Therefore, release your faith and praise God and use your hands to make his mercy shine in yours. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
God is benevolent and his love reinforce the affection. Also, virtuosity is an inherent part of human nature. God is really good. This morning I was asleep and I was awakened a few days ago by the fire alarm in the high-rise building going off. Usually, when the crews test the alarm, they tell us on the loud speak, but they started the test first, and in a low voice told of they were testing the alarm. I was going to stay in bed even if it was a real alarm because usually there is never a fire. The has only been once serious fire since I lived here. So, Sunday morning, I was laying in bed and my mother called and I did not answer the phone because I was not in a great mood. Then about an hour later, the fire alarm went off again, and I stayed in bed, and was not going to get up. However, my neighbor screamed from outside to tell me to get out of the building, it was a real fire. If my mother’s call had not woken me, I might have slept through the fire alarm, and who knows what would have happened. The fire department got here and put the fire out and there was no significant damage. As you see, God is always looking out for us, and even if you do not feel like talking, always answer the phone when your parents call. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
God owns and controls all things. And there is nothing that he would not give you. God has the power to provide redemption, restoration for past losses, and liberation from future enemies, forgiveness and freedom, pardon and power, healing the past and sealing the future. There is a revelation from God the Father, opening the eyes of the heart so that it cries out, like a person who stumbles onto an incredible treasure. Oh, I totally forgot to tell you. I have been experiencing a lot of hardships in life, so I cut certain people out of my life, stop swearing, gave up mature movies, I am celibate and have been, do not smoke, nor do drugs, and I do not drink. The purpose is so that I may have the favor of God. Maybe this will cause Satan to flee from my life completely. Now, may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom by glory forever and ever. Amen. One of the things pleasing in God’s sight is that his people keep on drawing near to him forever and ever. And so, he is working in us this very thing. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
God Still Remains the Most Original and Beautiful Expression
No suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlour. It is easy for us to lose ourselves in details in endeavoring to grasp and comprehend the real condition of a mass of human beings. We often forget that each unit in the mass is a throbbing human soul. To be a person is to have a status and worth that is unlike that of any other kind of being: it is a purpose or goal desired for its own sake with dignity. And the only response that is appropriate to such a being is respect. Respect (that is, moral recognition respect) is the acknowledgement in attitude and conduct of the dignity of persons as ends in themselves. Respect for such beings is not only appropriate to such a being, but also morally required: the status and worth of persons is such that they must always be respected. Because we are all too often inclined not to respect persons, not to value them as they ought to be valued, one formulation of the categorical imperative, which is the supreme principle of morality, commands that our actions express due respect for the worth of persons: Acts in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or the person of any other, as something that is valued and important. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in Heaven and on Earth, believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in Heaven and in Earth; believe that humans do not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend. And again, believe that you must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask insincerity of heart that he would forgive you; and now, if you believe all these things see that you do them. Our fundamental moral obligation, then, is to respect persons; morally right actions are thus those that express respect for persons because they are worthy of life and love, while morally wrong actions are those that express disrespect or contempt for persons by not valuing them as being worthy of life and love. As ideas of reason, God, freedom, and immortality are endless tasks for human activity. Alma 37.16 reports: if you keep the commandments of God, and do with these things which are sacred according to that which the Lord does command you (for you must appeal unto the Lord for all things whatsoever you must do with them) behold, no power of Earth or Hell can take them from you, for God is powerful to the fulfilling of his words. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
In affirming the existence of God, the subject also affirms its own being, the innermost character of its own existing. The affirmation of God within human existence that constitutes the human subject cannot be a merely transitory relationship and that immorality is therefore the logical extension of the interior objectivity. Humans are allowed to maintain both their freedom and the efficacy of grace. Given the fact of God’s foreknowledge, although God knows infallible what an individual will do, such an infallible knowledge in no way determines the will of the will of the individual. The term person means a being whose rational nature already marks them out as being worthy of dignity and an object of respect. God wishes all people to be saved and he extends his grace to all. The value or worth of a person is, as of all other things, one’s price—that is to say, so much would be given for the use of one’s power—and therefore is not absolute, but a thing dependent on the need and judgment of another. However, the Spirit enlightens and gives understanding of the eternal purpose of life. A human being regarded as a person that is, as subject of morally practical reason, is exalted above all price as being worthy of love and life and possesses a dignity by which one exacts respect for oneself from all others beings in the World. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
God foresees that some will cooperate with his grace and faith continues to have many supporters. Our great responsibility is to see that each is remembered and nourished by the good word of God, that each has opportunity for growth and expression and training in the work and ways of the Lord. It is our divine mission to assist in being to pass the immortality and eternal life of human beings. We must hunger and thirst after righteousness before we can be filled. We need to cultivate spiritual strength within ourselves before we can ever hope to engender it in others. Simply knowing about God and Jesus Christ is not enough, we must have personal, spiritual experiences to anchor us. These come through seeking them in the same intense, single-minded way that a starving person seeks food. The gaining of a strong and secure testimony is the privilege and opportunity of every individual member of the Church. Service in behalf of other, study, and prayer lead to faith in this work and then to knowledge of its truth. This has always been a personal pursuit, as it must always be in the future. I am happy about the future because that is where I live. We must fortify ourselves before we can ever hope to offer spiritual nourishment to others. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Dignity is in comparable worth: it cannot be compared with, exchanged for, nor replaced by any other value, whereas the very purpose of a price is to establish comparative value. And dignity is absolute or objective worth, which means that it is a value that everyone has compelling reason to acknowledge, regardless of their antecedent desires, interest, or affections. We must always treat people as they are the supremely valuable beings that they are. We could not get along in life if we could not make use of the talents, abilities, service, and labor of other people. What we must not do is to treat persons as they are a commodity for our exploitation and personal pleasure, as if the only value they have is what derives from their usefulness to us. We must respect others and regard them as absolutely, unconditionally, and incomparably valuable and we must acknowledge in a practical way that their dignity imposes absolute constraints on our treatment of them. While creation is primarily an act of the divine will, so that things exist and are good because God wills them, creation is also a rational act based on the divine intellect. Our ultimate end consists in love of, rather than in knowledge of, God, for it is the will and not the intellect that is the superior power in a human. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
If we are obedient to the Savior’s commands, we will focus our attention on the spiritual growth and development of those for whom we are responsible. We must away our interest to others. It is important to have an enthusiastic and dynamic love for our Heavenly Father’s children. He asks us to see the spiritual hunger around us and to respond by willingly sharing our abundance. No power on Earth can accomplish as much as one righteous man or woman or boy or girl. The home and family have vital roles in cultivating and developing personal faith and testimony. The family is the basic unit of society; the best place for individuals to build faith and strong testimonies is in righteous homes filled with love. Love for our Heavenly Father and his Son Jesus Christ is greatly enhanced when the gospel is taught and lived in the home. True principles of eternal life are embedded in the hearts and souls of young and antiquated alike when scriptures are read and discussed, when prayers are offered morning and night, and where reverence for God and obedience to him are modeled in everyday conduct. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Human intellect has a direct, intuitive knowledge of the singular material object, no merely indirect knowledge of it gained by reflecting upon the material image. You should understand that these things are not without a shadow. There is no home for the soul where dwells a shadow of untruth. Alma 37.21 & 22 reports: The mysteries and the works of darkness, and their secret works, or the secret works of people who have been destroyed, may be made manifest upon this people; all their murders, and robbings, and their plunderings, and all their wickedness and abominations, may be made manifest unto this people; and that you preserve in the face of these intruders. For behold, the Lord saw that his people began to work in darkness, work secret murders and abominations; therefore the Lord said, if they did not repent they should be destroyed from off the face of the Earth. The characteristics of religious life are an environment and expression of the higher life, they are of deep interest to the children of God, both socially and psychologically. The relationship with God still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing born on Earth. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Where is My God in Shinning Amour?
I call upon the Gods above, the ones of benevolence and of love, come down to me from above, come to this place and come to me from time and space. No one is to blame for suffering an evil he or she cannot avoid. Some people are under spiritual attacks and have been for years and spend hours praying for God to deliver them. Life can be hard when you have no one to turn to for comfort, but the good thing is God is always there. If you begin to see that everything you have counted on, may be taken away, it becomes much harder to take for granted. In the battle of life, the adversary takes enormous numbers of prisoners, and many who know of no way to escape and are pressed into his service. Every soul confined to a concentration camp of sin and guilt has a key to the gate. The adversary cannot hold them if they know how to use it. The key is labeled Repentance. The twin principles of repentance and forgiveness exceed in strength the awesome power of adversary. Having a grateful attitude is essential when going through spiritual warfare. It is precisely under crisis conditions when we have the most to gain by a grateful perspective on life. I am tired, in pain, and would like nothing more than to rest and not have my daily life feel like it is a job of which I cannot seem to take a day off and rest. However, in the face of demoralization, gratitude has the power to energize and heal and bring hope. Being thankful for life can help us cope with hard times. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
It is a great challenge to raise a family in the darkening mists of our moral environment. Our words, like our deeds, should be filled with faith and hope and charity. No one feels good about losing a job, home, or when good healthy has taken a devastating hit on his or her retirement portfolio. However, trials and suffering can actually refine and deepen gratefulness if we allow them to show us not to take things for granted. Our national holiday of being thankful, Thanksgiving, was born and grew out of hard times. The first Thanksgiving took place after nearly half the pilgrims died from a rough Winter year. We have been entrusted with the most sacred gift God can give us, which is life. We should be full of love and joyful about waking up every day. In times of uncertainty, though, people realize how powerless they are to control their own destiny. God grant that we will come to our sense and protect our moral environment from this mist of darkness which deepens day by day. The fate of all humanity hangs precariously in the balance. And may we have the protection of God who is our father and our Savior, and may we merit the love and blessings of his Son, our Redeemer, in whose name, even the name of Jesus Christ, I bear witness, amen. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The great work we will do will be within the walls of our houses. No other success can compensate for the failure in the house. Nevertheless, with great conviction, many of us believe that one day the wicked influences will be overruled. The eternal sealings of faithful and divine promises made to us will save us, and our posterity. Sooner or later, we will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after us and invading our lives with blessings. However, people who are knowingly involved in evil and refuse to repent and find great joy in making others suffer will have to pay their debt to justice; they will suffer for their sins. Consciously cultivating an attitude of gratitude builds up a sort of psychological immune system that can be a source of support when we go through hardships. Even the wicked, if their path leads them to our loving Heavenly Father’s heart and home, the painful experiences will not be in vain. Pray for the careless and disobedient; hold on to them with your faith. And for those who are living right, but experiencing undue hardships, trust on and you will see the salvation of God. There is scientific evidence that grateful people are more resilient to stress, whether minor everyday hassles or major personal upheavals. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
The contrast between suffering and redemption serves that the evil idea has been more destructive of happiness, no philosophy has produced more sorrow, more heartbreak and mischief; no idea has done more to destroy the family than the idea that we are not the offspring of God, only advanced animals, compelled to yield to every carnal urge. No greater ideal has been revealed than the supernal truth that we are the children of God, and we differ, by virtue of our creation, from all other living things. Romans 8.14-17 reports: For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to children of God. The Spirit testifies within our spirit that we are God’s children. Now, if we are God children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his suffering in order that we may also share in his glory. Gratitude maximizes happiness in multiple ways, and one reason is that it helps us reframe memories of unpleasant emotional impact. We look for beneficial consequences in negative events. We may look at how a stressful event has shaped who we are today and has prompted us to reevaluate what is really important in life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Processing a life experience through faith in God does not mean denying negativity. It means realizing the power we have to transform an obstacle into an opportunity. Reframing a loss into potential gain, recasting negativity into a channel of optimism. 2 Thessalonians 1.3-4 reports: We are bound to thank God always for our family and friends that our faith grows exceedingly and the charity of every one of us toward each other will be around us. So that we ourselves glory in us in the churches of God for our patience and faith in all our persecutions and tribulations that we endure. The spirit of God testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. When we cry out to God, the Spirit of God somehow comes alongside us with our spirit, and gives us assurance that we are truly God’s family. This testimony appears to be an inner witness in the heart, a sense that yes, God really loves us. We know we trust God. We have his promises. We see our lives changing and growing. All these pieces of evidence lead our spirit, our hearts, to have a measure of confidence that we really are his. God’s immediate presence and love comes to us when we increase of faith and gratitude in life. We find ourselves deeply assured that we love life and we love ourselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
While we pass laws to reduce pollution of Earth, any proposal to protect the moral and spiritual environment is shouted down and marched against as infringing upon liberty, agency, freedom, the right to choose. Interesting how one virtue, when given exaggerated or fanatical emphasis, can be used to batter down another, with freedom, a virtue, invoked to protect vice. Those determined to transgress see any regulation of their life-style as interfering with their agency and seek to have their actions condoned by making them legal. The adversary is jealous toward all who have the power to beget life. He cannot beget life; he is impotent. He and those who followed him were cast out and forfeited the right to a mortal body. His angels even begged to inhabit the bodies of swine. And the revelations tell us that Satan seek that all people might be miserable like himself. The rapid, sweeping deterioration of values is characterized by a preoccupation—even an obsession—with the procreative act. It is never too late to enter into the Kingdom of God through the promises of God. Your Earthly inheritance awaits. At this point, you should know who you are and who God predestined you to be. Others may have become very successful without acknowledging the fact that the Lord allowed them to obtain wealth. Refocus and use your God-given talents under the direction of our loving, Heavenly Father. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Now, if we are children of God, then we have an incredible future. With limited knowledge, we know we must be faithful and diligent in carrying forward our duty to be good children of God and to obey the laws of the land. Remarkable and miraculous things happen when we do so. God works in us and through our circumstances so that we will be conformed and he implants Christ’s nature in us. We become more grateful in our character and attitudes. We are able to talk to God and relate to him as a loving Father, and our Heavenly Father loves us deeply. 1 John 3.1 reports: See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. He understands us and has compassion on us as his children. As his children, God promises to take care of our needs. Many of the benefits of that inheritance await us in the future. This inheritance includes the new Heaven and Earth, our glorified and resurrected bodies, and residence in God’s coming kingdom. “I have learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave person is not the one who does not feel afraid, but one who conquers that fear,” says Nelson Mandela. As long as God is with us, we will never be alone. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
God is a Pervasive Principle of Goodness
Good habits formed at youth make all the difference. All acts and all thoughts are irreducibly the products of individual human beings and therefore inescapably associated with the needs, desires, and purposes of humans. Such terms are reality and truth denote nothing complete and absolute; rather, they are intertwined with human intentions and deeds. Effective creativity of the human mind in organizing the Universe of human experience is in making or remaking reality. Humans make their truth along with their other values, beauty and goodness. Our axioms are never God-given but are human-made; they are not a priori verities but postulates, or working hypotheses, whose truth grows or diminishes within our experience. The logic we employ in gathering knowledge is dynamic and functional rather than eternally fixed. Our data are not the given, but the taken. Human being’s activity is focal both to epistemology and to metaphysics, and there is genuine novelty in our growing universe and no theoretical limit to human’s freedom. The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Reality is a seamless logical unity, not a mere disjointed plurality; that in the Absolute all separateness vanishes; that nothing finite, nothing that changes, is ever quite real, not even human personality; and there is something makeshift, transitory, and unsatisfactory about the bits of matter we see, the individual acts we perform, and the private thoughts we think. That is all that exists for us. An independent or absolute reality that does not enter into our experience, or explain our knowledge, is irrelevant to us. Reality for us is piecemeal, incomplete, and plastic. It is idle to ask “What is real?” Rather, the only question we can answer is “What can I know as real?” Everyone’s situation is different, and the details of each life are unique. Nevertheless, we can make life sweeter, more joyful, even more glorious by being grateful. Spiritual gifts are powerful blessings. They increase our capacity as we develop them by drawing on the storehouse of Heaven. Our Heavenly Father did not put us on Earth to fail, but to succeed gloriously. It may seem paradoxical, but that is why recognizing answers to prayer can sometimes be very difficult. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The reality revealed by our actual active procedures of knowing is not rigid but malleable, not completed but evolving. Because it responds, at least to some extent, to our working and probing, it must somehow be not unrelated to our needs and purposes. The process of knowing is never one of bringing the mind into relation with a fundamentally alien reality, but always one of improving and extending an already existing system which we know. What we call real is that which, for our own reasons, we evaluate as important. It is the result of the kind of selection by which we reduce the chaos about us to order. Some face life with only their own experience and capacity to help them. Others seek, through prayer, divine inspiration to know what to do. When required, they qualify for power beyond their own capacity to do it. Communication with our Father in Heaven is not a trivial matter. It is a sacred privilege. It is based upon unchanging principles. When we receive help from our Father in Heaven, it is in response to faith, obedience, and the proper use of agency. We are here on Earth to gain experience we can obtain in no other way. We are given the opportunity to grow, to develop, and to gain spiritual maturity. To do that, we must learn to apply truth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
How we face challenges and resolve difficult problems is crucially important to our happiness. Stress, culture, and community maintains that the primary motivation of human beings is to build, protect, and foster their resource reservoirs in order to protect the self and it social attachments. The more stress you are under, the more important it is to balance this by moving the body. Move the energy and do not let things stagnate. Stagnation can cause illness and pain. Identify the source of stress in your life and work to eliminate them by changing how you perceive things. So much worry comes from our imagination because we are always thinking of what might happen. The imagination and its ideas mediate between perception and will. As opposed to the conceptions of the understanding, which are finite, the ideas of imagination are both finite and infinite. An idea’s relation to its object is finite, but the activity of the imagination in this relation is infinite. The function of the will is to idealize the imagination’s ideas. The contradiction thus engendered gives rise to impulse, defined as the desire to restore destroyed identity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
For us to grow, we need to do what we feel is right. In time, God will answer. God will not fail us. Through impulse, there is constant realization of ideals, but the ideas of the imagination are constantly striven after and never attained. The brain and body are completely pliable. One can shape one’s brain through one’s thoughts and actions. Once we recognize that the only thing we can count on is change and that change is inevitable, one can begin to let go of how we think things should be. One can then let go of the tension that comes from that way of thinking. The distinction between will and intelligence thus is relative, not absolute. From a higher point of view, they are identical. In intelligence, the I that acts and the I that knows are one. The acting I is an object for itself, while the know I merely perceives other objects. In action, there is no transition from the World of mind, for the subject has become an object to itself. Any change in the outer World is received as a perception, but every action causes such a change; therefore, action is perception. Self-determination is the primary condition of all consciousness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Happiness depends upon ourselves. The soul never thinks without a picture. The people who give us trouble are our best teachers. What are we willing to learn about ourselves? The World and God have as common ground the incomprehensible basis of reality. Existence is a self-affirmation. God is the infinite affirmation of himself. The objective World is the unconscious poetry of the spirit creating itself. There is a striking formulation of the existential anxiety, which is also an anticipation of the psychoanalytic doctrine of resistance: The philosopher who knows his calling is the physician who seeks to heal with gentle, slow hand the deep sounds of human consciousness. The restoration is all the more difficult since most people do not want to be healed at all and, like unhappy patients, rise unruly outcry if one even approaches their wounds. Family is an important part of one’s life, and is also very important to God. From Adam and Eve onward, God made humans to be together with love to guide and support one another. Through prayer, we can make out families stronger. Alma 10. 21 reports: God will judge all of our iniquities; the voices of Angels cry out to his people telling us to repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
How much time are you spending sitting watching the TV? Watching other people’s lives and experiences rather than creating you own? When we seek inspiration to help make decisions, the Lord gives gentle promptings. These require us to think, to exercise faith, to work, to struggle at times, and to act. Seldom does the whole answer to a decisively important matter or complex problem come all at once. More often, it comes a piece at a time, without the end in sight. Endless appreciation to our Father in Heaven whose blessings depend upon our obedience, but whose ratio of blessings to obedience makes him a generous God! Heavenly Father, please shine your light upon our families. Give us strength to overcome all of the difficulties that we are dealing with now and protect us against any and all problems we may encounter in the future. Lord, please bring us together where we are meant to be. May the love that binds us only grow stronger as we fulfill the destiny you have laid out for us. Grant us forgiveness for any sins we have committed. May we also forgive one another Lord, as it is sometimes difficult to do. Bless us God, in your name I pray, bless it be. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Our Sure Knowledge of a Resurrection to Immortality
Resurrection is much more than merely reuniting a spirit to a body. The resurrection is a restoration that brings back carnal for carnal and good for that which is good. I am not the one who is so far away, when I feel the snake bite enter my veins, never did I want to be here again, and I do not remember why I came. Who is this irresistible creature, who has an insatiable lust for the dead? Living dead girl. Candles raise my desire why I am so far away, no more meaning to my life, no more reason to stay. Freezing feeling. Hazing clouds rain on my head, as empty thoughts fills my ears, and find my shade by the moon light. Why my thoughts are not so clear? Demons dreaming. Breathe in, breathe in because I am coming back again. Never did I want to, did I want to be here again. You know I cannot believe you, all the things you say, they are not true. However, I fear I cannot just leave you. All I feel is that I need you my love. This is all my spirit can take, anymore and I will surely meet decay. Will you not reach out and touch my heartache, feel it beating, please do not throw it away. I cannot believe your careless speech, your burning eyes, pass through me. I never thought our love would die, but how could I, I could not see. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Our sure knowledge of a resurrection to immortality also gives us the courage to face the unknown. Baby girl you know that I need you, cannot believe that you would leave me this way. If my pain will not appease you, so it please you I have got nothing to say. I now begin to realize, you are not the girl I once knew. However, deep beneath those hollow eyes, reasons that die in part of you, of you. Come on though you shut the Moon out, as though it were bright as Sun in the day. I would crawl through a dementia in your head, you would show me a way. I never thought our love would die, but how could I, I could not see. See for you, I will cry, cry for you, for you. Rage in the cage and piss upon the stage. There is only one sure way to bring the giant down. Defunct the strings of cemetery things with one flat foot on the Devils wings. Crawl on me, skin into me, die for me, living dead girl. Raping the geek and hustling the freak like a hunchback juice on a sentimental noose. Operation filth. They love to love the wealth of an S.S. whore making scary sounds. Cyclone jack hallucinating hack do you think Donna Reed eats dollar bills. Gold foots machine creates another fiend so beautiful they make you, kill. Blood on her skin, dripping with sin. Do it again living dead girl. They were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
And I said unto them, why are you troubled? And why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Despite these Biblical witnesses, many who call themselves Christian reject or confess serious doubts about the reality of the resurrection. The possibility that a mortal who has died will be brought forth and live again in a resurrected body has awakened hope and stirred controversy through much of recorded history. Relying on clear scriptural teachings, it has been affirmed that God has broken the bands of death and that death is swallowed up in the victor. We readily accept the numerous scriptural doctrines that a similar resurrection will come to all mortals who have ever lived upon this Earth. The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time; now, this restoration shall come to all, both antiquated and young, both bond and free, both male and female, both the wicked and the righteous; and even there shall not be so much as a hair of their heads be lost; but everything shall be restored to its perfect frame. We should all praise God for the assured resurrection that makes our mortal separations temporary and gives us the hope and strength to carry on. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Many living witnesses can testify to the literal fulfillment of these scriptural assurances of the resurrection. Many, including some in my own extended family, have seen a departed loved one in vision or personal appearance and have witnessed their restoration in proper and perfect frame in the prime of life. Whether these were manifestations of persons already resurrected or of righteous spirits awaiting an assured resurrection, the reality and nature of the resurrection of mortals is evident. What a comfort to know that all who have been disadvantaged in life from birth defects, from mortal injuries, from disease, or from the natural deterioration of antiquated age will be resurrected in proper and perfect frame. For thou who sleeps in stone and clay, heed this call, rise up and obey, trek on through the mortal door, assemble flesh and be raised in immortality unto eternal life, reunite the spirit and the body. This is the great and eternal plan of deliverance from death. In our eternal journey, the resurrection is the mighty milepost that signifies the end of mortality and the beginning of immortality. We are living in a glorious season of temple and this is a consequence of our faith in resurrection. May our understanding be enlarged. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
It will here be objected that this is the well-known hysterical imitation, the ability of hysterical subjects to imitate all the symptoms which impress them when they occur in others, as though pity were aroused to the point of reproduction. This, however, only indicates the path which the psychic process follows in hysterical imitation. But the path itself and the psychic act which follows this path are two different matters. The act itself is slightly more complicated than we are prone to believe the imitation of the hysterical to be; it corresponds to an unconscious end-process, as an example will show. The physician who has, in the same ward with other patients, a female patient suffering from a particular kind of twitching, is not surprised if one morning he learns that this peculiar hysterical affection has found imitators. He merely tells himself: The others have seen her, and have imitated her; this is psychic infection. Yes, but a psychic infection occurs somewhat in the following manner: As a rule, patients know more about one another than the physician knows about any one of them, and they are concerned about another when the doctor’s visit is over. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
The is how the psychic infection happens. One of them has an attack today: at once it is known to the rest that a letter from home, a recrudescence of lovesickness, or the like, is the cause. Their sympathy is aroused, and although it does not emerge into consciousness they form the following conclusion: If it is possible to suffer such an attack; but it is formed in another psychic region, and consequently ends in the realization of the dreaded symptoms. Thus identification is not mere imitation, but an assimilation based upon the same etiological claim; it expresses a just like, and refers to some common condition which has remained in the unconscious. In hysteria identification is most frequently employed to express a sexual community. The hysterical woman identifies herself by her symptoms most readily—though not exclusively—with persons with whom she has had sexual relations, or who have had sexual intercourse with the same persons as herself. We believe in the literal, universal resurrection of all humankind because of the resurrection of the Holy One called The Living Christ—the immortal Son of God. His way is the path that leads to happiness in this life and eternal life in the World to come. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
そして私は彼らに言った、なぜあなたは悩んでいますか？あなたの心にはなぜ思考が生まれますか？これらの聖書の証人にもかかわらず、キリスト教徒と呼ぶ者の多くは、復活の現実について深刻な疑念を拒否したり告白したりします。死んだ死人が復活した体で再び生き返って生きるという可能性は、記録された歴史の多くを通して希望を起こし、論争を巻き起こした。明確な聖句の教えに依拠して、神が死の団を壊し、死が勝利者に呑み込まれたと断言されました。私たちは、これまでにこの地球に住んでいたすべての人に同様の復活が起こるという多くの聖句の教義を容易に受け入れます。精神と体は完全な形で再び再会される。四肢と関節の両方は、現時点でさえも、その適切な枠組みに復元されなければならない。今、この修復は老いも若も、絆と自由の両方、男性と女性の両方、邪悪な者と義人の両方に来るはずです。彼らの頭の髪の毛が紛失するほどではない。すべてが完全な枠組みに復帰しなければならない。私たちは、私たちの死の分裂を一時的にし、私たちに遂行する希望と強さを与えてくれる、確かな復活のために神を賞賛すべきです。
Call on the Lord Out of Pure Heart
With purity of heart, we reflect the Savior’s love and give others a glimpse of Heaven. There is only pure knowledge in God. Knowledge does not exist for its own sake (that is, for the purpose of contemplation) but always aims at the pragmatic reconstruction of being itself. Sometimes we feel discouraged because we are not more of something—more spiritual, respected, intelligent, healthy, rich, friendly, or capable. Naturally, there is nothing wrong with wanting to prove. God created us to grow and progress. However, remember, our deficits can help us to be humble and turn to Christ, who will make weak things become strong. Satan, on the other hand, uses our weaknesses to the point that we are discouraged from even trying. He has sent people wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed to make them ashamed of themselves. The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the people have not yet found their freedom in the promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the people. What we need to realize is that in life we do not need to be more of anything to start to become the person God intended us to become. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
God will accept you for who you are at this very moment and begin to work with you. All you need is a willing heart, a desire to believe, and trust in the Lord. Love replaces control as the motive for knowledge of essences. Essence refers to some elusive, unattainable, inner content of a thing which is hidden from perception. It is the properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. It is strongly believed both that the essence resides in the real or extra-mental thing and that it is able to be known. You ever hear someone say that they like a person because of their essence? The energy of the mind is the essence of life. It is something that radiates from the soul, the very core of their being, it is part of their personality, the way they smile, and their style. Essence, is an immanent consciousness of our experience. It is a realm of being and value which is in basis and origin utterly different from the whole reaming empirical World. If we look at ourselves only through our mortal eyes, we may not see ourselves as good enough. However, our Heavenly Father sees us as who we truly are and who we can become. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Although knowledge of essences is acquired by observing even a single real or imaginary object, God sees us as his sons and daughters, as beings of eternal light with everlasting potential and with a divine destiny. Ultimate being is presumed to contain rational power and an infinite spirit as well as an irrational driving force that appears in the life cycle of individuals. Just as the macrocosm is a replica of the microcosm, so are humans a microtheos, a miniature God, and is thereby the primary source of the access to God. Genesis 1.27 reports: So, God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Just think about that for a moment. That is very powerful. God’s greatest desire is for you to see a clear picture of his character. When you see God clearly, you will find his love irresistible. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being. He stands for wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. In our hearts, we know that is true, and God makes no mistakes. There is absolutely no sin nor evil thought in God at all. He is perfection and moral purity. God possesses perfect knowledge and is all-knowing, his knowledge is infinite. It is impossible to hide anything from God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
Everything that God has promised will come to pass. His faithfulness guarantees this fact. God is the truth. This is extremely important for us to understand because it is on God’s faithfulness that our hope of eternal life rests. He will honor his promise that our sins will be forgiven, as long as we repent, and we will live forever with him. The metaphysis of salvation is therefore a kind of meta-anthropology. Understanding of God—the ground of being—is to be achieved not through theoretical contemplation, but through active commitment. All people share in the divine nature; they sense it in the drive of sympathy and love toward oneness with the Universe, which is the way to God. Human beings are thus a cocreator with God. The Savior’s sacrifice opened the door of salvation for all to return to God. His grace is sufficient for all who humble themselves before God. His grace is the enabling power that allows access into God’s kingdoms of salvation. Because of his grace, we will all be resurrected and saved in a kingdom of glory. It surpasses all understanding, and countless people will inherit this salvation. It is life eternal in the presence of our Father in Heaven. It is the greatest gift of God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
In the celestial kingdom, we receive of God’s fullness, and of his glory. Indeed, all that the Father has shall be given unto us. Exaltation is our goal; discipleships is our journey. Through the phenomenological approach to ethics and to values in general—this is, the description of the ethical states of consciousness and of existence. As we exercise a little faith and begin our walk as peaceable followers of our Lord Jesus Christ, our hearts will change, and our whole being will be filled with light. Joy about good news, for instance, is an experience with a subjective as well as an objective pole. The object of that experience is seen as a good thing, which instantiates a value. It follows that there are such things as cognitive emotions and that they point to certain real objects. Some values are experiences as having characteristics that might best be described and evoked by the word eternal. God will help us become something greater than we ever thought possible, and we will discover that the gospel of Jesus Christ is indeed working in our lives. It is true. God is living to fill us with his love. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
We may understand another’s emotion, and even feel empathy or experience the contagion of his or her feeling, or we may feel as one with another individual, that is, feel totally identifies. In none of these instances do we feel sympathy. Authentic sympathy is not the experience of fusion; it recognizes, meets, and respects unequivocally the subjectivity of another human existence in a genuine encounter. To love is to experience spontaneously the movement from a lower to a higher value in the object loved, an experience that leads to sudden intimation of the object’s superior value. Love is the adumbration of human possibilities; it is thus the sine qua non (an essential condition; a thing that is absolutely necessary) for sympathy and the basis for the religious ideal of infinite compassion and unqualified acceptance. God’s love affects the way we live. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul and love your neighbor as you love yourself. God loves us even when we choose to reject his love. In those times, he allows us to walk away into the life of our own choices. Yet, he is still there, always ready to redeem us from the results of our decisions. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
We should focus on the simplicity that is in Christ and allow his grace to life and carry us during our journey from where we are now to our glorious destiny in our Heavenly Father’s presence. We have direct, immediate, and primary access to the minds of other people. Careful description of our consciousness of other bodies discloses that we experience directly the other’s pain in his or her tears and embarrassment in his or her blushing, even though there is in addition an inaccessible area (Intimsphare) in every person’s soul. Phenomenological analysis of the structure of experience also discloses that we are confronted by a neutral sea of being and that the process of judging data to be either subjective or objective is a constitutive act of our ego. May we choose to serve righteous cause as valiant emissaries of our Lord Jesus Christ, and remain pure in heart, and love the Lord and serve him, even amid our own trials. We must love one another and see in one another the beauty of the soul. Remember, the worth of souls is great in the sight of God. No matter how young or how old we are, each of us s precious in God’s sight. He loves us. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
The phenomenology of religion seeks to understand the ultimate nature of the divine, to study its manifestations in the World of human concerns, and to explore religion through an analysis of the act of faith. Proof of the existence of God must make allowances for direct intuitive manifestations (Aufweis). We are in search of an infinity, traditionally called God. Humans are God-seekers (Gottsucher). This search lead human beings to an ineffable numinous experience of an ultimate Personality, appropriately described as ens a se, being in itself, which has qualities that can be described metaphorically in the usual religious doctrines, rituals, and legends. God meets us half way in response to faith. Divine attributes are absoluteness, infinite goodness, infinite power, holiness, spirituality, and personality. Crucial to the religious experience is a feeling that human beings are nothing at all (Nichtigkeit). This so-called creature feeling (Geschopflichkeit) is the experience of direct contact with the source of one’s being; it is the feeling of infinite dependence (Gewirktheitserlebnis). We have no choice; we are coerced into responding religiously because the salvation of our souls is no matter to gamble with. #RandolphHarrus 8 of 9
We have a divine nature, and each have a glorious work to do. If we do so authentically we face God (Gott); it not, we face an idol (Gotze). Religious rituals, such as prayer, contrition, reverence, and strongly held spiritual beliefs well up from within our deepest nature. That a response to these states can be experiences—a response which does not come from the World of everyday experience—is presumably a fact of both historical and personal awareness. We may discover our individual and eternal worthy by acting in accordance with our divine purpose in mortality. As we follow the example of Jesus Christ and love God, and serve one another with kindness and compassion, we may stand in purity, blameless before God at the last day. We choose to serve the Lord in his righteous cause that we may become one with the Father and with the Son. We embark in the service of God with heart, might, mind, and strength. We receive the Holy Ghost and seek his promptings to guide our efforts. Righteousness emanates out to the World when we understand what God wants us to do and then we do it. The family is the very heart of the work of salvation. The divine plan of happiness enables family relations to be perpetuated beyond the grave. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
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What Shall We Do About It?
A succession of small successfully kept promises leads to integrity. As we keep our promises, we feel the Spirit in our lives. Experience is not just an aggregate of heterogeneous items of mental content, but a structured whole whose two poles are pure consciousness, as a constitutive, meaning-conferring activity, and the World, conceived as the transcendent correlate of these intentional acts of consciousness. Between many of us and the World there is ever an unmasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. Why did God make some of us outcast and strangers in our own house? Many people feel different from others in heart and life and longing; shut out from the vast World by a veil. However, over the years, as we mature, all this fine contempt begins to fade for the Worlds we long for, and all its dazzling opportunities becomes more appealing. We want to use our best powers and latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The powers flashed here and there like falling stars, and died sometimes before the World had rightly gauged their brightness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
Intellectual work is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and its own highest reward. Aspirations of human beings runs so deep as to be virtually definitive of what it is to be a human being: the aspiration to find one’s own individual being in a rational necessity of some sort. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the souls of people forward with strength and courage is pure consciousness. To teach and help raise a sin-resistant generation might strike a deep spiritual cord within you. We have a master concept of human existence in the Holy Bible, which teaches us about the total human reality. Life must be treated as a spontaneous activity of consciousness and not as something that is passively suffered or undergone. Emotion is in fact not a physiological phenomenon, but a certain total mode of relating oneself to the World; its peculiar strategy is that of a magical transformation of given situations that bypass the necessity for dealing with them by rational, step-by-step methods. Thus, sadness makes the World appear sad so that it offers no opening to our efforts to change it, and in this way it justifies our passivity by making purposeful effort seems pointless. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
This self-imposed passivity is called a degradation of consciousness, a concept which is a clear forerunner of the bad faith that figures so largely with people who have lost confidence in humanity. How can emotion (or any other mental function) be interpreted as a spontaneous and purposive activity without attributing an intolerably sophisticated kind of self-consciousness to those who have the emotion? We have to set up an intermediate kind of self-awareness between explicit or reflective consciousness of self (as when I am writing and think to myself, I am writing) and events of which we are completely unconscious (for example, the circulation of the blood). This intermediary is exemplified by the awareness that I have of what I am doing—my intention—while I am doing. This is what is known as a non-positional consciousness and the strategies of action, such as those which are taken to be characteristic of the emotions, can be attributed to it without any of the incongruities that would result is explicit or verbal self-awareness were required. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
We honor people who strive to live pure and obedient lives. The strength of many people throughout the World is resilient, steadfast, and immovable in a variety of challenging circumstances and environments. These people with pure consciousness understand their divine identity, feel the Heavenly Father’s love for them, and seek to obey his will. The human consciousness is free because it is forced to think of itself as—and this is—other than the World and unincorporable into any casual sequences it may discern within the World. The feeling of anguish is our experience of this freedom. There who are susceptible to negativity. People who do not have the proper influences in their lives and their minds are being wounded, and are in need of some reinforcement and support. There is kind of a reality-negating function which is happening in some families and in the community where people in positions of authority are knowingly setting bad examples by telling others to fight certain individuals and making them feel that it is okay to do drugs and drink liquor, and it is not. Many attempt to conceal with freedom from themselves by a variety of devices, the most typical of which is belief in some form of psychological determinism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
All of these efforts are doomed to failure because human beings can try to conceal their freedom only to the extent that they recognize it. The attempt succeeds only in producing a paradoxical internal duality of consciousness in which consciousness thinks of itself as a thing at the same time that it gives recognition to its freedom. This state, which has to be carefully distinguished both from lying to others and from the Freudian conception of a manipulation of consciousness by subconscious forces called bad faith. Its antithesis is an acceptance of one’s own freedom and a recognition that human beings are the absolute origin of, and are solely responsible for, their own acts. When you are planning to mug someone or rob a business, how do you get past all the thoughts telling you that what you are about to do is very, very wrong? How is it that criminals who carry out immoral acts day after day manage to convince themselves that they are actually rational people? To be a career criminal, you either have to be a master of self-deception, or genuinely just do not care. The majority of criminals either make excuses for, or attempt to justify, their actions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
There is little evidence that criminals make justifications prior to committing the crimes, so it is possible—and somewhat likely—that they are conjured up afterwards as a way to mitigate the guilt. Criminals use a technique called neutralization theory. By using the neutralization theory, criminals are able to ignore values that would otherwise prohibit them from carrying our certain acts by: denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of the victim, condemnation of the condemners, and appealing to higher loyalties. This impossible combination of being-for-itself and being-in-itself, and in this impossibility is the ultimate reason for the hopeless character of these human enterprises (which is an attempt to make oneself God). And there is no way you can teach these people why what they are doing is wrong because they know and do not care and they will repeat the behavior until they have achieved their objective or are punished by the law. Their life-attitudes are self-contradictory because they are making an effort to achieve the status of a thing while remaining a consciousness that contemplates itself as a thing. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
However, their effort to convince themselves that they are God must fail, or while human beings (in most cases) are absolutely responsible for their choices, their existence is not the result of conscious choice. It is simply a fact, and it is uneliminable contingency makes it impossible for human beings to be ontologically self-sufficient in the way that God must be. These criminals often justify their wrong doings to others, including attempted murder or murder, by blaming corrupt politicians, police, and society. They also convince themselves that the ends justify the means by saying their victims deserved it or were asking for it, and they keep telling themselves that they are doing good and being successful, and repeat it so many times that they actually believe it. They treat them crimes as a skill and it helps them mitigate feelings of guilt. In their minds, it legitimizes the behavior. Criminals may view themselves as skilled entrepreneurs rather than someone who made a living by committing immoral acts. Alma 8.11 reports: We do not believe in such foolish traditions. We have enlisted in the cause of Christ to withstand the powers of Lucifer. We need to strengthen our spiritual strategies. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. We must teach people to become sin-resistant by teaching ourselves and others to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and to pray and to walk uprightly before the Lord. The Spirit will inspire us in the most effective ways we can spiritually inoculate our children. Being sin-resistant means being continually repentant, vigilant, and valiant. To help people become sin-resistant, we have to lovingly infuse them with the respect of the law and to honor God and want to be honest and understand that it is important to be on a high moral level, even when no one is paying attention to their behavior because God sees everything and will judge us for our actions. Keeping commitments prepares people to make and keep sacred covenants. When we talk about covenant keeping, we are talking about the heart and soul of our purpose in mortality. There is unusual power in making and keeping covenants with our Heavenly Father. It is even important to keep simple promises with our friends and family because it will empower us to keep holy covenants. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
The consummate reward of integrity is the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. Out of the well of integrity springs an empowered sin-resistant generation. The youth are great imitators, so we have to give them something great to imitate. True moral freedom is now projected into a future that will not be realized until the dialectic of human antagonism has run its course, and of this future we are indeed helping to teach and raise a sin-resistant generation unto the Lord promise by promise and covenant by covenant. We need to take a conscientious effort to devote our energy and time to the things that truly matter, while we uplift others and build the kingdom of God. Hearing the word of God with earnest intent leads us to believe in God and to trust his promises. The more we trust God, the more our hearts are filled with love for him and for each other. Because we love God, we want to serve him; we want to bless the lives of others and help the poor and needy. The more we walk in this path of discipleship, the more we desire to learn the word of God fillings us with ever-increasing faith, hope and charity. It is beautifully simple, and it works beautifully. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
1164 Morning Glory Circle
There will always be something worth living for while there are shimmery afternoons. Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Do not wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it is at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored. Pause for a moment an enjoy the elegant show window of a prestigious furniture store. Let the beautifully designed sofa, and the comfortable-appearing chairs and the coffee table catch your eyes. Gaze at the amazing chandelier positioned overhead, and let your eyes rest as you image yourself relaxing with the evening paper. Each person is passionate about his or her own projects and is primarily interested in cultivating them with the minimum outside interference. To some extent, modern humans are capable of governing themselves, but their individual resources are insufficient. In order to prevent constant collision and frustration, some agency is required which will supervise a set of rules that is designed simply to serve this limited purpose. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
The image of the perfect ruler that of the umpire or referee who controls the game without participating in it himself or herself is the ideal protector of humanity. There will also be times when you will have to demonstrate your righteous courage in plain view of your peers, the consequences of which may be ridicule and embarrassment. Additionally, in your World, skirmishes with an adversary will also be fought on a silent, solitary battlefield in front of a screen. The political skeptic of government warns against the tendency of the specific activity of government to turn into something more grandiose and quite different. For there are many who dream of a perfectly harmonious condition of affairs and who deplore the waste and lack of planning in modern life. Such people regard the government as a vast reservoir of powers that are to be captured and guided in the direction of their own political dream. Politics thus becomes an encounter of dreams, and the umpire abandons his or her position and begins to play the game on his or her own account. In life, as in business, there has always been a need for those persons who could be called finishers. Their ranks are few, their opportunities many, their contributions great. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
From the very beginning to the present time, a fundamental question remains to be answered by each of us who runs the race of life. Shall I falter or shall I finish? On the answer await the blessings of joy and happiness here in mortality and eternal life in the World to come. For the skeptical conservative, one dream is on par with any other. Governments are not, and cannot be expected to become, repositories of truth: any such claims are impostures. A government that actually governs, rather than imposing some dream or other upon its subjects, will be guided, not by a vision of truth, nor by the attempt to impose one project upon its subjects, but by the evolution of the society it rules. Social life constantly generates new situations: some activities decline and new ones arise, a process which requires an adaption of the rules governing the society. However, the changes in the rules should always grow out of, rather than be imposed upon, the life which they regulate. Further, changes should be made economically or else they may lose their effectiveness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Frequent changes are deplorable in that they give rise to feverish hopes and disappointments which encourage further dreams of taking over the resources of government. All human achievements have been made (and sustained) in the face of great difficulties: authorities exist to guard such achievements and traditions against the continual threat of human folly, laziness, blindness, and stupidity. Conservatism stresses our responsibilities to our duties rather than on rights. We are not left without guidance to make this momentous decision. The Holy Bible contains those accounts, even those lessons, which, if carefully learned, will serve us well and be as a beacon light to guide our thoughts and influence our actions. As we read, we sympathize with those who falter. We honor those who finish. The moment God put a dream in your heart, the moment the promise took root, God not only started it, but he set a completion date. God is called the Author and the Finisher of our Faith. He would not have given you the dream, the promise would not have come alive, if God did not already have a plan to make it come true. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
Maybe at one time you believed that you could do something extraordinary. You had a dream of living the apple pie life, with a big house, two fancy cars, a three-bedroom house with three full bathrooms, and two main bedrooms, rooms big enough to fit more than one bed, stained glass windows, a washer dryer combination that literally does everything for you…washes, rinses, dries, and shuts off…in one continuous operation…without watching. Once you have tossed in soiled clothes, add Persil Pro Clean, set the time and temperature dials, your work is finished. Take them out at your leisure…clean, completely dried, and “Sun-freshed”…ready to iron, or fold and put away. Your hands never touch water, never come in contact with bleaches nor detergents. Wash at any time of the day, up to ten pounds of clothes. And then zip through a big family ironing in record time with the new Kenmore Automatic Ironer Machine, which features two roll speeds—fast for flat work and slow for fancy ruffles and frills. Both shoe and press controls helps to free hands for guiding work. With an exclusive adjustable light for best work area illumination. And a new, large drop-leaf, laps shelf. Easily accessible release bar. White baked-on enamel finish, and hinged cover and chrome hardware. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
You believed that you could have a twin top with griddle where you could roast a turkey and all the trimmings, broil other meats and vegetables, fry apple rings on the griddle—all this at the same time! With a smokeless waist-high broiler that is over-size. Chrome-plated broiler rack that adjusts easily to desired height. You dream of an oven with a deep Roast-R-Pan and trivet. With a Visi-bake own door that lets you have the fun of seeing what is cooking; peek-switch turns on oven light. Three giant, two standard top burners, and two Warm-R-Burners. Cook top covers with baking charts inside. Two utility drawers. And a Kenmore garbage burner where you dump food scraps, sweeper dirt and rubbish—anything burnable with a heavy-gauge steel body with a smooth, metallic brown baked-on enamel finish that has a top, grate, burner that is sturdy, warp-resistant cast iron. And of course, a kitchen with an automatic dishwasher, and a Coldspot freezer that can store up to 350 meals and have eleven convenient food store sections. With a quick-freeze compartment, three food elevator baskets, two storage baskets and adjustable basket. Ready rack to store juices, ice cream and small items. Along with a Coldspot refrigerator with rust proof structural aluminum shelving and an automobile type door lock. Color-tone interior beauty…gleaming white porcelain enamel with colorful harmonizing trim. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
God is telling you do not let lies play around in your mind. Your dream is not over. Keep thinking about the details of what you want. God set a completion date. It does not matter how long it has been or how impossible it looks. If you will stay in faith and not talk yourself out of it, it is just a matter of time before your dreams come true. Just because it has not happened yet does not mean it is not going to happen. God has already lined up the right people, the right opportunities, the right answers. Everything you need is already in your future. Let go of the doubt, shake off the discouragement. Whether it has been a year or one hundred and twenty-two years, what God promised you he still has every intention of bringing it to pass. In the Scripture, it reports that the Holy Spirit revealed to a man called Simeon that: he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah (Luke 2.26). You can image how far out that promise seemed. As time went by, and Simeon did not see any sign of the Messiah, negative thoughts came: “You heard God wrong. It has been too long. It is never going to happen.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
Nevertheless, Simeon awakened every morning believing, expecting, and knowing that it would happen, and one day it did. The promise came to a dramatic fulfillment and Simeon declared, “My eyes have seen God’s salvation!” I am keeping the faith that my dream will come true. I want a house just like Darrin and Samantha Stephens from Bewtiched, and exact replica down to the furniture and appliances, the only difference is I want a turret with a witches cap. And God is saying to all of us, in reference to our dreams, science does not matter, have faith and know that he is going to finish what he started. No one and nothing can stop God from fulfilling his promises. And God put that promise of that house in my heart as a kid. God promised to bring even the secret petitions of our hearts to completion. Some will try to push us down, steal our dreams, and talk us into settling for mediocrity, but we need to have this new attitude and believe that whatever God started in our lives, he will finish. Will you keep believing even though it looks impossible? Will you stay in faith, even though every voice tells you it is not happening? #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Samantha had no idea that she would ever meet Darrin, that they would get married, but they kept bumping into each other. One day, he came home from work and told her that he no longer wanted to live in someone else’s house with furnishings and curtains they picked out, and surprised her with a house he bought while she thought he was at work. It was a dream come true. If people want to believe the things in movies and on the Silvertone Console matched five-ply mahogany veneer television with magnificent “Photo-Tune” pictures that brings all the magic of no glare into our living rooms are real, could you image how much better our lives would be if we focused on the good stuff, and had faith in God? The Scripture says that for years Rachel desired to have a baby, but she had fertility problems. After she had given up on her dreams, it reported that: God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and enabled her to conceive (Genesis 30.22). It does not say that Rachel remembered God, but she must have been living right. So somewhere in her heart and mind she kept the divine law active. This is how much God wants you to fulfill your destiny. So, what are the incompletions in your life that you need to stay in faith about? #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
Lust of power, greed of popularity, and disdain for honor have every appeared as faces of failure in the panorama of life. Captivated by their artificial attraction, many noble souls have stumbled and fallen, thus losing the crown of victory reserved for the finisher of life’s great journey. We cannot impress upon you enough, it is best to be popular with God because eternal life is important. There is more to come after life on Earth and you do not want to spend your eternity in Hell. The damned do further evil in Hell. By doing further evil, they lose more being. The damned are confined in different places according to the second nature that they have acquired for themselves. Those, for example, who have given into wrath during their Earthly lives will be consigned to a place with like-minded people. The damned can then act according to their second nature and the sufferings and pain which they undergo emerge from their behaviour, as well as the behaviour and acts of others around them. So, people who are wrathful in their Earthly life, will be attacked and torn apart by others wrathful people. The damned cannot affect anyone with their evil actions as long as the person affected are the damned and so no further evil done. They wanted to live foul and that is what they will experience. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
Though Jesus was tempted by the evil one, he resisted. Though he was hated, he loved. Though he was betrayed, he triumphed. Not in a cloud of glory or chariot of fire was Jesus to depart mortality, but with his arms outstretched in agony upon a cruel cross. Mortality ended. Immortality began. Times change, circumstances vary, but the true marks of a finisher remain. Know them well, for they are vital to our success. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in humans. Recognize that faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other. Let virtue garnish your thoughts unceasingly. Courage becomes a living and active virtue when it is regarded as determination to live. When the burdens of life become heavy, when trials test one’s faith, when pain, sorrow, and despair cause the light of hope to flicker and burn low, communication with our Heavenly Father provides peace. Behave like a child of God, this is one who will finish life. Helaman 15.5 reports: Walk circumspectly before God, and observe and keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments according to the law of Moses. I pray that we will all be a finisher in this race of life and thus qualify for that precious prize: eternal life with our Heavenly Father in the celestial kingdom. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
The Details of Human Behavior are Unpredictable
God will hold us responsible for all the wonderful things on Earth that we refuse to enjoy. It is better than we should be servants of a kind master than the slave to our own wild passion. All conservatives are united in the belief that human affairs are extremely complicated and that the details of human behavior are unpredictable: this we may call the complexity thesis. The nature of human beings is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity: and be suitable either to human’s nature to qualify their affairs. Many conservatives have accepted some version of the doctrine of original sin and have taken the view that government is ordained by God as a remedy for human defect. It is heartwarming for us to receive so many good wishes from you all during the past six months and to feel your acceptance. Many of you have reported that you are praying for our President. We feel that spiritual strength and gratefully acknowledge it—both to you and to our Father in Heaven. Most people have agreed that virtue, stability, and civilization depend on the continuity of long-established institutions. Political stability is founded on state, church, and family, whole moral stability rests upon a strong sense of duty, preferably buttressed by religious belief. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Conservative accounts of the nature of humans may emphasize either our enduring sinfulness or our frailty. The only position conservatives cannot take without ceasing to be conservative is the belief that people are fundamentally good and perhaps ultimately perfectible. Jacob 4.13 reports: The Spirit speaks the truth and does not lie. Wherefore, it speaks of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly for the salvation of our souls. Religion is not a thing apart from life. It is not principles and ordinances or missionary work or leadership as an end in themselves. It is manifested by the kind of people we are, by our relationship with our Heavenly Father and his Son and all the commandments, by the measure in which we qualify for the approval of our own Spirit-guided conscience, and by the way we treat other people. It is a continuing marvel to me how well and with what grace and unselfish goodness so many live this sacred commandment. And is it sad to think that some may, in joyless version of the gospel, miss the special blessing awaiting on the path established by our Savior and leading to the highest joy through Christian service and sacrifice. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
I never trust writers or entertainers who say critics do not bother them. Adversity is all about us and among us. It is an inevitable element of mortality, and many have some share in it ultimately. An explosive device detonates on London Subway, on 15 September 2017, injuring commuters. This is the fifth attack on London in 2017. Authorities confirm in this specific attack 29 people were injured at Parson Green Tube station in Southwest London. Thankfully there were not life-threatening injuries. God and Christ love us with a mature, perfect love. The plan by which they lead requires mortal instruments of their love. We have the great honor to be invited to be such instruments. We need them, but they also need us. In this service, we find the foundation of those blessings that God wants us to enjoy. If you will always be more fair and more kind to others than a few of them may sometimes be to you, you will enjoy every sweet blessing life afford. The sweetness of true Christian service is often experienced in obscurity—in quiet rooms in houses and hospitals and places of confinement, in military barracks, schools, and in other places far from public attention. Usually it is unheralded, but it reflects the standards set by the Savior for those who will inherit the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the World. These are they who serve the hungry and the thirsty and the unclothed and homeless and those who are sick and imprisoned, and who do this after the pattern in the spirit of God. To those who so serve God promised eternal life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Do you not supposed that this is all; for after you have done all these things, if you turn away the needy, and unclothed, and visit not the sick and afflicted, and impart of your substance, is you have, to those who stand in need—if you do none of these things, behold, your prayer is vain, and nothing will come to you because you are hypocrites who do deny the faith. Empathy cuts through our isolation, generating a network of interconnection. Empathy brings our heart out of the cold. Empathy makes compassion possible. However, empathy also needs an empathic boundary, meaning we sometimes need to take a step back so we do not get overly absorbed in or identified with others’ emotional states—standing back just far enough to keep them in clear focus, resonating with what they are feeling without losing ourselves in it. Being empathetic does not mean putting up with other people’s emotional and mental nor physical mess because we feel what they are feeling, but it does make it very difficult to dehumanize them, regardless of how strong a stand we might need to take with them. Empathy helps keep us from getting numb, heady, or overly detached. It begins with and reinforced vulnerability. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Emotional literacy blends emotional sensitivity, understanding, and savvy. It means knowing what you are feeling while you are feeling it, and being able to both contain and openly express it. That spirit is still operative among the people of the Church. We should not have to talk about our religion to others, our values should come through like the Sun in the Summertime. One of the first steps in developing greater emotional literacy is uncovering whatever shame you might have about your lack of such literacy. We need to cultivate intimacy with our emotions, getting close enough to all of them, to know them and our ways of handling them from the inside. The people whom they served have looked upon them with almost the reverence that they might have bestowed upon the Savior himself. And when they have experiences this purifying blessing—the blessing of service. Each of your emotions is worth getting to know very, very well—its nature, its purpose, its expression, its containment, its value, your history with it, your use of it. Across the World, such individual investment of self in service is happening, following the example and teachings of the Lord, who laid upon the altar his very life for the blessing of others. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Sometimes hurts to the heart are more damaging than physical blows. Yes, they may take longer to heal, but they will heal more quickly if we avoid bitterness and anger and practice forgiveness. The royal law of love is of sacred significance in the Lord’s program for his people—an element as vital as any other in the gospel. It is inseparable from them and the spirit of them. It is well known to us institutionally; indeed, the Church to which we have the honor to belong is celebrated for knowing and acting upon it on occasions of great need across the Earth. Courage is an essential attribute, for without it other highly valued qualities, like compassion and integrity, would lack the strength and resolve needed to shift into actions. Take pride in what we (and others) have done can be a beautiful part of honoring ourselves and others. The human soul is infinite and not in the least under its own command. Love: an absorbing concentration on some one object, an intense movement to a single point, a gravitation of your whole being around a solitary centre. May we honor that commandment and those who do so well personally to accept God’s invitation to impart to others both temporally and spiritually, according to their needs. That we may do so, I humbly pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Envision What a Happy Ending Might Look Like
Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on Earth in the night season, and melt away in the first bream of the Sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the World. Human beings can achieve goodness and fulfill their nature when they act according to reason. A person who lives his or her life according to reason is a good and happy person. How necessary and important it is that we all continually strive to improve ourselves and prepare for the day when a call might come to serve in a new or more responsible position! The whole purpose of our existence in mortality is to build the kingdom of God and to prove ourselves worthy to go back to into God’s presence. To act and live according to reason is what is objectively good for every human being. However, this does not suppose that every human being knowingly desires a life lived according to reason. Wishing what is ultimately good is to desire union with God, and only those who exercise their specifying potentiality—reason—can do so. Part of what it is to suffer is to prevent someone from being what he or she ought to be, that is, to prevent him or her from flourishing. On the other hand, to cause someone to suffer is to prevent him or her from fulfilling his or her desires. Therefore, suffering is bad because it undermines or destroys what the sufferer cares about, his or her own flourishing, his or her desires, or both. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Fate is just even to rival storytellers, and balance matters. In this brief time, away from our Heavenly home and parents is a time when we are given agency for the purpose of being tried and tested in every way. There will be some days when we are stressed and sad, and we will face some hard tests. It is important to learn from them and grow from them. These experiences will teach us to be stronger. God cares and loves you very, very much. The experience of pain and heartaches, sorrows, and tribulations give us all experience; we can also make them work for our own good. Difficulties are just God’s errands. If we are sent upon them, it is an evidence of his confidence in us. Therefore, let us be glad, be happy, for it is a way of being wise. God loves you and he is ever willing to help you at all times. Just call on God through fervent prayers. God never fails; he is there, he is listening, and he cares very deeply about you. With daily prayer, scripture study, and our feet firmly planted on the road to the celestial kingdom, we have a perfect brightness of hope. God loves with a great love the people whose heart is bursting with a passion for the extraordinary. When you face situations that seem impossible, we should pray. When we ask, God releases favor. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
I remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away into the World of dreams. There is a secret way of the soul which all may know, it is the way of peace and love. This secret way leads into places of joy and into the house of God. It is the way of the spirit and all may enter who will. Plant your feet firmly on the path to the celestial kingdom. Lift up your heart and let your soul rejoice, and never give up. When you ask God, angels go to work and strongholds are broken. When you ask, God beings to turn things around in your favor, and you will see the greatness of God. As love enters, fear vanishes. God will fill us with love that no fear can enter our thoughts and perfect intelligence guards and governs our every act. Our soul will rejoice at the realization of life, and we cannot be depressed because God has claimed us as his own. The light of God has come and the day of salvation is near. We need those who bring gladness into our lives. We need those who give encouragement and reflect optimism. Sincere yet simple words of praise can lift souls and bring gladness. Encouragement can be quick and simple, but it is a voice of gladness that is needed by everyone. Some things in life are precious like freedom and liberty and are very important. Many have had their lives changed permanently fighting for our freedom, but their voices of gladness overshadow the prevailing interruption and sacrifices they have made for all of us. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
You have no right to dispose of your future destiny whilst there is the least probable chance you may be reclaimed. God never made a promise that was too good to be true. Hope springs eternal for those who have the vision to trust in and to live by God’s inspired principles. Thank God for noble souls who can and do weather life’s storms with sincere voices of gladness which overshadow the present and make the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ real and strengthening. Have a faith that God can see. Put actions behind what you believe. Demonstrate your faith. You may not see how your dream could ever work out, but as you take steps in faith, you will see God open new doors. You will have the strength to do what you could not do. You will see God’s favor in unusual ways. The voices of gladness from the scriptures remind us that we do not have to walk through life alone. We do not have to run around like savages jumping on each other’s bones. Christ came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. 2 Nephi 25.23 reports: For we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do. Therefore, know that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Let us remember that acts of kindness with pure motives and righteous purposes can be and are encouraged to be done in quietness, gentle voices, and in privacy. We can program ourselves to build, encourage, and give strength. Moroni 7.47 reports: Charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endures forever; and who is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him or her. God’s spirit and power will comfort us as we extend ourselves in help and love to those who need us. However, God’s commandment that as we love him, we must respect ourselves, suggests we must not accept disrespect from others. It is not charity to bow down in despair and helplessness. That kind of suffering should be ended, and that is very difficult to do alone. If we help individuals to relieve pain, or loneliness, or injustice in our own communities, God promises that a compassion would enter our hearts, and through the Holy Ghost sanctification could take place within our souls, and we will become more like our Savior. I pray in all humility that our faith in God may move us to such action and that we may thus know, by the Holy Spirit, the meaning of charity, so that we can exercise it in our lives. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
What secret of happiness is greater than to follow your illusions? Experience is a great teacher, except when it is not. What we make of experience—and whether it serves us or harms us—depends on the knowledge we build out of it. And make no mistake: we are all master knowledge builders, able to turn the most random events into meaningful knowledge about the World and how to operate it. Much of this knowledge is called experiential knowledge, and it lies outside our awareness, where it is difficult to see or assess. Father in Heaven, thank you for bring to completion the good work you began in us. You promised to complete our incompletions. So, thank you Lord that the fulfillment of our dreams is on the way, even the secret petitions of our hearts. You spoke the Worlds into existence, and you have us in the palm of your hands. I believe that you will make sure we complete what you put us here to do. As we move forward in faith, the foundation of greatness is being laid, which will allow us to go beyond our barriers and become everything God created us to be, and everything he intended for us to have will come to fruition. In Jesus name, Amen. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Randolph Harris II International Institute 