Unshakable🍒Faith

Catholics are called Catholics. Baptists are called Baptists. Lutherans are called Lutherans. Methodists are called Methodists. Jehovah's Witnesses are called Jehovah's Witnesses. Muslims are called Muslims. Jews are called Jews. Evangelicals are called Evangelicals. Calvinists are called Calvinists. Quakers are called Quakers. Buddhists are called Buddhists. . . . Members of the Church of Jesus Christ are called Saints. (See Acts 9:13, 32, 41; Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2; Philip. 1:1; 1 Pet. 1:14–15)

Evangelical: I’d like to tell you about Mormonism. Mormon: Oh, are you a former member? Evangelical: No. Mormon: Have you read the Book of Mormon? Evangelical: No. Mormon: Doctrine & Covenants? Evangelical: No. Mormon: Pearl of Great Price? Evangelical: No. Mormon: General Conference? Evangelical: No. Mormon: Official Church publications? Evangelical: No. Mormon: Then where did you learn what Mormons believe? Evangelical: A guy on YouTube who learned it from another guy on YouTube who learned it from an anti-Mormon website in 2007. Mormon: Ah. Please continue explaining my religion to me.

The Jews were all like, “Blasphemy! Stone him!” And then Jesus was all like, “Hey Jews, why are you trying to stone me?” And they’re like, “Because you said you were God.” And then Jesus is like, “Wo wo, slow your role… it’s like already written in Psalms that you all are gods. So why you mad?” And then Joseph Smith one day was like, “we are all gods because we are coeternal with God the Father.” And then Christians are like, “Blasphemy! Stone him!”

Mormons believe in Christ… in fact the name of our church has been and always will be: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. “And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins”. - 2 Nephi 25:26 I wanted to share the lyrics to one of my favorite hymns.🫶🏼 And I add with this testimony, that I know my Savior lives and loves me. He has saved me through the atonement. I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and will boldly proclaim that HE is my Advocate, my Healer, my Shepherd. “I believe in Christ; he is my King! With all my heart to him I’ll sing; I’ll raise my voice in praise and joy, In grand amens my tongue employ. I believe in Christ; he is God’s Son. On earth to dwell his soul did come. He healed the sick; the dead he raised. Good works were his; his name be praised. I believe in Christ; oh blessed name! As Mary’s Son he came to reign ’Mid mortal men, his earthly kin, To save them from the woes of sin. I believe in Christ, who marked the path, Who did gain all his Father hath, Who said to men: “Come, follow me, That ye, my friends, with God may be.” I believe in Christ—my Lord, my God! My feet he plants on gospel sod. I’ll worship him with all my might; He is the source of truth and light. I believe in Christ; he ransoms me. From Satan’s grasp he sets me free, And I shall live with joy and love In his eternal courts above. I believe in Christ; he stands supreme! From him I’ll gain my fondest dream; And while I strive through grief and pain, His voice is heard: “Ye shall obtain.” I believe in Christ; so come what may, With him I’ll stand in that great day When on this earth he comes again To rule among the sons of men”. - Bruce R. McConkie “By this shall man know, ye are my disciples, if ye have love, one to another” 🫶🏼

“Societies are not held together primarily by law and its enforcement, but by those who voluntarily obey the unenforceable because of their sense of accountability to God.” - Dallin H. Oaks

You have to attend ONE church for the rest of your life. Which one are you choosing?

I am going to share an experience that is real. It's how I ended up seriously exploring the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in my 20s. I have told five people. A Mormon bishop's family in Colorado, a Roman Catholic priest, my wife, and a good friend. I don't tell others. When I told the bishop's family, they laughed because it is unbelievable to some. I understand that. I am telling it anyway. I was in law school, and I was under immense stress. I had started the semester after spending the summer in the holy land. I was split down the middle on what to believe. Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, a half dozen other faiths, reading everyone, believing no one. So I asked God to do the one thing I could not do for myself. I asked him to reveal himself. Not an argument. Not a sign I could explain away by morning. Himself. I was lying on the couch. I went under, and then I came back up fast, the way you do when something is wrong, because something was standing over my face. I could feel it. A real presence, right above me, close, deliberate. I opened my eyes and there was no one. The room was empty. And I was awake. This is the part people want to take from me, and I will not give it up. I was awake. Then it came. An embrace. My body physically moved. Not the feeling of being loved — the love itself, with arms. Love beyond love. I keep saying it because there is no better way, and there is no way at all. Every word I reach for falls short and keeps falling. Abundance beyond abundance. More than I had room to hold, and more coming, and more behind that. Ineffability and inexplicable. It was so much that it frightened me, not because it was dark, but because it was too much light for one body. I said stop. I actually said it. Stop. And it stopped. I have lived a whole life since that couch. It never came again. The answer to my prayer did not come as a name. It came as love. I asked a question of theological doctrine and I was answered in a different language entirely — the way a father answers a frightened child, not with a syllogism but by picking the child up. Whatever was in that room had no interest in winning my theological argument for me. It had an interest in me. Notice second that I could not produce it, sustain it, or survive it at full strength. I said stop and it did, and that tells you two things at once. It was greater than me, because it overwhelmed me. And it was gentle with me, because it relented the instant I asked. That combination, overwhelming power that yields to a single weak word from the person it is overwhelming, is the whole grammar of grace. Power that listens. Vastness that is also tender. I was not crushed. I was held, and then released because I asked to be, and the releasing was as much love as the holding. Notice third that it never returned, and I no longer think that is abandonment. I think it is the point. I was not given a practice or a feeling I could go back to and refill. I was given one thing, once, in the difficult stretch of my life, and then I was sent back to live. People want the experience to repeat so they can be sure of it. But a thing that happened once and changed the floor I stand on does not need to repeat. The fire on the mountain burns once. The man carries it down for the rest of his days. You cannot be argued out of love beyond love once it has been poured into your own body. There is no counterargument to a thing you were inside of. The doctrines kept shifting under me for years, because doctrines are downstream. But what came in through the experience itself, not through my reading, held — and it held precisely because I did not reason my way to it. It was given. Two things were given. The first was a closing of doors. I went onto that couch torn between Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, and the rest, and I did not get up neutral. I came up knowing that Islam is not true. That a number of the other faiths I had been weighing are not true either. Emphatically not. I cannot hand you the proof, because it never came to me as proof — it came the way the love came, given and total, not the conclusion of an argument but the removal of a question. The second was what stayed standing once the doors had closed. God is love. That is the whole of it. 1 John 4:16 became my compass: God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. Everything I have read since, every tradition I have walked into and out of, I have measured against that one line — because that one line did not come from a book. It came in through my own skin, on a couch, in the worst year of my life, and it has never moved. And this love survives in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This I believe. I don't know the rest, but that's good enough for me at this point in my life.

To those who doubt: Justin and Kenna Valdez moved away from family so they could more easily walk away from their faith. But their eight-year-old son still wanted to be baptized. Sensing a door opening, a wise stake president scheduled us for a ministering visit to their home. Kenna eventually confided that she still had faith in the Savior, and even a testimony of the Book of Mormon, but faced a few triggering issues that held her back. We promised them that as they anchored on the things they believed, the Lord would help with the things they didn’t. Overcoming their concerns was not an issue of resolving every faith question but of helping them recognize the Holy Ghost. As President Dallin H. Oaks recently taught, “You live in a season where the adversary has become so effective at disguising truth that if you don’t have the Holy Ghost, you will be deceived.” Justin and Kenna began to make the changes necessary to come back to church. Six months after our visit, Kenna texted me: “Hi Elder Gilbert! We are ready to be sealed as a family.” This is a photo from the day they were sealed at the temple. Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling all of us home.

He always was a stickler for the creeds…