Ever wonder what those “Mormon missionaries” are so persistent about? Why they knock doors and ride bikes and do service projects and seem so cheerful and eager? It’s not for money (we’re all volunteers), praise, or adventure factor. To help you understand why we do what we do, here’s why quit my job for a year and a half, put on a nametag, learned a new language, and became a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Something special I believe in is the possibility for marriage to last to eternity and beyond, happily forever after. That fairytale ending is not just a nice story, it’s something we can all experience. Just as we don’t honor someone’s state professional license in a different state, the earthly authority of someone to marry is valid on earth, until death. However when a marriage is sealed by one acting with the power and authority of God, that marriage is binding wherever we go, even after death. That message of forever families is at the center of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That power to seal families eternally is real, it’s been given to prophets throughout history, and was given once again to a prophet named Joseph Smith in the 1830s. My treasure in life is my family. Jesus taught: “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
We’re not here to pay bills and die. We’re here to come to know God, and to know Christ, and live up to our divine heritage as children of a Heavenly Father. I remember in college I was sad because my friends kept graduating and leaving to far away places, and I was tired of loving and caring about someone only to say goodbye earlier than I wanted. Building relationships with people that will last forever— that’s what we’re made for, which is why goodbyes can feel so wrong.
The perspective I gain from knowing that what I do here on earth, what I treasure, and how I love others will last longer than til death gives me hope that grounds me and peace I wouldn’t trade for anything.
That hope for a better world gives me the power to change myself and see my life as a time to prepare for eternity as part of a forever family. With Christ, fairytales are reality, and to me, that’s something worth sharing.
If you want to learn more about anything I've written, even just out of sheer curiosity or a desire to understand, comment below or message me. If you want to read more about what I believe, you can scroll through my blog posts, or visit ComeUntoChrist.org
Thank you, Becca, for expressing your purpose and testimony 💕
ReplyDeleteLove it, Becca. When Elder Uchtdorf made that statement about how endings are such a foreign concept to us as potential eternal beings, it put into words something I've always felt very deeply but could never express. This life is so precious and important, but there's more. This isn't the end!
ReplyDeleteDo you really believe there will be marriage in heaven? Jesus didn't think so.
ReplyDeleteMatthew 23-33: 23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 24 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27 Finally, the woman died. 28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”
29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”
33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.
So no, we will not have marriage in heaven. The deeper you look you'll find that the Jesus of LDS is not the Jesus of the OT and NT, no matter how LDS likes to frame Jesus.