Steve Nash: Man, Myth, Legend

Steve Nash. Point guard for the Phoenix Suns. 2 time NBA MVP. One of the all-time leading players for assists in the NBA. And overall, just a classy guy. A year or two ago I was for some reason or other drawn to the Phoenix Suns. I'm not sure exactly why, their record wasn't super great at the time and they haven't won any championships in a while. I think it was mostly because of Steve Nash. He is known for his ability to see the whole court and to pass the ball to the person who can do the most with it. His best ability is not in scoring, but in being a team player. That is what makes him such a phenomenal athlete, it's not his sheer skill or ability alone, but his ability to bring the best out of other people.

Spiritually speaking, we can all become a "Steve Nash" in our own way. When we enter into the covenant of baptism, we promise certain things, and the Lord promises us certain things in return and helps strengthen us to keep those promises. Part of this covenant states:

"... as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another burdens, that they may be light; Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in.... Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized int he name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?" (Mosiah 18:8-10)

Jesus Christ wants us to become the best we can be, He wants us to be our very own Steve Nash or MVP. He knows we can become the best player on the court that we can be by serving or assisting others, just like Steve Nash. By being humble, submitting our own skills or abilities to the will of the Lord, and instead choosing to help others, to "mourn with those that mourn" and to "comfort those that stand in need of comfort" we become even stronger and better players than we could be when left to ourselves. We can help bring out the best in other people.  

The world's a court, and everyone's a player.

Do you want to be an MVP or a bench-warmer on the Lord's team?

A Blessing In Disguise

Opposition. Every athlete knows you need it to become stronger. Well, every dedicated athlete does. Without constant training, excercise, and activity, the muscles in the body will weaken and lose their use or effectiveness.
We lift weights, we go running, we get sore. In the end is that such a bad thing?



It is if you do it like this guy....

 Our soreness comes from micro tears in our muscles, seperations you could say, from one end of the muscle to the other. That's why we hurt. The muscles does not have the capability to heal itself with no outside help. It needs nourishing by proteins and other crucial nutirents that come from our bloodstream. Through these vital components and time, the torn, or seperated fibers in our muscles grow back together even stronger than before!!! This momentary seperation in the end is a benefit to our body! It hurts, but the end result is not bad, unless we let the seperation, tears, and pressure increase instead of taking time to heal. This happens when we continue to overwork ourselves instead of resting and healing. After too much continuous stress, or opposition, the seperation builds up until we "pull a muscle", leaving that muscle and other associated ligaments handicapped or useless for a while, making the recovery process even more painful and longer than was before necessary if we would have but given our body the proper time to recover. Surely when we are brought to that point we would choose to rest and recover than to continue straining our muscles even more, by then we see the negative effects of the muscle-fiber seperation.

Our relationship with God is just like our muscles! Let me elaborate. Like the muscle fibers before the workout, Adam was in the garden of Eden with God. God commanded Adam not to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17). There were two choices. Adam could stay in the garden and not progress, or Adam could eat the fruit, be cast out of the garden (or seperated from God), and be able to experience opposition. Adam chose to partake, transgressing or breaking a commandment of God, and was cast out. Like our muscles, this situation was only temporary. God provided the necessary growth and healing through our Savior Jesus Christ. If we rest and take time, through faith and repentance,we can "apply the atoning blood of Christ that we may receive forgiveness of our sins" (Mosiah 4:2). As we allow the nourishing blood of Christ to bring the essential components for recovery to ourselves we can begin to rebuild and recover. We can become stronger through opposition by turning to Jesus Christ or we can overwork our muscles by continuing in sin and choosing to delay repentance. As an ancient-American prophet wrote:

For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors... I beseech of you that ye do not procrasinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherin there can be no labor performed (Alma 34:32-33)

Are we going to allow the Fall of Adam to be a bad thing, or just a temporary soreness in our life?

Are we going to be strengthened through the Lord Jesus Christ, or continue to be weakened, torn, and seperated by sin?

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death. according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself (2 Nephi 2:27)

THE CHOICE IS YOURS

OR

The Refiner's Fire

I once heard a story of a group of women who in their Bible study had been reading Malchi 3:2, which reads:
"But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap"
Their interested was awoken. What is a refiner's fire? They decided to go straight to the source.



 They went to visit a refiner to learn more so they could understand this verse. They did not tell the refiner their purpose for visiting, they simply told him they came out of honest curiosity to learn what he does. The refiner started out with a piece of silver. He explained that it was not pure silver, but there were other metals mixed in with the silver, keeping the silver from its purity. The way that they removed the other metals was to hold it in the center of the fire, the hottest part. Slowly the weaker metals would melt and run off until the stronger purified silver was the only element remaining of the original alloy. The refiner explained that the refining in and of itself was not very difficult, the most important part was that you watch the silver, for if it is in the fire too long then it will break, losing the desired result of perfect, refined, and purified silver.

"How do you know when it's been in just long enough?" The Bible study group inquired.

"That's the easy part. I know the silver is just right when I can see my reflection in it."

So it is with our Savior Jesus Christ! He is our Great Refiner. He wants us to be happy as he is. He wants us to experience the joy and hope that comes from Him, and we do so as we become more like Him, as our actions and countenance slowly reflects more and more of the light of Christ. Our trials and tribulations are not given to us as punishment, but as a blessing to "refine" us and make us more Christ-like if we go through them with the help of our Refiner. Listen to the words of a modern-day apostle of the Lord:

    

"The Divine Shepherd has a message of hope, strength, and deliverance for all. If there were no night, we would not appreciate the day, nor could we see the stars and the vastness of the heavens. We must partake of the bitter with the sweet. There is a divine purpose in the adversities we encounter every day. They prepare, they purge, they purify, and thus they bless.

When we pluck the roses, we find we often cannot avoid the thorns which spring from the same stem.

Out of the refiner’s fire can come a glorious deliverance. It can be a noble and lasting rebirth. The price to become acquainted with God will have been paid. There can come a sacred peace. There will be a reawakening of dormant, inner resources. A comfortable cloak of righteousness will be drawn around us to protect us and to keep us warm spiritually. Self-pity will vanish as our blessings are counted.

The blessings of eternity will surely come to those who endure refining, as the Lord Himself taught: 'He only is saved who endureth unto the end.' I testify that Jesus is the Christ and the Divine Redeemer. He lives! His are the sweet words of eternal life." -James E. Faust (click here)

I know our Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ love us so much. They will always be there to strengthen us. They will never let us sit in the fire longer than is needed! I testify of these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Line upon Line, Link by Link

Have you ever heard the phrase 'keep your eyes on the prize'? It's a phrase I would usually think associated with sports or some other competitive event, but it applies to almost every aspect in our life if we think about it. It means remembering the ultimate goal of whatever we are working towards. Staying focused and diligent so we ultimately obtain the focus of our labors. Imagine our life is a long chain of metal links working together, from the beginning of our life to the end of our life, left to right. Each period of our life is a little link, that can either be strengthened through righteous actions, or weakened from sin. If we look too far ahead in our life we start pulling in that direction, to the right, and previous links start stretching as the weaker links that you have not yet reinforced are strained due to the tugging. The same thing happens when we go the other way. If we spend too much time in the past we pull the chain in that direction, to the left, and once again the links we have not yet reinforced are weakened as they stretch due to the strain.

Listen to the warnings of Book of Mormon prophet: "But behold, the Jews were a stiffnecked people; and they despised the words of plainness, and killed the prophets, and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble" (Jacob 4:14). The mark that the Jews looked past was that of the long awaited Messiah, Jesus Christ! Many had become caught up in hopes of a redeemer from their temporal circumstances so that they looked past the mark, or took their 'eyes off the prize', and missed their spiritual Redeemer when he was among them. Instead of reinforcing whatever link they were at in their life, they started pulling their chain in other directions, weakening their faith and rejecting the Savior. Before we are so quick to judge, how many of us do the same things? This is a lesson my dad taught me. So often we are always looking forward to the next thing, the next 'link' you could say, whether it be the next job, or next class, etc. We get so caught up in looking forward to something else, or looking back on opportunities missed, that we forget the gift of time with which we have been currently entrusted and the things we need to focus on now. There will be times that we sin, that we look beyond our Savior, the mark, in our own lives, but as we humble ourselves and repent the Lord gives us this promise: "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all mean that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them" (Ether 12:27).

What Do Our Hands Say About Us?

I have never blogged before. I have never enjoyed any form of poetry, or writing, or English for that matter. Quite frankly put, words are not my forte. What I do enjoy though is my Savior Jesus Christ and everything He has done for me. For that reason I "labor diligently to write, to persuade... [my] brethren, to believe in Christ" (2 Nephi 25:23). I wouldn't like to say that there will be any definite theme or motif to my blog, I feel that establishing a theme will limit my ability to write, but if I had to choose a theme, or one beginning message to define what I hope for from my blog, it would be from this following story.

Before I came to Tennessee to serve a two-year mission for my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the LDS or 'Mormon' Church), two of my favorite hobbies were running and playing the acoustic guitar. My days were filled with miles of pavement pounding and hours of harmonious chords and frets.
If you have ever donated blood before you are familiar with the process before they draw the blood. If you aren't familiar I'll elaborate. Before they actually draw the blood from you, a nurse will go over some paperwork with you, take your pulse, and take a sample of your blood by pricking the end of one of your fingers. Every time without fail I was asked one of these two questions: "Do you play guitar?" or "Do you run a lot?". The callous on the ends of my fingertips was a result of my hours of practice, my extremely low pulse revealed my passion for running. As little as the nurses had known about me, the majority of my lifestyle was revealed through a simple touch of my hands.
"Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands" (1 Nephi 21:16). What do the Savior's hands say about His lifestyle? What do the marks in his hands, his feet, and his side, say about His unending love for us and His dedication to serving us? The theme of His life was written in His hands, to draw all men unto Him, to have faith in Him, repent, be baptized, received the gift of the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end!
 Our hands can reveal a lot about what we do with our life. If people could see our spiritual hands, what stories would they tell?

Christ's hands told the story of His life, as our Savior and Redeemer, and through my hands I write to the best of my capabilities to testify of Him. He lives and loves us!