Step #2 of Life

      So step #2 in life was that God created this beautiful and wonderful world and we are born with physical bodies. Again, gaining a physical body is the first of the 4 basic reasons for coming to earth.

     Learning to live by faith is the second purpose of life. Faith is "not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true." (Book of Mormon; Alma 32:21). In other words, we live here without being able to see our Heavenly Parents nor remember them because we need to prove ourselves obedient when we are not with them. It is like when kids obey the parents' rules while the parents are in the room, but will they continue to obey when the parents are not there? If they have love and faith in their parents they will. Same goes for each of us here; we obey the laws God set down here with the creation of the world to show Him we do love and honor Him. And the more we obey the stronger our faith becomes.

     And that goes along with purpose #3: obedience. How do we show our love and faith to someone? We obey them! Our Heavenly Parents did not send us down here to figure it out all alone; They set rules for us to follow that will help us feel their love and lead us closer to them as we obey them. And,yes, we all make mistakes! We have all disobeyed more than one rule, I am sure. Sometimes because we don't know the rules, sometimes because we don't understand them, sometimes we just choose wrong and sometimes we really want to break the rules because the other side seems better. Again our Heavenly Parents knew this would happen and so a Savior was chosen. Remember that Jesus Christ volunteered to come down here and take our mistakes upon Him and atone for them so we could be forgiven and be made clean again. He loves us enough that He volunteered to do that for us.

     And to build on the purpose for which we came to this earth: we need to endure to the end, which is considered the 4th step. In other words, we need to stay strong and true to our faith and obedience to the Lord so that we continue to grow and progress and become more and more like Him. And after all is said and done we will be judged according to our efforts to choose to follow Him because this earth life is a temporary test. We are born and we die!

     But what is death really? Death is the separation of our spirit from our body. The physical body is laid in a grave to await the day when the spirit is reunited with it for eternity, which is called resurrection. Once a person is resurrected they can never die again and our bodies are as perfect as they can be. Each person when they die receives a partial judgment where the spirit goes to spirit prison or spirit paradise. Those in spirit prison are those who have never heard of God's plan or never accepted it while upon the earth. BUT those who go to paradise who did hear and accept the plan teach those in spirit prison so they will still have the opportunity to choose God's plan. He loves all of us and wants to offer us every chance He can so we can return to live with Him.

     So what happens next? We will discuss that next week!!!