Never Give Up On Yourself or God

   There has always been one major struggle in my life that has held me back from reaching the things that I want to reach in my life. This struggle has put a halt on so many goals and desires that I have. My problem is this, I am just awful at following through with anything. It seems that I can be strong to a plan that I have for about a week before I'm thinking about something else and then I completely forget about what I was trying to do. Sometimes I don't even make it a week. It seems to me that there is a pattern that follows all of these attempts as well. It goes like this; I decide that I am going to read my scriptures everyday. For three or four days I am great, I remember every time and I just feel good. Then it hits, something comes up, I make an excuse to miss one time and as we all know once you make the first excuse, every other excuse becomes that much easier. Before I realized it, I have missed the last two or three weeks of reading. I feel like a failure, I feel useless and helpless because if God can't even trust me to do something as simple as read my scriptures everyday, then how will He ever trust me with any sort of spiritual experience or important calling that He has in store for me. Time and time again I do this to myself, and it is the worst. 

   Lately I've been doing this more and more, and it truly has led me to great contemplation about many things in my life. Every time I get down on my knees and ask God for forgiveness I wonder what God is thinking. Because of my human frailties if I was God, I may look upon me and grow very impatient. I would probably think something along the lines of, "I have given you hundreds of chances and yet the same result comes from each one. Why should I give you another chance now"? And that is why I am not God. As I've come to more fully understand who God is, I see so much love and care that He has for each of us. He doesn't want us to be afraid of him, He wants us to trust him and call upon him for ANYTHING and even EVERYTHING. Now, I don't see God as impatiently hearing me ask for forgiveness for the thousandth time, but instead I see him picking me back up every time I fall down and saying to me, "You can do it, you're so close. Have faith in me, for I have faith in you".

   I don't know about you, but that perspective makes all the difference for me. It reminds me of all of my days in sports actually. In all my years playing sports, I have had hundreds of different coaches. All of them had different ways of coaching, but what I realized is that I respond best to the coaches that didn't yell, but encouraged. I had one coach in particular that really understood how to coach. This particular coach saw great potential in me through the terrible rough that I was covered in. I had quite the attitude when I played and most coaches thought the best way to get rid of it was through fear. They figured if they yelled at me enough and made me run, then the attitude would go away. They were wrong, it made it even worse. This coach however coached me in a loving way to use that attitude and competitiveness in the right way. He taught me how to control it. It took years of him coaching before I really started to pick up on it, but he never gave up on me. 

   God is their coaching us along the way, and lovingly giving us advice. No matter how long it takes before we get it right though, God is not getting mad at us. My advice to you is this, don't give up on yourself. Change will take time. Turn to God for all things. Satan wants you to think that God will be mad at you for asking for forgiveness hundreds of times. That is simply not the case, God is happy that we have a desire to strive to be better. 

   Don't give up on yourself. Strive to reach the great potential that is in you. Have faith in God, for He has faith in You!

Line Upon Line

   On my mission I saw great changes in people including myself. They were such great and miraculous changes, but they happened over an extended period of time. Some times I would start to see changes after a few months of working with people and then I would have to leave, sometimes I saw the end result of a change that had already been taking place coming into a new area, and sometimes (but very rarely) I got to see the change from beginning to end. What a wonderful gift that was!
   I bring this up not to discourage people, but hopefully to encourage people. Since it is the new year, lots of people are setting goals (including myself). I don't know about you, but in the past I have found that I set these lofty goals and I am solid with them for about 2 weeks or so and then I just completely give up on them for one reason or another. The problem I catch myself in is this, I don't see immediate change, so I quit. Obviously it's not working right?...... Wrong, actually. Change was occurring, I just didn't realize it because it came line upon line and precept upon precept.
   This reminds me of one lady in particular from my mission that this same thing happened with. Beth was about 60 years old, living all by herself. She had major depression which led to a lot of things such as hording and smoking in particular. Her home was in terrible condition, and to make things worse, she was smoking about 30 cigarettes a day. As we taught her the gospel, we started to see change in her life. It started with her giving up a few cigarettes here and there, and throwing out a bag or two of garbage every few days. To Beth, the change wasn't noticed, or felt like it was making much of a difference at first because it seemed so small. It wasn't until after many weeks of working with her that me and my companion got her to take a step back and really see the progress she was making. She was a completely new person. Eventually, before she passed away, she had given up smoking completely, and her house was clean again.
   My thought for me and you here is this, set goals. Strive to be better, reach for that potential that you know is within you. That being said, don't give up on your goals. Just because you can't see the change right away doesn't mean it's not happening. Allow the atonement to work in your life. Christ paid the ultimate price so that we can become better. Don't waste this precious gift we have been given.