why I believe...
Life is hard. Life is constantly in motion. There are so many distractions and ways of feeling pulled in so many directions. There are the highs. There are the lows. Happiness, joy, peace mixed together with despair, illness, death, or watching someone you love suffer through such painful trials, not to mention the painful trials you go through yourself. How I make sense of all this would be futile if I didn't have a knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is what pulls me through.
To know that this life is a journey to an eternal destination, that this life is a way of becoming like the Divine Being who created all of us, makes all the refining moments in life more bearable for me. It puts things into perspective. We become like Him by being: by experiencing every emotion and experience that He went through in His life and His Atonement, to understand what it would be like for us in our own little sphere of mortality. We are not alone in our trials. We have access to our Heavenly Father through prayer and through the holy scriptures. Because of the Restoration of the Gospel through the Prophet Joseph Smith, we have restored to us the same priesthood keys, power, and gifts of the Spirit that existed in Christ's time on the earth. We have living revelation. There are living Prophets and Apostles on the earth.
Our bodies are gifts from Him. Through them, we get to experience health and death, happiness and pain. But because of our Savior's suffering and Resurrection, we'll someday receive a perfected body and a reunion with all our loved ones who have passed through the grave. This would not be possible without our Lord's life and death.
Our Father in Heaven gave to each of us the gift of agency. This lets us each be accountable for the choices we make in this life, good and bad. Someday, we will give an accounting of our actions and interactions with each other. Remorse of conscience allows us to make changes in our paths. God's Commandments are there for our safety and happiness. We have power to choose a better way. We have power to learn to love and forgive those who have wronged us. But because we all have weakness and because we all sin, we need a Savior. We need a perfect Being to be our Advocate with our perfect Heavenly Father. I cannot make up for someone else's poor choices. But a God, who created each of us and who knows our individual failings and desires, DID make up the difference for our mistakes. He did this for every single person who would ever live on this earth, past, present, and future. He accomplished all this through that one time Infinite Atonement, where He alone could satisfy the demands of God's justice (from God's laws) with God's mercy (from our breaking God's laws).
There are so many beautiful reasons why I believe, too innumerable to expound upon here. But I invite each one of you, my friends, to find out for yourself, about the truths and principles of the Gospel which teach you how to enjoy peace and comfort in this life, in the midst of all the other hard and difficult trials. You can have happiness here...and happiness in the hereafter, with all your loved ones and with your God. You can have comfort here and perspective, to strengthen you in the midst of so many hard life trials. Loneliness. Unemployment. Divorce. Betrayal. Death. Disability. Illness. Low self-esteem/confidence. Any other trial you can think of, endure, or that you know another person you love has experienced.
You can find out that your life has a beautiful purpose and that God loves you and knows your every NEED. You can find out how to apply His truths to you and your circumstances. It will bless you and your family. It will bless the lives of all your friends. I know these things are true. We find out the truth of these things through study, faith, and prayer. Yup! Even YOU can talk to God. These are some of the reasons why I believe.