The book of John chronicles a point in Jesus’s ministry where, after he had taught some hard ideas, many of his disciples “went back, and walked no more with him.” Seeing this, Jesus turned to the twelve men he had specially chosen as apostles, asking, “Will ye also go away?” Peter replied, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.” (John 6:66–68.) Two thousand years later in a very different world, I feel the same about Jesus, as I have come to know him through the rites, doctrines, leaders, members, and programs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For me, among the most powerful witnesses that Jesus is alive today and actively attending to our needs—and among the most powerful forces that make me want to cling to the church—are the Book of Mormon, temples, and priesthood blessings.
At nineteen I for the first time sought in earnest a testimony of the Book of Mormon. I began a program of reading daily, accompanied by prayer. At first I noted questions as I read, such as why the book of Jacob would end with the French “adieu.” As I continued reading I forgot the questions and became engrossed in the story. At some point I realized I believed I was reading an authentic record. This did not come by an overpowering witness. It was more a realization that the book was having a positive effect on me. I was happier, more at peace, and I hungered to read more of this book. I especially began to feel that God knew me and had a purpose for me. I, Eric, an inconsequential teenager who feels incredibly awkward socially and is without direction in life, am known to the Almighty God! I gradually identified those feelings as the Spirit of God working upon me. With much additional study and reflection since then, the Book of Mormon has become one of the most important parts of my life. I cannot read it but what I feel the Spirit. I feel a portal open, as it were, between heaven and me, where I am transported to a higher plane. I feel more patient with my wife and children and others, and more buffered against temptation. Sometimes I have specific thoughts about what I need to do better, or I have an answer to a question I have been brewing over. Sometimes I come away filled with joy in God’s goodness to me and to the world. I usually feel a reassurance of God’s love for me and that he has a plan for me. I see these feelings and impressions as communications from Jesus. He is helping me with my problems because he loves me, and he is helping me to learn about him and become more like him. I love the way the Savior works: he showed and shows us by his example what to do; he tells us with his words what to do; and then he gives us power by his Spirit to act and to change! I would see a dim future for myself if it did not involve a continuing connection to the Book of Mormon.
The same is true of the temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When he dedicated the temple in Kirtland, Ohio, Joseph Smith prayed that those who even so much as entered the threshold of the edifice would be constrained to acknowledge it as God’s house and that he had sanctified it. (Doctrine and Covenants 109:13.) That plea has been fulfilled literally in my life: as I have gone to the temple, I have felt on specific occasions the Spirit grow stronger as I cross the lobby away from the outdoors and toward the threshold, or the door through which only recommend holders can pass. More generally, I feel buoyed up every time I go to the temple. I am not an exemplar in quantity of temple attendance or in what I have learned from going, but I cannot deny that I am washed in the Spirit when I go anymore than I could deny after good food or drink that I could feel my body satisfied. For days or weeks after worshiping in the temple, I feel greater peace, greater self-control against temptation and pettiness, greater connection to God, greater motivation to do what is right. I have had occasional specific impressions in the temple about questions or challenges in my life. My wife, who is a profoundly good person but who is not given to talking much about spiritual experiences, once reported a specific impression she received in the temple about our family. My mom, a generally skeptical person, reported to me an even more powerful revelatory experience she had in the temple years ago. Neither of these people has ever lied to me. Their independent witnesses strengthen my own that Jesus uses the temple as a place to teach us and help us. I would not want to do anything that would cut me off from being able to go to the temple to seek strength and revelation.
In my life I have received five priesthood blessings that have left a deep, lasting impression. One of these was the patriarchal blessing I received as a teenager from a man I had never met before and have never seen since, but who pronounced words of blessing that were clearly from someone who knows me well. Where else in all the world does a man lay his hands on a stranger and claim to be giving specific direction from God to guide the recipient for the rest of his life? Another one of the blessings came in a setting the fuller details of which are perhaps worth recounting. When I was forty, what seemed at first like an innocuous medical exam revealed that I had a large mass in one of my kidneys. After this finding, my wife read up on kidney cancer on the Internet and was despondent. I was hardly better off, especially because I am a naturally anxious person, prone to jump quickly to the worst possible conclusion. While we waited over a weekend to get the results of a second exam that would confirm whether I had cancer, my wife’s family called for a special fast for my health. On a Sunday evening we congregated at her parents’ home to close the fast with prayer. My wife and I arrived a good while late but it was meaningful to me that everyone had continued to fast, even though something cooking on the stove was giving off a wonderful aroma. I felt lifted up by the faith and prayers of the family and moved by their concern for me. That evening her dad gave us both blessings of counsel and comfort. The next morning, I called the urologist’s office exactly at nine, when they opened, to find out whether the second test indicated cancer. Only a few days before I had had the wind completely knocked out of me when I heard the term “large mass.” But now, when I was told that the second test confirmed a diagnosis of cancer, I felt a deep peace come over me, which was most remarkable given the circumstances and my naturally anxious nature. This peace continued with both me and my wife through a surgery to get the kidney removed and through the worries of the next weeks after that until a follow-up exam showed the cancer was gone. It was almost sad when this period ended because the Spirit we felt had brought us so much closer as a married couple and with our extended family. I realize that all cancer stories don’t end this way, and maybe someday the outcome will be different even for me. The point is not that I recovered but that God gave us—I feel in part because of the fasting, prayer, and priesthood blessings—a miracle of peace in a difficult time. Here was Jesus again, administering to us not by appearing personally but nor in some abstract way, but through the Holy Ghost and through his church—in this case, through the faith and prayers of believing members of his church and through a priesthood ritual.
I am aware of many of the issues of church history, doctrine, or policy that genuinely concern members of the church or are sometimes maliciously distorted by opponents. There have also been times when I have observed conduct by members of the church toward other people that is not Christlike. I have also had periods when I felt my prayers went unanswered. I haven’t had explanations or quick resolution in a lot of cases, but I do know that I cannot let anything come between me and what I have felt, what I have known. Elder Holland explained it this way: “When we have these heartaches in our lives, when we have questions for which we do not have adequate answers, then I think we are obligated to cling ever more desperately to the things we do know. The things we do know will get us past anything we don’t know.” (Jeffrey R. Holland, “Leading as the Savior Would Lead,” Leadership Enrichment Series, 9 Nov. 2011; emphasis added.)
I see challenges to faith the same way I see flaws in my wife. My wife has some shortcomings (far fewer than I do), and it can be frustrating to bump into them. It can be valuable to communicate about such things; we can eliminate some of our own weaknesses, or understand how better to work around those of our spouse. But if I were to focus on her weaknesses too much, few even as they are, it could become an obsession that would blind me to her virtues and cut me off from the immense joy I feel in our marriage. I make the choice in our marriage to focus on her positives and on our mutual positives, and to “invest” in the marriage with acts of support, charity, selflessness, and so forth. Ultimately I think faith is the same way: it is a choice to focus on, to build on, to seek more of the positive feelings we have undeniably felt; a choice to nourish something that is growing; a choice to not “give place” to that which would threaten what we have found so much value in; a confession that, alluring as other options may sometimes seem, we really have nowhere else to go.
Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon 