22 replies to this topic

[halconero]

Carborendum, on 11 August 2012 - 08:48 AM, said:

halconero,

I thank you for sharing your story.  I haven't received a confirmation from the Spirit that it is definitely true.  But I have no problem just accepting your statements at face value.  This minimum level of faith is all I would ask of anyone.  But it appears that many aren't even willing to have even this level of faith.

Scary?  Why?  I've given blessings when I received confirmation upon completion that my words would be fulfilled.  Other times I received no such confirmation.  And worse, I've received confirmation that my words would NOT be fulfilled.

It is obvious they were my words.  But the power is from God.

It is not scary for me any more. It was scary the first time and the few times after that. The giving of the priesthood blessing was not so scary, but seeking for and actually finding the gift of prophecy is. In that moment, when a righteous priesthood holder, acting in the name of Jesus Christ and under his authority is giving a blessing of healing the only tool that Satan uses (at least on me) is doubt. Not a doubt of the Gospel, a doubt of self a doubt about whether or not you are sharing your sentiments and wishes or truly acting in the name of God. It's the "What if it doesn't happen?" thought. That's what scared me.

I will not go into details here on this board, but one time I felt the need to promise a couple under my authority as a missionary that they would be baptized in one week, an ordinance they had waited 4 years for, but were unable to take due to certain circumstances. I knew what God wanted me to say, to promise them, and yet there was Satan putting doubt into my mind "What if you say this and it doesn't happen?"

I have since learned to cast out all doubt in the words I give in a blessing. I now seek the gift of prophecy before and during the blessing. No longer do I use the words "if it be the Lord's will." Why? Because I know the Lord's will before and during the blessing. His will becomes my will and there is great power in a definitive declaration.

Why do we not see miracles more often? I feel that we, as a priesthood, generally have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof. Do we know what we really have?

[Stargazer]

Carborendum, on 10 August 2012 - 04:18 PM, said:

But with both of those two in particular, when I told the ones giving the blessings, they refused to believe me.  One of them (my father) even went so far as to say,"No, son.  That's not how it works."  I began wondering how a healing blessing was supposed to work in any manner other than resulting in being healed.

Of course that is how it CAN work.

I was visiting my brother's house many years ago and his wife came down with some really bad thing (don't know what it was) during the night, and he finally came to me to ask me to give her a blessing.  She, though not a member (and a professed atheist to boot), was in so much distress that she went along with it.  I gave her the blessing, and within a few moments things started happening with her, and in a very few minutes she was able to go to sleep and was relieved from her distress.  This didn't cure her -- there was an underlying condition that had to be resolved -- but it allowed her to deal with the problem on a less frantic mode.

One evening my two year old woke up with a very bad ear infection, and he spent some hours crying and carrying on, until finally my wife told me I needed to give him a blessing.  I blessed him to have his pain taken away and to be able to go to sleep, and immediately upon the Amen, he turned over and went to sleep.  The next day, when we took him to the doctor, my son was pain-free and his usual cheerful self, and the doctor looked at us quite skeptically when we explained the problem.  That is, until he checked his ears.  It was at first a perfunctory look, but he literally did a double-take with the otoscope.  He told us that he could not understand why our son wasn't screaming in pain, and that he had only rarely seen such a bad infection.  He prescribed anti-bioltics, and this cured the underlying problem, but the blessing held for the duration.  I had a nearly identical experience with the young daughter of a member of our ward.  I was called one morning because her father was still at work, and I picked up another priesthood holder, a retired gent, and we administered to her.  She was very much in distress, but right after the blessing was finally able to get to sleep.  Some might argue that she had been awake all night and so that was why she conked out, but I know better.  Because she was asleep within seconds after competing the blessing.  And the doctor visit went much as ours did.

The power of the priesthood is real, of that there is no doubt.  Those who insist that "that isn't how it works" need to have a faith check-up.  If Jesus healed instantly, and Joseph Smith and others did so, too, then of course that is how it can work.

[Stargazer]

Tacenda, on 10 August 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

Because it's sort of a "clause" in case the blessing doesn't produce.  I'd be even angrier if all blessings are to be fulfilled if one has faith.  I had all the faith in the world that after the priesthood blessing she received, my mom could be cured of Alzheimer's or at the least something would be on the cusp to cure it from stem cells to a vaccine.  When that didn't happen I chalked it up to "not all blessings produce miracles".

The scriptures themselves provide evidence that there is no intent that every blessing will produce a miracle.  The priesthood cannot be used to counter the will of God, and in the cases where a person is ordained to death, well, they are going to die.  In that instance then the blessing is a blessing of comfort.  It's in the D&C.  Look it up.

If the priesthood were all powerful, then we could make wars cease, people stop dying, and everything would turn to peaches and cream.  But life itself was not meant to be perfect, because with perfection we would lose the "opposition in all things" aspect.  Without something to push against, we'd turn into sloths.