The First Article of Faith

We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.

Fun story: I once really confused some Jehovah's Witnesses by saying we believed in the Trinity.

I mean, the Trinity was the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, right? We believe in them.

As it is, in our church we do sometimes refer to them as the "Godhead" referring to how they function together. 

I know the difference now, though I still find it kind of weird.

I don't want this to be a series of posts arguing the doctrine, but rather more how I feel about my beliefs and how they affect me. However, I do want to throw in one scripture here.

You might expect it to be from the baptism of Jesus when he is in the water, the voice of the Father is heard, and the Holy Ghost is mentioned as descending like a dove. 

Instead, I want to bring up John 17:21, when Jesus is praying for his apostles...

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. 

I mention that not to convince anyone, which I don't think one scripture could do, but because I think that there is value in understanding that there can be both unity and the individual. A lot of scripture can point us toward something better, but we have to believe that such things are possible and maybe even imagine them as desirable.

At the same time, so often we hear one thing and imagine the worst possible meaning of it, maybe because of what we have seen from other people... I won't pretend it's not hard.

Because there can be confusion about "God," I will often refer to Heavenly Father specifically. That is whom I pray to.

It gets tricky trying to be respectful and not overuse names, especially as those names become exclamations for so many people. 

For Jesus, I will often refer to "the Savior", and often "the Spirit" for the Holy Ghost. 

Things that are important for the phrasing in the article is that God is the father of our spirits and that our savior is the man who was known as Jesus and was anointed to be the Savior of the World. 

We have less to refer to for the Holy Ghost, and yet that can be the one that you have the most personal experience with.

I will write more about Jesus later (on the third article), but for the other two, this is their importance to me.

You may know that I have had a difficult relationship with my earthly father, even though I love him. There are people with that situation who find it difficult to imagine a loving, fatherly God.

Somehow I always felt that.

Well, let me modify that. I did worry very much about being worthy of love and if He could love me, imperfect mess that I was. However, I was able to understand that He was good; there wasn't going to be any of this unfair, competitive, grudge-holding difficulty. 

In addition, love from God was persistently shown and demonstrated until it was something that I knew and that has been a source of strength.

In my teen years I remember a great deal of emotional pain, specifically about the concern of being lovable to other people. Though that took longer to resolve, there were limits to how much it brought me down. I believe that was the influence of the Holy Ghost, shoring up my resilience.

In addition, there have been many times when I have received knowledge and guidance through the Spirit, so that the biggest influence on my life might be from there, except they all work together, so it doesn't need to be separated out that way.

But they do fill their unique roles, as individuals. So if I wanted to sort it out, I could.