Hear Him Heal You
This podcast is for those who are looking to experience the Savior more in their lives because of the peace and healing that only He can offer through revelation. Come unto Christ to get out of the mental mire, find meaning in emotion, leave bad behind, and finally, be whole. This is where we hear Him to be healed.
Hear Him Heal You
When You Feel Unworthy, Remember God Judges Desires And Effort
Welcome to Hear Him Heal You with Morgan and Joel. This podcast is for those who are imperfect and rough around the edges, but are still wanting to come under Christ. Essentially, it's for everyone. So join us to get yourself out of the mental mire, find meaning and emotion, and leave that behind. This is where we hear him to be healed. Alright, little flock. Welcome back to a new episode. I know it's been quite a long time, but we're happy to be back, right, Joel?
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, we're really happy. It's an away game for me today. I am visiting family up here in Pleasant Grove, so kind of winging it on the tech side of things, but you know, I'm glad to be back.
SPEAKER_01:I love it. I love it. Yeah, I guess like, I don't know, what what was the last thing we talked about? I'm trying to remember now.
SPEAKER_00:Only remember because my brother-in-law, or soon-to-be brother-in-law, told me that he really liked our last episode and that it helped him. And it was the uh are you listening? It was about the uh bids for emotional intimacy. Intimacy between us and God and how commandments are that bid. And so that's that's the last thing. It's been a while. It's been a minute.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's been a while. Um, it was funny, it's like we would always like plan to do this episode, and then one of us would have something like I would fall asleep for a nap, Joe would go to bed early, or we'd just be like, ah, not today.
SPEAKER_00:So true. It's so true. It's so often it was like playing phone tag with each other, but for this, it was like, hey, you good? Yeah, I'm good. And then one of us, like, I seriously came home from work. I texted you on my way home, like, hey, you get to record tonight. And by 8:30, I'd fallen asleep, like just cold.
SPEAKER_01:I was up playing like, you ready? We're doing this. Uh, I love it.
SPEAKER_00:Needless to say, that response did not come that night.
SPEAKER_01:It did not. Did not. Cool. Well, I do think this kind of what we want to talk about today does line up a little bit with bids for emotional intimacy. Because I think we know what God wants us to do, right? But there's a lot of times where we fall flat or we fall short of trying to meet His His uh requirements for us. And so sometimes so this this podcast episode is gonna be more centered around like worthiness and and our internal desires and how those play into our overall worthiness as well. Because I think there's I think there's pretty common, I've gone through this in my own life where I've been falling short, but like I think I'm completely gone or like as far as off off as I can be. But internally, I really want to get to that point, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um, I think for me personally, it's like sometimes I feel like I judge myself when approaching this uh topic, as I was thinking about like I judge myself so harshly, you know, harsher than even what my father in heaven does. And I'm holding myself to a standard that he doesn't even hold me to. And, you know, I held myself back from participating fully in the gospel for a long time because of that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think uh there've definitely been times in my life where like I was struggling with certain things in my life, and I just I was you know like the term quiet quitting. Like have you heard of You know what?
SPEAKER_00:I think I could probably figure out what it is, but I've never heard that term before. So go ahead and elaborate.
SPEAKER_01:So it's this it's more associated with like millennials and uh like Gen Z and how they approach like when they're not being fulfilled at work, they they just start to choose to do the bare minimum without getting fired. And so they call it quiet quitting because they're mentally checked out and they're just not they're just not they're just barely doing what needs to be done to to show that they're working. And then sometimes I feel like that's all I feel when I feel like I'm unworthy or I'm not meeting the expectation God has set is I'm just a quiet quitter. Like I'm showing up to church, I'm doing the bare minimum, so that way I don't become a problem child in the ward. That way my name stays out of ward council, you know. But internally, I'm just like I've I'm kind of done because I just don't feel like I'm good enough. But there's also a an aspect of I do want to get there. And so I feel like my desires aren't like are never gonna be good enough. I'm never gonna meet that expectation. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I think it's it's kind of cool to acknowledge this isn't just a problem with like us as regular people, you know, or just your everyday member, but also the prophets of old, and I'm sure the prophets of today have felt this way. I mean, Nephi, we always call what Nephi's Psalm, right? And we read that, and it's we think it's so beautiful, but really it's just Nephi just saying, like, I am not good enough, man. I stink at this whole being a leader and a prophet thing, you know. I am always pissed off at my brothers and angry with them, and I'm getting violent, and I, you know, that's not explicitly said, but I think that's some somewhat of his issue is his anger towards his brethren and his frustrations being expressed in not the most Christ-like way, and he's to a point where he's like, oh wretched man that I am, right? He's like, he's so tired and fed up with himself and feeling like he's not living up to his calling as a prophet and as a leader, as a priest amongst his people.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. That's 100%, 100% true. So um, I know Joel, you said you've recently had an experience with this and kind of what has led you to want to, I guess, talk about this today. Uh so what what what was that experience? And can you kind of tell me what you learned from that experience?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so like many young men of today's age, I have had many struggles with pornography and addiction and things of that nature. And for the longest time, even though I heard kind of the same message over and over from different bishops, like, hey, like, where are you striving? Are you striving and are you making that effort? And then for me though, I always felt like, oh, I need to have a long, long period of sobriety. I need to make sure I fully kick this problem and issue, right? Like, I need to make sure that this is no longer an issue. When I show up to addiction recovery meetings or the 12-step programs, right, for the church, that I'm like, hey guys, I'm chilling. I don't need to say anything. This meeting, you know, I feel like I need to beat at that point before I could fully participate. And it really wasn't until I sat down with one of my bishops who said he read the temple recommend questions to me. And then he said, I don't interpret those questions. He goes, the questions are what they are. And it's as simple as yes or no to these. There's no, well, but he goes, it's just easy. Keep it simple, Joel. He's like, it's yes or no. And he goes, I want you to take some time and just think. Can you genuinely say you are striving to have moral cleanliness in your thoughts and actions or your thoughts and behaviors, right? And he says, and what what do those words mean? He goes, think about that. And so it was kind of funny. I finally realized, like, yeah, I am. Like I'm making active steps to like combat this, you know. I'm showing up for my meetings, you know, I'm trying to fulfill any callings I'm given and striving to, you know, support others and to help others in the ward, to be available, to give blessings and whatnot. And so why should I not fully allow myself to participate and go back to the temple? You know, if I'm really striving to do this, if I'm setting up good and developing good habits to break these bad ones. And it was like, it was like kind of like a little light bulb moment and realizing like that's what all my bishops have been trying to tell me. Like, hey, stop trying to like impose your interpretation on those questions, right? Stop trying to add steps, right? They're like, it's so simple. And I think they had to let me come to that conclusion myself. And probably some of them are banging their heads against the wall, looking at me, like, come on, Joel, just get with it. Once I realized that I could answer yes to the questions that needed to be answered, yes, and no to the ones that needed a no, I was like, okay, like wow, like it's as easy as that. And you know, I'm in the temple and in the endowment, and I don't have any, nothing's in the back of my mind gnawing at me. Nothing is like I always feared, that was my fear. I'd fear I'd get in there and still feel unworthy or feel like I didn't belong. But uh, as I was sitting in there, I just felt the Lord just express love and express the fact that He was pleased to have me there and that He was, you know, that it was acceptable for me to be there and probably could have been there a while ago had I been willing to, you know, kind of forgive myself and also recognize what His standard is. And so that's where this whole idea, I think, that we came up with of like He judges us by our efforts and our desires rather than our explicit actions or our strict obedience every time. It's our efforts to strive to be obedient, right? Our efforts to seek to obey and to follow and to be a true believer in Christ.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think like I think like the common problem here is, and I I run into this all the time where we feel like I feel like sometimes we just don't understand the nature of God deep enough. Like we because we feel all these negative feelings when we're feeling unworthy or we're we're falling short, we've we associate that with those feelings that are coming from God. And this is where I'm like, does God really, really like want us to f hate ourselves and and feel bad about ourselves and feel like we're never gonna measure up? I think that's just a consequence for I think those those feelings are a consequence of doing what's not what what isn't right. I don't think God is coming into our lives and and placing those feelings there. And when we f when we're feeling that way, we automatically just want to say, nope, not good, not good, got got this is God telling me. But like this is why it's also so necessary to have someone who is that's why we we need these judges in Israel, like bishops to kind of make it make our connection to God a little bit easier. Because like sometimes we can't cut through the haze of these negative emotions, and we need someone who's present, who's tangible, who is doesn't feel so far away at times in order to help us through it. And I think that's the benefit of being able to go and work through some of these things with a bishop is they can kind of show it like every time I've talked to a bishop and and like I think this is like God trying to say, like, this is how I truly am, not the way you think of me. Because every time I have talked to a bishop, they're like, I'm really appreciative that you told me, like, you're doing fine. Like keep doing what you're doing, keep keep striving. And I'm like sitting here, I'm like, where's the punishment? Like, like I feel terrible. Like I should not, like, at least do some take something away, right? And I'm like, maybe maybe that's truly how God is when when he's trying to connect with us, trying to convey his love. He's he's just very positive, very loving. And I'm I mean, he is gonna hold the standard for sure, but like the day hasn't come for us to be held to that standard yet. Like we are not gonna be able to enter the social kingdom. We're still in that probationary period where we can repent, we can come unto the savior, and sometimes we want to condemn ourselves now when we still got a lifetime to figure it out. And it's like, why are we so quick to have our day of judgment be today rather than the day of judgment coming after we've passed from this life, you know?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I think something else to add on to that is it doesn't even matter if it's if it's if our judgment's today or, you know, a hundred years from now or a thousand or a million, right? Like because we have made covenants and bound ourselves to Christ, we're no longer judged on our merits, we're no longer judged on our abilities, right? We're judged on his if we have bound ourselves to him and kept, and if we have kept our end of the covenant, right, which is is to make it simplified, is just simple faithfulness to Christ, right? As long as we have been faithful and continue to repent, that's one of the covenants we make is to live the law of the gospel, which requires repentance. It requires us to repent, which means that means we're gonna make mistakes, and it's required that we repent of those mistakes, right? And so it's kind of a paradox you see there. And so it doesn't really matter how far we've come because that's just a benefit that we get, I think. I think that's the benefit we get to see the change in ourselves that Christ can make when we make these covenants with him. But as far as it comes to our salvation, our exaltation, those things are judged on his merits, mercy, and grace, as it says in 2 Nephi. And sometimes I think we like to worry and think that that's gonna go away, but and it can, but only if we're not fulfilling our end of the covenant. But if we are, if we're living the law of the gospel, we're repenting when we make mistakes, it renews that covenant. When we partake of the sacrament, it renews that covenant. Okay, yeah. That covenant isn't like it breaks once and you can't be fixed, it just keeps coming back and it keeps coming back stronger. It's like when you put a seal or what is it, like a weld will be stronger at the point of the weld than it will be originally.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so that's what it's like. It's like we keep getting rewelded back in, stronger and stronger. And each time a piece of our metal breaks, Christ rewelds it and makes it stronger. And so we have to stop having this mindset of like, oh, I'm not good enough. I don't know what I'm if I'm there yet, right? Dude, like calm down, take a step back, realize you're doing the simple things and doing those primary answers is actually enough.
SPEAKER_01:I think no, I I love that because really the only time our covenant or our relationship with Christ does not cover us is if we refuse that relationship, right? And the way we refuse that is kind of like you said, we don't keep like we don't keep this commandment to repent. And I think that's that's only part of it, right? Like I think that's the one where we all get hung up on, like we we want to refuse to repent, you know, we've made a mistake and we we either go too long without wanting to repent or yada yada, like we just like, I don't want to do this. But I I think there's plenty of other ones too, but that's the one that I feel pe most people get hung up on. And so it just makes me think how complicated we make this whole worthiness repentance thing. When all if we all are just like, I'm a follower of Christ, I go to church, I admit my mistakes when I do them, and that's how simple it should be. Man, I think I that's like the realization I'm having here is like the gospel's not that complicated, but I want to make it complicated. I want there to be a billion steps for me to feel good after I've made a mistake. But maybe it's just as simple as admitting those mistakes, repenting, and try keep trying again. And sometimes I let I let my disappointment and my self-loathing overpower my desire. And so I don't get back up after I make a mistake, or I prolong that period after making a mistake to start doing the things that build me back up again. And I think that's the key here, and I think that I'm taking away is like we can't let the adversary use our emotions against us, like our guilt, our shame. We can't allow him to let us hate ourselves because those continually drowned out the spirit and our our natural desire to be close to God. Like it's really nice because the light of Christ is always there. It's always permeating everything in our lives. Even at the bottom where I feel like I have no desire to get back up, like I feel like I've been completely abandoned. For some reason, again and again, there's always that urge, there's always that craving, there's always that desire to come back to Christ, no matter how far I've gone away from him, or how far I feel like, or how out of it I feel when it comes to the gospel. There's always this thing like, I can do that. I can be that person, I can be that leader, I can be that person for for whoever. I can help one more person in this in this gospel, I can try one more time. And I think that's the desire we need to cling to and judge ourselves off of. Rather than judging ourselves off our mistakes, we need to judge our regardless if we're doing things right or not, like we need to always lean back on I am wanting to be a part of this church, I am wanting to be a follower of Christ. And as long as that desire is there, hold to it, judge yourself off that because that means you're not done, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. You know, I think it kind of reminds me as we were chatting, like it kind of took me back to like on my mission when I would teach the gospel of Jesus Christ to someone and try to keep it simple for them, right? Because not everyone had the same understanding, you know, not everyone had grew up religious or, you know, took their religion very seriously. So when explaining the gospel, I would just, you know, we'd lay out the five points, right? But we just start with like, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of the world, that he died, suffered for your sins, and paid the price for them to allow you freedom? Yeah. Okay. You believe that? Okay, great. If you believe that, why wouldn't you want to be forgiven? Why would you not want to repent and change if you believe he did that for you freely? Okay, makes sense, right? Like, yeah, that makes sense. I would want to repent because he's made that available to me for free. He suffered, he did all these things, and I would like to take advantage of that. Okay, why would you not want to be baptized in his name, take his name upon you, bind yourself to him now and have a remission of your sins, right? And then, you know, it's like pretty simple. And then let's okay, would you like to feel purified after that and have your desires changed so you don't keep repeating, or that when you make a mistake again, that you feel the desire to continue to repent. Yeah, and so it kind of builds onto each itself, right? It's it seems like a paradox, but if you realize, hey, believing leads to action, action leads to covenants, covenants leads to you know receiving a gift from God, and receiving that gift from God allows you to continue in this cycle, right? And that's basically how I'd explain it to him. It's as simple as that. It's not, you know, a bunch of yes-no check boxes when you get there, living the gospel of Jesus Christ, it's living a cycle, it's not a list, it's a cycle. And so I'm like, you keep going through this cycle, and it's and it's the same. And if you uh read in the scriptures, it says the Lord's Course is one eternal round, right? And you know, it's we have we are human beings, so we think in a very linear linear way, right? You know, we think of time coming and passing, right? But in the Lord's timing, it's secular.
SPEAKER_01:No, I what's funny is I feel like we think linearly, but life's happening to us secularly.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:And and what's funny is because there's we for example, like our days are cycles. Morning, afternoon, evening, nighttime, right?
SPEAKER_00:And or like holidays, our calendars, everything cycle, it repeats.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And and I see that with mistakes and good times in my life, too. Like, sure enough, the pride cycle lives on even nowadays. I'll be doing good. I'm like, uh, I don't need to really lean on the savior, and then uh I'll hit a hard time, and then I'm like, oh, I need to repent. And I come back to Christ and I start feeling good again. And I do this cycle a lot. And I like sometimes I'm just like I get frustrated with myself because I'm like, when I'm gonna learn my lesson, you know, like when am I gonna stop? Um, but I think like we're always gonna have a waxing and waning in our lives to the degree, like they don't have to be big waxing and wanings, because we don't always want to fall way off the bandwagon or off the wagon and then have to get back on. Sometimes that's how it is. But I think even in our good moment lives, there are going to be times when we feel really good, and then there becomes a question of faith, and then it leads us back to wanting to rely on Christ. And it's this continual coming back to Christ that, like you said, strings that weld, that bond until it's unbreakable, until there is no waxing and waning at all. And I think it's just like sometimes like God is just pushing us on this merry-go-around. He's like, ah, he's coming back again, you know. So um you know what it reminds me of?
SPEAKER_00:It reminds me of like that generic scene of a of a child getting angry with a parent and be like, that's it, I'm leaving, packs up his little bag, puts it on a stick and on his you know shoulder and starts marching away from home. And you know, the mother may be like, Oh, you need to stop him to the father. And the father's like, Don't worry, he'll be back. Because this happens every time, right? It's like he'll be back. And so sometimes we have to realize, like, you know, Heavenly Father is just patiently waiting there. He's not angry, he's just waiting for us to come back. And he knows that we will. He knows that instinctually we know where our home is and where we want to reside. And I believe he, our father in heaven and our savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit that God had, right? I believe they all have a confidence and a faith that we can have the ability to come back and we can find our way back. And they've given us every possibility and every way to make it back, right?
SPEAKER_01:What's funny enough, I I think we set out to talk about how to judge ourselves by our desires, but I think we just replaced it with judge ourselves off of Christ and God's desires for us.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, no. Well, I don't think we should ever judge ourselves by our desires, but we should allow God to set his standard and realize that he judges us off of our desires, right? That he, you know, I've always explained it to people who ask us, you know, people who aren't of our faith, because even today with the podcast and the social media page on Instagram, I have a lot of people in the comments and people coming into the DMs saying stuff like, Well, how do you guys view salvation? It seems like you guys just believe in a checklist and you know, how do you know if you're saved or not? And I said, Well, for us, God is not, it's not a checklist for us. It's a compass, right? It's not a ruler, it's a compass. It's where are we pointed? Where are we going? Where where are we headed, right? And if we're headed towards God, right, we're good. Okay. And if we get off course, we check our compass and we get back. We get back on course.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. A hundred percent.
SPEAKER_00:Remember, little flock, fear not, build upon the rock, do good, and always remember to hear him.
SPEAKER_01:Peace, y'all. Peace.