Stretching of my faith

Last Friday, while I was playing with Sammy, I heard a knock at the door. I knew that it could only be one of three kinds of people who would be knocking on my front door at 3:00 in the afternoon--the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, or (because it is election time in Minnesota) a candidate running for office. This time it was two young men in dress clothes from the Mormon Church.

I love talking to Mormons. One of the reasons I was so excited to be a homeowner was the frequent visits by friends, neighbors, and people trying to convert me to their faith.

Now while I firmly disagree with their beliefs (even though they say they are Christians and believe in Jesus Christ and the Bible), I welcome opportunities to talk with them. But I used to be so scared to talk to them. What if I couldn't remember what to say? What if I called myself a Christian, but couldn't come up with the right verses to share? What if I just sounded stupid?

So since I've been a stay at home mom, I've reviewed verses in the Bible to discredit many of their strange beliefs, studied the Mormon church, their original "prophet" Joseph Smith, his life, and his teachings and writings...knowing that I would probably have them show up at my door at some time.

After an hour and a half...that's right...a whole hour and a half, we finally parted ways. We had talked about salvation, heaven, hell, Jesus Christ in the Americas, Mary, modern day apostleship, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, among other things. Before I closed the door, the two young men asked me to just read through the Book of Mormon and pray that God would make it clear if it was truly His word. I agreed to do that. (When I did eventually read through the first 2 books in the Book of Mormon, I was so upset by what I was reading—Smith copying almost the entire book of Isaiah saying that it was a “new revelation” and writing words that he claimed my Lord, Jesus Christ had said in the Americas--that I had to put it down before I started it on fire.) Then I asked them to pray about whether Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. Because if my belief is true, they would someday stand before God the Father and have to explain why they followed the beliefs and writings of a false prophet. They also agreed. We didn’t convert each other to our respective belief systems, but I do hope I planted some seeds in their hearts.

Afterwards I gave Sammy a snack (she was so STARVING because she hadn’t gotten her afternoon snack because of our visitors) and immediately called Brad. He put me on speaker phone and I told him all about it and asked him about two questions they had for me which I didn’t have a really good answer for. I was SO THANKFUL that I only had two questions that I wasn’t quite sure how to answer—God is good! He and the rest of his office staff got a kick out of my conversation with them.

The one thing I kept repeating to them when they asked me why I believed a certain thing was, “It says so in the Bible, and I believe that it is God breathed, inspired by the Holy Spirit, accurate and completely infallible. Every belief I have is founded in the Bible.” The Bible is key to what I believe. If I can’t correctly communicate that to others, I have a serious problem.

Even though my heart was beating wildly when I first opened the door, now looking back on it, I see that I have grown and my faith has been strengthened by the experience. The Bible says that we should always be ready to give the reason for the hope that we have, and I hope that I accurately and firmly communicated that faith to those two young men.