"Where Will Your Friends Take You?" -New Era

Where Will Your Friends Take You? By John Bytheway
John Bytheway, "Where Will Your Friends Take You?", New Era, Feb. 2011, 10–11

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Has this ever happened to you? You’re sitting in church listening to the speaker when all of a sudden you hear loud noises coming from the ceiling above. To your great surprise, the roof opens up, revealing the bright blue sky, and you see the faces of four men peering down onto the congregation. The next thing you know, they are lowering another man on a stretcher onto the chapel floor.

Has that ever happened to you? Probably not. But something similar happened during the Savior’s ministry.

A Miraculous Healing
“Men brought in a bed a man which was taken with a palsy” the story begins in Luke 5:18, “and they sought means to bring him in, and lay him before [Jesus].” The only problem was they couldn’t bring their sick friend in because the place was packed! Even the doorways were blocked with the multitude, and there was no way to get inside.

At this point the friends could have given up and gone home. But they didn’t. You can almost imagine the conversation: “What should we do?” says one. “I have an idea,” says another. “Let’s go up on top of the building, make an opening in the roof, and lower him to the floor!” You can also imagine the sick man at this point hearing these unusual plans and saying, “You’re going to do what?”

The story continues:

“They went upon the housetop, and let him down through the tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus.

“And when he saw their faith, he said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee” (Luke 5:19–20).

The scribes and Pharisees thought this was blasphemous, so Jesus responded:

“Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk?

“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins, (he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house” (Luke 5:23–24).

The story ends beautifully:

“And immediately he rose up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his own house, glorifying God.

“And they were all amazed, and they glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, We have seen strange things to day” (Luke 5:25–26).

If You Feel Spiritually Weak
Perhaps you haven’t witnessed such an event, but there are a number of ways to apply this story to your life. You could put yourself in the place of the sick man. Let’s say you were weak—not physically but spiritually. Where will your friends take you? Maybe there’s a party or a movie or another activity, and you have little say in the matter—where will they take you? This story teaches us a wonderful lesson: There may come a day when you are not as strong as you should be. At that point your choice of friends will be critical. Choose friends who will take you to Christ. To have friends who will always take you to higher ground is an incalculable blessing.

What Kind of Friend Are You?
But there’s another way to look at this scripture. Put yourself in the place of the friends. What kind of friend are you? Although the Savior was the one who healed and forgave the man, the friends are also worthy of mention. They loved their friend and wanted to help him. They didn’t give up and go home when things were difficult. Imagine the joy they must have felt when they looked down through the ceiling and saw their friend take up his bed and walk! That’s another lesson: Be the kind of friend who takes people to Christ. These friends were courageous, persistent, even creative. In every word, in every action, in every choice, you can lead people to the Savior, who can heal us not only physically but also spiritually.

Be the kind of friend who takes people to Christ.

Elder Oaks Speaks on Religious Freedom in Society

Apostle Emphasizes the Importance of Religious Freedom to Society
BloggerDiggFacebookTwitterEmailShare this Story PRINT |04 February 2011 — SALT LAKE CITY
News Release

In a landmark address today to the Chapman University School of Law, Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints affirmed the importance of the free exercise of religion and called for people to work together to protect this First Amendment right. “It is imperative that those of us who believe in God and in the reality of right and wrong unite more effectively to protect our religious freedom to preach and practice our faith in God,” he said.

Elder Oaks outlined the positive impact religion has had on society.

“In our nation‘s founding and in our constitutional order, religious freedom and its associated First Amendment freedoms of speech and press are the motivating and dominating civil liberties and civil rights,” Elder Oaks said. This freedom is founded upon “religious principles of human worth and dignity” that protect the conscience of all individuals. He further emphasized that “only those principles in the hearts of a majority of our diverse population can sustain that Constitution today.”

Elder Oaks stated that religious values and political realities are “so interlinked in the origin and perpetuation of this nation that we cannot lose the influence of religion in our public life without seriously jeopardizing our freedoms.”

Elder Oaks noted instances in which individuals who have spoken out or acted in accordance with their religious beliefs have been disciplined, dismissed from their employment and otherwise punished, describing these cases as another sign of the threat to the free exercise of religion.

“All of this shows an alarming trajectory of events pointing toward constraining the freedom of religious speech by forcing it to give way to the ‘rights’ of those offended by such speech,” Elder Oaks said.

In calling for a united effort among religions to defend religious freedom, Elder Oaks said such a coalition need not be associated with a particular religious group or political party.

“I speak for what Cardinal Francis George described in his address at Brigham Young University just a year ago. His title was ‘Catholics and Latter-day Saints: Partners in the Defense of Religious Freedom.’ He proposed “that Catholics and Mormons stand with one another and with other defenders of conscience, and that we can and should stand as one in the defense of religious liberty. In the coming years, interreligious coalitions formed to defend the rights of conscience for individuals and for religious institutions should become a vital bulwark against the tide of forces at work in our government and society to reduce religion to a purely private reality. At stake is whether or not the religious voice will maintain its right to be heard in the public square.”

In an interview prior to his speech (read and watch the full interview here), Elder Oaks said, “What unites us in religion is far more important than what divides us in the capacity to speak up for religious freedom.”