I have both an undergraduate and graduate degree in business. In my academic and professional pursuits I have read a lot of business-related books. One of the most influential and oft-quoted business writers is the late Clayton Christensen, who was a professor at Harvard as well as a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Clayton Christensen has long been a hero and role model to me: we share the same alma maters and he was wildly successful and very highly regarded in his professional life while being a stalwart example as a disciple of Jesus Christ and outspoken missionary and advocate for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
While he was a professor at Harvard, he published a document called “Why I Belong and Why I Believe” which is his testimony of why he belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an organized religion and why he believes the doctrines taught in the Church are true. I was recently asked to give a sermon in my church on this same topic “Why I Belong and Why I Believe” which I am also sharing with you here.
I was born into the church to a father who is a first-generation member of the Church and to a mother from a family that has mostly left the Church. Growing up, my parents faithfully took me and my siblings to church each week and I was blessed to have many good examples in friends and leaders along the way who helped me progress enough so I could make the right decisions sooner or later at each crossroad.
I am grateful for my parents, leaders, and friends who were good examples and have helped me get this far on the strait and narrow path and I would be remiss not to attribute their influence at least partially to why I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
However, while I have relied at times on the testimonies and good examples of those around me, my testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ and His restored Church is my own. I believe in Jesus Christ and His restored gospel because I have experimented on my own upon the words, commandments, and promises of God given to us through His prophets both ancient and modern. I have, as taught by the Book of Mormon prophet Alma, repeatedly exercised even a particle of faith and have been blessed for it.
This repeated experimentation has led to spiritual experiences too numerous to count, from feeling the Holy Ghost as an eight-year-old when I was baptized and given the gift of the Holy Ghost to feeling that same Spirit as a nineteen-year-old when I testified as a missionary that God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ appeared to the prophet Joseph Smith. From being comforted by the Holy Ghost through the words of an ancient Book of Mormon prophet after completely bombing my events at the National Jump Rope Championships to being comforted by that same Spirit when our first two children were given Priesthood blessings as they were sent to the NICU immediately after birth.
These and countless smaller yet eternally-significant and sometimes daily experiences strengthen the foundation of my faith in Jesus Christ and His restored gospel and continually confirm my choice to belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Never have I had an experience that is a singular, significant turning point in my life that I can point to and say “this happened and then I knew that God lives” or “this happened and then I knew the Book of Mormon is true”--like the turning on of a light in a dark room. Some people are blessed with these larger, significantly life-changing experiences which are amazing miracles and I love to hear about them.
But for me, all of my experiences with God and His Spirit and prophets have slowly added light to my understanding like the “slow and almost imperceptible increase in light on the horizon”1 as night turns to morning, until I can now look back and say with confidence that I know that Jesus is the Christ, that He restored His Church through Joseph Smith, that the Book of Mormon is true, and that through temple covenants we can return to live with our Father in Heaven and our families forever.
Each experience with the Spirit is a constant, very slight turning point changing the course of my life only a few degrees--enough to keep me on the path to return to my Father in Heaven.
Of course that is not to say that I haven’t made large mistakes along the way or that I have always made choices that kept me on the straight and narrow. At various times I haven’t clung to the rod and pressed forward. Sometimes perhaps I have even let go. But that’s the beauty of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a gospel of repentance and progression. We can make mistakes and the Lord will always forgive us and help us--through the Spirit, through examples of others, through kind and caring church leaders, and, vitally, through His infinite Atonement.
That is why I believe.
So why do I belong? No experiences with the Spirit happened on their own in independent situations. The vast majority of the experiences that have built and reinforced my testimony of Jesus Christ and His Atonement have come directly through His organized Church including the gift of the Holy Ghost from priesthood holders, experiences in His holy temples, the positive influence of patient Church leaders, and the teachings of the prophets in the Book of Mormon and latter-day prophets including the prophet Joseph Smith and President Russell M. Nelson.
I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because here I can both make and find help to keep my baptismal and temple covenants with God--covenants that He requires in order to return to live with him again. I belong because here “we can unite our faith, hearts, strengths, minds, and hands for Him to perform His mighty miracles.” I belong because “The Church … is the scaffolding with which we build eternal families” which is my ultimate goal in life--to live with my family forever.
Yes, I have had enough experiences with Jesus Christ and His gospel to know that living the restored gospel as taught in His Church is the only way to find true happiness and peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come. This is why I belong and this is why I believe.
Jeremy
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