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Today’s episode is completely off-tangent to what is normally discussed in this podcast: the difference between spirituality and religion? Yes, these are two different things that Nate will enlighten us today, and why knowing about it can help you make better decisions when it comes to this aspect.
Welcome back. Today, we’re talking about spirituality versus religion and yes, this is a departure from what I typically talk about. But it is something that’s very important to me and it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. And I’ve been wanting to make a video about this for a long time. So what is the difference between spirituality and religion? Should there be a difference? That’s we’re going to talk about. To begin this topic, let me define what I mean by spirituality and religion. Specifically spirituality means a connection to God, okay? You have a connection with God, you can get inspiration from God. Now, what I mean by religion is actually an organization. It’s like organized spirituality. There’s a leader, there’s a group of people together in a church. So, originally there was no difference between spirituality and religion and I’ll give you an example. Let’s go clear back thousands of years ago to Moses. Okay, Moses was just a man but he had a specific job. His job was to be a prophet. And God appeared to Moses and spoke to him. So that’s obviously a very spiritual connection. Moses was very spiritual he was directly connected. He saw God face-to-face. He talked with him, he got inspiration from him. He came down from the mountain and he spoke to the people. So the people learned the Word of God. Moses organized a religion. Okay, he was the the leader on the earth for God’s religion. And what the people could do is they could learn from the Prophet. They could hear the words of this prophet and then they could get a confirmation because we’re given the gift of the Holy Ghost. The spirit. So we can listen in our hearts, we can pray ourselves and we can use spirituality to connect directly to God to find out, “Hey, is what this prophet is teaching me, is it true?” Okay, so we can get that confirmation for ourselves or the people at that time, they both were a part of a religion led by a true prophet who received revelation from God and they could pray themselves. They could get that spiritual conformation for themselves. And so the religion that they were part of the spirituality, it was all interconnected. So, what happened? How does that change? See overtime, apostasy happens. It’s happened so many times throughout the history of the earth. When people reject the prophets and replace the teachings that these prophets gave them with teachings of their own, they create doctrine of their own or they tweak or change the doctrines that have been taught by prophets that was revealed by God when they tweaked these doctrines to better suit themselves, that’s when religion is no longer directly connected to God and therefore spirituality is pulled out. And therefore spirituality becomes separate from that religion. Because they stepped away from the true source of spirituality such as revelation and prophets, their religion was quite separate from spirituality. I mean think about the religious climate at the time that Jesus Christ lived on the earth. Among the Jews, there were 2 prominent religious sects. There was the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And they both had extremely different viewpoints, different doctrines. One group believed in the resurrection, the other group did not believe in resurrection. One group believed that marriage was holy and could not be broken. Divorce was not on the table except in extreme circumstances. The other group, marriage wasn’t as important. They could easily justify divorce. The ironic thing is that those that were the most spiritual. They recognized Jesus as their Savior and they separated themselves from those other sects. They saw that what those religions were teaching that it was different from how they felt and when they heard Jesus speak. They were attracted to true spirituality and they separated themselves from that religion. But then again, Jesus called 12 Apostles and he set up the true religion again. The church that Jesus Christ set up was the church that was directly connected with spirituality. So again, spirituality is a connection to God and religion is a connection to a church. What about today? I’ve got so many wonderful friends that are very spiritual people but they have so many different beliefs. There’s so many different ideas that they have and that is so confusing. There are so many different sects of religion that it becomes really confusing. Whether you’re talking about different major religions from Christianity to Judaism to Muslim to Seek to Hindu to Buddhist to any other major religion. Yeah, there’s differences there. But even look within Christianity, there’s all the different denominations from Catholics to of Angelicans to Protestants to Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that I’m a part of. If a church isn’t directly connected to the source of spirituality then something is missing. I mean think about it. I want to join the church so I can have a connection to God. But if that church doesn’t have a direct connection to God, then it actually becomes a stumbling block. It becomes a hinder meant for me to having a real connection with God. The only way that a church can help me connect with God is if that church is led by a prophet. I will say that any church that teaches good values can help you get part of the way. There’s a lot of good things taught in a lot of churches. But again, you can only get part of the way. You can’t have a complete connection to God if the church that you’re following does not have a direct connection to God. I mean look at it this way. A church without a prophet is a club or a business. Things are decided upon by vote. I mean today, that’s why I think there is such a huge movement toward spirituality as there’s so many different churches out there teaching different things. Doing different marketing campaigns. Raising money and spending money in different ways. They’re not led by a prophet and they’re financially run like a business. I wouldn’t want to be a part of a church like that either. I want to take a little tangent here and talk about paid clergy. To me that doesn’t even make sense. I mean why do you pay tithing and why do these churches put so much money into marketing? It’s because it’s a business and so that the preacher can make a living. The more exciting or the more appealing his doctrine is the more followers he has and the more money his business can generate. This business is driven by profits not by connection to God. So, why am I talking about this topic today? There is a prophet on the earth today. Yep a real prophet. Just like Moses, Noah, Abraham, Peter. Just like they were prophets, there’s a prophet on the earth today. His name is Russell M Nelson. He had a career as a heart surgeon. In fact, he was one of the world’s foremost heart surgeons in developing many different practices. And so in medical schools people really revere him as a pioneer. He’s a man, he’s led a really good life and today he’s got a calling as a prophet. When I pay tithing to my church I know that my local bishop doesn’t get paid a dime of that. Our church is built upon volunteers. In fact, a few weeks ago, they asked me to give a sermon. We don’t usually use that word sermon. I call that I gave a talk. But I was the one who gave the sermon that Sunday. I certainly wasn’t paid to do that. Now, the very cool thing is is you don’t have to take my word for it. I’m telling you that there is a prophet on the earth today, Russell M Nelson. He’s the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints. You don’t have to take my word for it. You don’t have to take my word for it. There’s something that you can do to have that direct connection with God and find out for yourself if it’s true. If there was a prophet on the earth today, would you want to know about it? Would you want to know what he’s talking about? And would you want to know if there’s a way if you could find out if it’s true? There are a lot of false prophets throughout the world today. And so, it makes sense that God would provide a way for us to know what is truth. To be able to determine is this a true prophet or is this a false prophet? There’s only one true prophet on the earth at a time. I’m going to end this video with a challenge. My challenge to you is to be spiritually in tune enough connect with God, listen to your heart and search until you find Church that has that direct connection to God that is led by a prophet.