1 Nephi 15:7-9,11

This year members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are reading the Book of Mormon together. As in, each week members are given the same set of chapters to read from the Book of Mormon, starting at the beginning and going through the end. If you'd like to follow along, you can look up today's date using this link and see what chapters we're reading during the week.  Typically, Scott and I like to read chapters together on Sunday, and then finish reading or discussing our thoughts during the rest of the week.

I didn't realized how passionate I was about this particular set of scriptures until I started sharing my thoughts about them to my family. In 1 Nephi 15:7-9, Nephi (the author of these chapters in the Book of Mormon) is speaking with his older brothers about a vision that their father Lehi had seen. Nephi's brothers were confused about the interpretation of the vision and mentioned their confusion to Nephi (who speaks in the first person in these verses).

7 And they said: Behold, we cannot understand the words which our father hath spoken concerning the natural branches of the olive tree, and also concerning the Gentiles.

8 And I said unto them: Have ye inquired of the Lord?

9 And they said unto me: We have not; for the Lord maketh no such thing known unto us.

*Inserting my commentary again... Before I go deep on my soapbox, I'll just preface my longwinded-ness to say that your personal spirituality/ relationship with God/ testimony of truth takes work. There's no getting around the work part if you truly want your own spiritual life. If you're ambivalent about making an effort, then you may continue to be dependent on others' insights for spiritual progression. That's the summary... here comes the depth.

Recently I finished a book about goal setting called Atomic Habits by James Clear. I bring up this book so often now in conversations because the principles of habits are genius, and apparently the concepts even come to mind when I read the scriptures. In the beginning of this book about establishing habits, the author talks about how you need to see yourself already as being what you want to become. For example, if you want to quit smoking, you need to start referring to yourself as a non-smoker because that mentality will give you motivation to not smoke.

A brief explanation, but applying that concept here, if you want to be a more independent spiritual thinker, then you need to refer to yourself as a scriptorian or spiritual person and start acting like that persona and building habits like a spiritual person would build. In the above verses, Nephi's older brothers did not see themselves as people who receive personal revelation or spiritual confirmations, and already that mentality is going to make it harder for them to be open and prepared to receive the personal spiritual insights that Heavenly Father wants to give them.

Here's the thing, I believe that all people living on this Earth are spirit children of God, and thus have the right to hear from Him, to receive direction and answers. That message may not come in a vision or an audible voice. It usually doesn't. Most of the time, I feel a spiritual confirmation of a truth I hadn't previously understood, and that comes after I ponder, study, pray, and discuss.

Nephi outlines this process for his brothers in a subsequent verse:

11 Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said?—If ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be made known unto you.

This is a topic that I could discuss for awhile, but I won't write too much more here because that would be boring.

Last words on this topic for now: See yourself as a spiritual being who can receive personal direction from God! Set yourself up for success by creating habits that encourage revelation (study, ponder, ask, pray, listen).

If you already see yourself as a spiritual person, the best thing you can do for someone who is trying to be more spiritual is to ask him/her questions and encourage studying it out for themselves. From personal experience I can say, that telling someone the answer that you received will either provide no relief or only temporary strength. The Holy Spirit teaches us on an individual curriculum that makes sense for what we are experiencing in life, and that person you're "helping" can only sustain their spirituality through the work it takes to listen to their own curriculum.

*Soapbox exit... unless you get me started again, an opportunity which I would be happy to oblige in person. 

1 Nephi 1:18

Today I watched the newly released first episode of the Book of Mormon video series. After previously watching one behind the scenes video on YouTube, it seems that both cast and crew put a great deal of thought into the creation of these episodes to accurately depict the lives of prophets and disciples in the Book of Mormon. Though I've read the Book of Mormon many times, watching this video helps to humanize scripture stories, put myself in the experiences and emotions this family may have felt while leaving Jerusalem following prophetic warnings from prophets like Jeremiah.

In the very first verses written in the Book of Mormon, Nephi gives some background about what was happening in Jerusalem and how his father, Lehi, prayed to know what his family needed to do. The answer to his prayer came as a confirmation of what the prophets were preaching to the people - that God would allow Jerusalem to be destroyed due to overwhelming wickedness in the city. This first chapter in the Book of Mormon doesn't go into much detail of what was so wicked in Jerusalem. However, I found it interesting that the video depiction features Lehi walking through a busy market in Jerusalem surrounded by instances of what looks like normalized human trafficking.

In 1 Nephi 1:18 it reads:

18 Therefore, I would that ye should know, that after the Lord had shown so many marvelous things unto my father, Lehi, yea, concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, behold he went forth among the people, and began to prophesy and to declare unto them concerning the things which he had both seen and heard.

Two things stood out as I watched this first episode. Firstly, I was impressed by Lehi's courage to stand in the middle of a busy metropolitan area and tell people about his faith and what he had learned by praying. When I put myself in his shoes, it would be easy to think, "Oh, there are others, more qualified that I am, who are already warning the people." It was an act of faith for Lehi to obey God's direction to share what he had learned with people, who, by easy estimate, wouldn't want to hear what he had to say. Secondly, it would take trust in Lehi's character to listen and adhere to what he said. Again, if I were to put myself in their shoes - standing in the middle of the mall (let's say) listening to someone standing on food court table preaching of destruction, I'm more likely to consider them as crazy then to listen. I would have to know and trust Lehi, or I would need to have a strong spiritual impression to go and pray about it myself, in order to even have a lingering thought about what was said. It made me wonder, besides Lehi's family, who in the community was best situated to trust and heed Lehi's warning.

Ether 12:27

I have gotten into an awful habit of unintentionally complaining. When I was mindful enough to notice, I might catch myself complaining about other people not meeting my expectations. It is also not uncommon for me to complain about not being able to get on top of my health or whatever new trail I am facing - how I'm trying to be proactive and make good choices but instead feel like I've taken two steps back. Not difficult to complain about that frustration! This habit is so bad that I can be found complaining about what I anticipate may happen even before I give people a chance to do something different.

My bad habits started to come to light in several ways. As I was reading a couple books (The Happiness Project and The Power of The Other) I observed that while teaching concepts of improving happiness and leadership, these authors also focused on an opposite perspective of pessimism and listed some negative characteristics that I had just become aware of having. I began to wonder if my negative tendencies were disrupting my happiness, and maybe even more importantly, the happiness of those around me. Then one day, my husband was acting funny - apologizing for things he didn't need to apologize for and acting like he was putting me out, so to speak. These little seeds of doubt were annoying, honestly, and I called him out on it. Then later when I sat to think about this strange behavior of his, I connected some dots and realized that he was probably trying to compensate for my timely pessimism.

A couple weeks ago, as Scott and I studied the Come Follow Me lesson for that week, the lesson suggested we could read a talk to ponder more about Mary and Martha. It was in reading this talk that I could finally put a name to this weakness, a spiritual muscle of mine that had atrophied - charity.

It seriously seems like all signs have been pointing with a neon outline to my weakness lately. All these promptings reminded me of a scripture in the Book of Mormon. In the book of Ether, Moroni receives some instruction from the Lord that teaches that character weakness is an essential part of life, and could even be considered a gift from God, to help us choose humility and look to Him. These innate, or potentially acquired, weaknesses also give us opportunities to become better, more Christlike (a.k.a repentance), to demonstrate faith, and grow in spiritual maturity.

27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.

The best comparison I've heard with this scripture came from a local mental health professional a few months ago in church. He quoted this scripture and said these weaknesses we have are like big boulders in our lives, and all that Heavenly Father asks of us is to push on it a little every day. The boulder may move an inch or a mile over our lifetimes, or potentially not move at all. But if we consistently push every day (maybe some days just lay next to the boulders when we are too weak to push), over time we will become physically or mentally stronger because of the exercise.

Over the next few months I'm going to workout my charity muscle and make charity the focus of my personal study. Maybe I'll even keep a journal of my experiments implementing what I learn, so I can recognize patterns and attempt to turn around these bad habits and be kinder to family, friends, strangers, and even myself.

Alma 58:11

We have a Sunday Jar filled with ideas on different ways that we can spend time together after church. The activities vary from playing a board game together, taking a walk or exploring a new area of town, learning something new, indexing family history information, or even memorizing a scripture. When Scott was a missionary for our church, he chose to memorize a lot of different scriptures that would help him relate the scriptures to personal experiences of those he was teaching. Since we have been married, we haven't memorized many scriptures together. One Sunday earlier this year, we decided that we had some extra time to ourselves on a Sunday afternoon and we would choose one of our Sunday Jar activities - which of course was to memorize a scripture, since I'm bringing it up now.

Scott and I discussed whether there were any scriptures that we wanted to memorize together that we hadn't memorized already. Scott couldn't think of any off-hand, so I turned to my Gospel Library app for scriptures that I had tagged to come back to later and ponder more. One of those scriptures was in the book of Alma within the Book of Mormon.

11 Yea, and it came to pass that the Lord our God did visit us with assurances that he would deliver us; yea, insomuch that he did speak peace to our souls, and did grant unto us great faith, and did cause us that we should hope for our deliverance in him.

Background to this scripture - Alma and his people are in the middle of a war, and while Alma is a prophet, he had volunteered to serve in the military, commanding an army of young men. Conditions for that little army weren't great - they were hungry and needed more provisions. These young men weren't experienced fighters and needed more men to strengthen their ranks. There was a lot of pressure to maintain their homeland villages that they had been able to capture back from the enemy. Because of these pressures, the young men became fearful, as I imagine was their leader who wasn't a trained military man. But he and his little army were men of faith, and they turned to God in prayer for assistance.

As I was studying the scriptures, this verse had stood out to me as a message of hope and potentially a pattern of how our Heavenly Father answers prayers in the midst of turbulent times - not necessarily immediate relief, but with feelings of peace, a boost in faith, and hope for a solution.

The timing could not have been better to work on learning and memorizing this scripture as we debated two potential job offers. The answer to this employment dilemma wasn't initially clear, and this verse reminded us to be prayerful and look for God's assurances to guide us.

Luke 11:5-9

This last weekend we listened to General Conference on our TV on Saturday and Sunday. (For those who aren't familiar with what General Conference is in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, here is a link where you can learn more about it.) As I was listening to Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk, I realized that even though my idea for a scripture sharing social site has been held-up, the basic idea didn't have to wait. I could try to recreate the most important element using this blog space. So from time to time, I plan to post some of my thoughts as I study the scriptures and try to apply them to my life. Then I am creating a new page in the header of my blog that I can share with others showing a compilation of how I try to study the scriptures and what they mean to me.

...

In Luke, after he gives an account of the Savior teaching the Lord's prayer, Luke also includes an interesting parable that amounts to verses 5-9 in Chapter 11. I don't remember ever having read this parable before, but it struck me as odd when I was studying this chapter recently.

The story is of a man who asks a friend to provide the ingredients needed for breakfast, as an unexpected visitor has arrived that night. Okay, sounds like prayer. As I was casually reading through these verses, the part that caught me off guard and caused me to read through the entire parable more closely was this verse:

8 I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.

At first I was thinking, "Wait! That doesn't sound like my understanding of the character of God. Doesn't He consider us to be friends when we come to Him in prayer?"

But then I went back and read all the details. This man knocked on "his friend's" door, AT MIDNIGHT, while the rest of the house was clearly asleep, because this man WASN'T PREPARED. Seriously?! I would be questioning the friendship too, in that case.

Sure, I have a couple friends who despite how often we talk or how much time we spend together, if they called me in the middle of the night to ask for an emergency favor, I would run to their aid because of my love for them... not to mention that I know they would only ever call me in the middle of the night if it was an emergency. However, if I had a friend like the man in this parable, who took advantage of our friendship and crossed some boundaries, I too would only consider helping if he was too darn persistent that my best option was to give in just to get him to stop.

This parable made me reevaluate how I am using prayer. Am I working to study out and solve my own problems before going to the Lord? Or even better, am I prepared enough to go to the Lord for advice well in advance of my problem due dates? Am I the kind of friend with God that we have an established relationship of love and mutual respect based on many previous conversations and reciprocating help? Or am I frequently bumming off His good graces?

Note to self: Try being a better friend with Heavenly Father.

I love how reading the scriptures and listening to General Conference cause me to ponder on my areas of weakness and commit to improve.