Women’s Conference Today!!

Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Taken by myself with a Canon 10D and 17-40mm f/4 L lens. This is a 3 segment panorama. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Behold, I am Jesus Christ… (Photo credit: was_bedeutet_jemanden)

 

 

 

 

Today I give you a promise.

 

I promise you that when you participate in the General Relief Society meeting of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tonight, you will be filled with joy and rejoicing.  You will feel the Spirit of God and receive inspiration from Him to help you in your life.

 

Go with a prayer in your heart and a question in your mind.  Be open to receiving inspiration from your kind, loving Father in Heaven to answer that question.  Be prepared to seek to know what His will is for you in your life, how you can become all that He would have you become.  You are His child!  That gives you all the good attributes and characteristics you could hope for.  Look for the ones that you can develop at this time of your life, and how to do so.

 

As you do this you will find new avenues opening up to you.  You will receive greater gifts and knowledge that you have ever had before.  Things will become more clear to you.  You will begin to understand your relationship to your Father in Heaven, and you will love Him more.  You will be strengthened to overcome the problems and trials in your life.  The path through them will become more readily visible.

 

The little annoyances in life will start to dissipate.  You’ll find yourself feeling happier and more hopeful, despite the circumstances around you!  This will surprise you.  But the feeling of peace will pervade your existence and you will find yourself more drawn to your loving Heavenly Father.

 

You will desire to keep these feelings alive in you always.  You can have that!  God has given us many resources to enrich our lives.  We can come to know Him better as we pray to Him by talking to Him as we would to our best friend.  He is always near and anxious to hear from us.  He is the “Great Parent of the universe” and stands ready to help and guide us in our lives!

 

He has given us a living prophet to guide and direct us today.  He has provided His word through sacred scripture, the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.  All contain His words and bring us closer to Him and give us answers in our lives as we study, ponder, and pray about the things we read in them.

 

He has given us His church so that we can be organized in helping and serving others.  Through the organization of the church we have the principles and ordinances we need to know why we are here, where we came from, what our relationship with God and each other is, where we are going after this life, and to tie ourselves and our families together forever and return to Him who created us and live with Him for all Eternity.

 

All from watching women’s conference.  Ask and ye shall receive!  🙂

 

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Thankful to Go to Church

I went to church today.  🙂

It may not seem like such a big thing, nor an important one.

However, millions of people in the world today do not have the option to perform that one, single, little act.

And many others can go, but they have no choice which church to go to.  😦

I know that I am one of a great minority who may not only choose to go to church, in fact the church I choose to go to, but have also found the church that I believe is the true church of God.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often known as the Mormons, is different from all other churches and religions in the world.

How are we different?

We have the priesthood authority of God, our Heavenly Father, to seal families together not just until death, but for time and all eternity.  We have all the principles and ordinances of the gospel that can enable everyone everywhere to to learn of God’s plan of happiness, follow the example Jesus Christ set for us,  repent of our sins, and lead our families back to live together with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in eternal joy and happiness.

When Jesus was alive on the earth, He organized his church so he could spread his gospel throughout the world.  Unfortunately, after His death and the death of the apostles, people began turning away from what they had been taught.  Apostasy reigned and the authority of God was taken from the earth.  Jesus had foretold that this would happen.  He taught his disciples that one day He would restore, or reinstate, His true church with all of the same power and authority that He brought to His original organization.

We believe that sequence of events began when a young, 14-year-old boy, was looking for truth.  “There was in the place where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject of religion….Indeed, the whole district of country seemed affected by it, and great multitudes united themselves to the different religious parties, which created no small stir and division amongst the people, some crying, ^a“Lo, here!” and others, “Lo, there!”…

for a scene of great confusion and bad feeling ensued—priest contending against priest, and convert against convert; so that all their good feelings one for another, if they ever had any, were entirely lost in a strife of words and a contest about opinions.

I was at this time in my fifteenth year….it was impossible for a person young as I was, and so unacquainted with men and things, to come to any certain conclusion who was ^bright and who was wrong.”  This young man was Joseph Smith.   One day as he read the Bible, he read James 1:5, “If any of you lack ^bwisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.”  He continues, ”

Never did any passage of ^ascripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed ^bwisdomfrom God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects ^cunderstood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.

 13 At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in^adarkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to “ask of God,” concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would ^bgive liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture.

 14 So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the ^awoods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a ^bbeautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to ^cpray ^dvocally.

 15 After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God.”

What followed is one of the most beautiful stories in the history of the world: “I saw a pillar of ^clight exactly over my head, above the brightness of the ^dsun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me….When the light rested upon me I^bsaw two ^cPersonages, whose brightness and ^dglory defy all description, ^estanding above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My^fBeloved ^gSon. Hear Him!

 18 My object in going to ^ainquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)—and which I should join.

 19 I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all^awrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those ^bprofessorswere all ^ccorrupt; that: “they ^ddraw near to me with their lips, but their ^ehearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the^fcommandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the ^gpower thereof.”

20 He again forbade me to join with any of them; and many other things did he say unto me…” Joseph Smith History 1:5-20.

This glorious story continues a few years later when Joseph Smith became the first prophet of this dispensation and Jesus Christ restored His original church to the earth, through Joseph.  The glad tidings that angels joyously delivered to Mary, to Joseph, and later to the shepherds on that quiet hillside at the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, would again be brought to mankind, that the earth would again rejoice as the true gospel was again brought to the world!

This is the good news of the true gospel of Jesus Christ.  And you can know if for yourself, you do not have to take my word for it.

You can follow the same process Joseph Smith followed, and ask God, your Heavenly Father, for yourself if these things are true.  He will make it known to you, in your mind and in your heart, the truth of anything you ask Him about.

Therefore, ask – and find out for yourself.  🙂

Smith’s later theology described Jesus and God the Father as two distinct physical beings. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Trusting the Lord

You know, I usually think of trusting the Lord in the passive sense, meaning that I believe God will bless me and help me as I patiently wait for it to be His will and for when the timing is best for me, and any others concerned.

But as I’ve been reading the book I referred to in my last blog, Teachings of Presidents of the Church, Lorenzo Snow, I am reminded that I can trust, and in fact should expect to trust, the Lord in the active sense.  By this I mean that we can believe the things He says, and when we obey those laws and rules that He has set forth, we will reap the blessings He has promised.  And even moreso, I am feeling that I can have the desire to say and do things that will strengthen and help others, and I can expect that as I move forward, initiating an action in that direction, God will bless my efforts, fill my mouth, and enable my meager attempts at encouraging someone else to be magnified!

And these acts do not need to be huge, or grandiose.  Sometimes just opening my mouth or stepping forward is enough to begin with.  For instance, today on that shuttle ride from the parking lot to work, there were several people already on it when I boarded.  I found an empty seat and pulled out my book to begin reading.  But it was so quiet!  The Spirit of God nudged me, so I didn’t begin reading.  And after a minute I asked the woman I was sitting next to how she was doing.  She said fine.  I thought for a moment, and then said the thought that entered my mind, “When I started for work this morning it was pretty nice.  But when I got into town it felt so much colder!”  And the gal behind me spoke up and said, “It’s true!  It is colder here in town than by the foothills!”

This sparked a lively conversation between the 3 of us and even a couple others on the shuttle and we had a very enjoyable ride in to work!  And did some teambuilding in the process.  Again, not a big thing, but sure a nice way to start the day!

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