“What’s the thing that could potentially perfect you in a way that would make sense?” And my answer is knowledge, to understand how things work.
If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.
When we talk about mystery, we talk about eternal obscurity; for that which is known, ceases to be a mystery; and all that is known, we may know as we progress in the scale of intelligence.
Mix it up. Experiment a bit. Expect more from yourself. Most importantly, embrace feedback and actually use it.
Hint: if you feel as though you are stuck in a rut, you are almost certainly stuck in a rut. Try something different, but - this is the hugely important part - actually pay attention to how others react.
Heresy five: There are those who say that there is progression from one kingdom to another in the eternal worlds or that lower kingdoms eventually progress to where higher kingdoms once were. This belief lulls men into a state of carnal security. It causes them to say, “God is so merciful; surely he will save us all eventually; if we do not gain the celestial kingdom now, eventually we will; so why worry?” It lets people live a life of sin here and now with the hope that they will be saved eventually.
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought ofCthrowing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace”
Likewise, tests in the school of mortality are a vital element of our eternal progression. Interestingly, however, the word test is not found even one time in the scriptural text of the standard works in English. Rather, words such as prove, examine, and try are used to describe various patterns of demonstrating appropriately our spiritual knowledge about, understanding of, and devotion to our Heavenly Father’s eternal plan of happiness and our capacity to seek for the blessings of the Savior’s Atonement.
He who authored the plan of salvation described the very purpose of our mortal probation using the words prove, examine, and try in ancient and modern scripture. “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.”
Our efforts to prepare for the proving experiences of mortality should follow the example of the Savior, who incrementally “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man”7—a blended balance of intellectual, physical, spiritual, and social readiness.
With a deepening reverence for sacred things, your understanding grows. The scriptures speak of it as a light that grows “brighter and brighter until the perfect day”. That process is also described as progressing from grace to grace. The Savior Himself progressed in that way until He received a fulness, and you may follow in His footsteps.
Before we get on a bus, we should ask the bus driver a few questions...When we get on the "gospel" bus, we are both passenger and driver. The bus itself is what carries us to our ultimate goal, powered by the most efficient and perfect engine in the universe — the Atonement. But we decide where we are going to go, how fast we get there, and how firmly we put the "pedal to the metal". We all take detours, and it can be a bumpy ride. But this is a "smart bus" with a Gospel Positioning System that invariably points us back to our destination. Our refueling stations are beautiful, and our bus doesn't go very far if we don’t visit them and refuel often enough. And if we can see clearly, we will notice the cheering crowds on either side of our road, smiling and waving as we head toward the Eternal City. And the best thing is that we can invite others along for the ride!
You may dally by the wayside; you may fool away your time; you may be idle, indifferent and careless; but you only lose thereby the progress that you ought to make.
“On my way to visit the James’s the other evening, I saw a wheat field that appeared to be greener and taller than the others. Thinking about it for a while, I concluded that occasionally some loving farmer drives over the field with his tractor and pumps manure all over it. I thought, “My, it’s just like life. Here we are minding our own business, growing our little hearts out. We’re really quite green, somewhat productive, and very sincere, when out of the blue, life deals us a dirty one and we’re up to our eyebrows in manure. We, or course, conclude that life as we have known it has just ended and will never be the same again. But one day when the smell and the shock are gone, we find ourselves greener and taller than we have been.”
Those of you further down the road are smiling because you know something about priesthood service. It is this: the more faithful service you give, the more the Lord asks you. Your smile is a happy one because you know that He increases our power to carry the heavier load. The tough part of that reality, however is that for him to give you that increased power you must go in service to and faith to your outer limits. It is like building muscle strength. You must break down your muscles to build them up. You push muscles to the point of exhaustion. Then they repair themselves, and they develop greater strength.
Increased spritual strength is a gift from God which He can give when we push in His service to our limits. Through the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, our natures can be changed. Then our power to carry burdens can be increased more than enough to compensate for the increased service we will be asked to give. That helps me understand when I see someone else who makes priesthood service look easy. I know that they have either passed hard tests or that the tests lie ahead. So rather than envying them, I stand ready to help when the going gets harder for them, because it surely will.
“No matter how wicked and ferocious and depraved the Lamanites might be (and they were that!), no matter how much they outnumbered the Nephites, darkly closing in on all sides, no matter how insidiously they spied and intrigued and infiltrated and hatched their diabolical plots and breathed their bloody threats and pushed their formidable preparations for all-out war, they were not the Nephite problem. They were merely kept there to remind the Nephites of their real problem, which was to walk uprightly before the Lord”
Learning is integral to progression, especially as the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost teaches us what is needful for each of us to lay aside—meaning that which could distract us or delay our progression.
Our continuing role is to receive continuing revelation... The Lord’s loving influence through the Holy Ghost helps us know His priority for our progression. Heeding personal revelation leads to personal progression.
Each of us has the same commandments to keep and must walk the same straight and narrow path in order to have happiness here and there. Each of us has the same eternal attributes to develop. So our fundamental circumstances are the same.
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
Attack your weaknesses. That's difficult. Creativity can present a whole spectrum of challenges, and it's so tempting to stick with familiar territory.
I pray that we as a people are using this unique time to grow spiritually. We are here on earth to be tested, to see if we will choose to follow Jesus Christ, to repent regularly, to learn, and to progress. Our spirits long to progress. And we do that best by staying firmly on the covenant path.
Now a brief word of caution. The commandment to be like Him is not intended to make you feel guilty, unworthy, or unloved. Our entire mortal experience is about progression, trying, failing, and succeeding.
You are good enough, you are loved, but that does not mean that you are yet complete. There is work to be done in this life and the next. Only with His divine help can we all progress toward becoming like Him.
Though there are things about the priesthood as it relates to both men and women that I don't understand, this does not concern me, because wrestling with spiritual questions is a fundamental aspect of mortality. It is an exercise that strengthens our faith and spurs our growth, if we'll allow it to. Learning, after all, is integral to progression.
Sometimes, life's greatest lessons come to us at the most dreadful times of our lives...How we respond at such times of crisis determines if such challenges will be times for progression or merely times of suffering.
You, alone, are responsible for your spiritual growth and accumulation of worldly knowledge...
“Take away the serpents from us,” they pled. But apparently the Lord did not, even when Moses prayed about it, because the serpents were not the problem. The real problem was lack of faith and an attitude that caused the Israelites to complain constantly, and to blame God and Moses for every difficulty. If the Israelites had gone to Moses and said, “Pray unto the Lord, that He might take away our rotten attitudes from us,” this story might have a different ending. But to them, bad attitude was not the problem. Snakes were the problem. The Lord’s response was to have Moses make a brass snake and place it on a pole where people could find it and look at it. With the sculpted serpent came the promise: “Everyone that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.” (Numbers 21:8.) The number of fiery serpents did not diminish at all. They remained in all their poisonous plenty to remind Israel about the genuine issue. As we would expect, the Lord’s response dealt with the real problem, and attempted to teach trust, faith, and gratitude, in much the same way as His response to the question of the brother of Jared about light in the barges.
Immediately after Jesus fed the five thousand with two tiny fish and five loaves of barley bread and filled twelve baskets with the leftovers, some of the Jews determined to “take him by force, to make him a king” (John 6:15). He would have made a great king! He could feed the starving, heal the sick, raise the dead, pay taxes with money from the mouth of a fish; certainly He could defeat and expel the Romans. He could with a wave of his hand resolve every social problem faced by the Jewish nation. But the problems the Jews needed to solve were neither social nor political. They were spiritual. And until the Jews resolved their spiritual dilemma, they could not expect the Lord to help them solve other problems.
I first saw Jim speak when I was 17, and he introduced me to a new way of thinking. He taught me that if you want anything to change, you must change. If you want things to get better, you’ve got to get better. And that the secret of life is working harder on myself than on the job, or a specific skill, or anything else. Jim taught me that as soon as I committed myself to excellence, I would really have something to give others.
Jim also taught me that every day, you have to “stand guard at the door of your mind.” He taught me that you have to continually feed your mind with knowledge and thoughts that empower you. Gratitude, courage, faith, determination, compassion and love — these are the emotions that we must nurture.
Learning is like rowing upsteam; not to advance is to drop back.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
Man should be content with what he has... but never with what he is.
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
“What’s the thing that could potentially perfect you in a way that would make sense?” And my answer is knowledge, to understand how things work.
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