Sacrament Talk -Prophets

"How the Words of the Prophets Have Blessed My Life" given n Sunday the 26th

I feel like before we can even start talking about blessings, we have to first answer a few questions.
1. Do we have a prophet today 
2. Do I care
3. If I do, Therefore what
To answer those questions we have to start with what Alma the younger describes in Chapter 8:10 of Alma
'Alma labored much in the spirit, wrestling with God in mighty prayer...'
What does it mean to wrestle and labor much? Is it a once and done kinda thing? Is it half hearted? How long of a time frame would this be? Min, hours, days, months, or perhaps years?
What I'm about to talk about, I'm no expert on. I'm no one of particular importance. Take what I have to say as what it is; the thoughts and impressions of someone who has vigorously engaged in a wrestle with the Lord for further light and knowledge
Let's now start our 3 questions back at the foundation of our knowledge of the gospel.
The Plan of Salvation
That phrase is probably conjuring images of circles and lines representing the 4 areas that make up the plan
1. The creation
2. The fall
3. Mortal life
4. Life after death

The plan of salvation is the gospel big picture. The plan is everything, or we have nothing. I am going to liken the plan of salvation to a stipple painting. The stippling technique is when the artist uses tiny brush strokes of paint in different colors that when standing close to the painting looks like nothing but some little dots, but when you take a couple steps back and view the painting from a distance all those little dot like brush strokes reveal a picture.

This revealed picture is of the plan of salvation and what gives us eternal perspective. The plan starts with 3 fundamental doctrinal truths. Godhead, a plan presented for exaltation, and that Jesus Christ was put forward to be the success of this plan with his atonement.

The rest of the colors in the painting are appendages to those 3 things. If you attend seminary, or your child does you know that there are 10 doctrinal topics of the gospel that represent eternal truth. What are those things?

The restoration, Prophets and Revelation Priesthood and Priesthood keys Ordinances and Covenants Marriage and family Commandments
Lastly

A.S.K= Acquiring spiritual knowledge. This is the process I will be walking us through today
1st you have to act in faith. You have to have questions? This is where you explore your doubt with faith. How do you do that? Start with what you know and then walk yourself backward to the questions you have.
2nd examine concepts and questions with an eternal perspective. Work to reframe the question in a faith based way, and remember to start with what you know-however small and simple.
3rd Seek further understanding through divinely appointed sources and study it out in your mind. Here’s the key study it out in your mind from a faith perspective- that holding on to what you know.
lets now look back on our first 3 parts of the plan? Can you have a testimony of the Godhead, the plan of salvation, and the atonement of Jesus Christ, and stop there? Many will tell you that you can. That you don't need anything else to be a good person. To be loved by God.

What if you find yourself stuck there. What would acting in faith look like? What would help you to know the pattern of God. Would he organize a church, and how would he? What kind of things would he expect of his followers? Do I need to be subject to his laws if he is loving and forgiving? Let's take a leap of faith and say yes, it is totally reasonable that he would organize a church? Now what? How do we view those organizational guidelines?

Now remember, we are leading with our faith. We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, so we're going to look to the prophet who claims to have restored this church we've been talking about.

Joseph Smith “God himself found himself in the midst of spirits and glory because he was greater he saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest who were less in intelligence could have a privilege to advance like himself and be exalted with him that they might have one glory upon another in all that knowledge, power, and glory. so he took in hand to save the world of spirits.”

If we believe that is the goal of God, then what does that look like? What would the laws for advancement look like? Think back to our stipple painting; Would there be appendages?- A restoration? Prophets and Revelation? Priesthood and Priesthood keys,? Ordinances and Covenants? Marriage and Family? Commandments or 'laws'?

Is this process easy that we are exploring today? No! It's a hard and headache inducing, sometimes soul ripping, rollercoaster of faith and doubt. It takes effort. If we think back to what Joseph Smith said; that we are being trained to be able to advance as God has. What might that look like? I imagine that should look a lot like Special forces training. Not just anyone can be in the special forces because the training is so hard. Why make the training so hard, don't we want everyone to join? It has to be hard because they do what others can't. They have to be strengthened so that they can survive any circumstance. When confronted with fear they need to be trained to act and not react. They save the lives in the most difficult circumstances. They willingly subject themselves to this grueling training. They sign up for this training to be the best of the best. How can they be strong enough to survive in every conceivable scenario? Being beaten down to their lowest point and surviving? I often think of one of the training exercises where they are lined up laying down along the shore and tied together while wave after wave crash upon them until they feel like death is immanent. This training can feel cruel, but it is designed to save lives.

This is how I look at trials and struggles which lead me to engage in a wrestling with the Lord. The special forces training we are called upon to endure are; unanswered questions, challenges that seem to hard to bear, addictions, feeling forsaken, blessings not realized, children choosing another path, friends or siblings leaving the church, questions regarding The church's history, commandments you don't understand, words of the prophet that seem as if words of a man, and many others. These can all feel like waves crashing upon us ready to drown us. Why does a loving God want us to struggle or as Alma put it - labor much and wrestle? Because he is strengthening us to weather any storm and save not only our lives, but be a strength to others. To make us into someone who increases with all knowledge, power and glory that the Father hath.

We are all unique in our challenges and testimonies. We should not compare ourselves to others. What you struggle with, someone else will find easy and struggle with something else that you find easy.

What happens when you don't receive promised blessings? Maybe you are feeling that if you were just more righteous you wouldn't have doubts. Maybe you see others testifying of things you can't seem to receive? This is something that I currently struggle with. The blessings promised from family scripture study, temple attendance, family history have not yielded the blessings I was expecting. What then? Was my execution bad? I just should have done more? Prayed harder? Read more? Said the right things And everything would have turned out the way I wanted? There is one little pesky little big detail that we often forget. Agency. Not even the super righteous actions of the parents can override a child's agency. It can't be done or the plan is a lie.

How important is agency when it comes to parents and children? How can I find the answer to my heart wrenching questions of failure? Well, I know we have lots of examples of parents and missionaries, and people who have struggled with their faith in the scriptures. We can look to them for how to measure success in the Lord's way. Let's take a step back from the picture so we can see it better.

The BOM- it has been promised to give us strength- so let's start with Lehi. He was a prophet and a father. If we measured his success as a parent by the number of children active in the church, what would we conclude? What didn't he do right? What would people speculate about his parenting or lack thereof? He didn't have a difficult time speaking truth, so surely it wasn't that. Remember that he left Jerusalem because of persecution for what he was saying. His own sons Lamen and Lemuel persecuted him for the things he said. Did Lehi ever feel he had been denied of blessings?

Next Abinidi, he was a prophet, and he was giving it his all for the gospel and full of the spirit. Did people treat him well or convert because he had the spirit with him. Did they never get angry at the things he was saying?! He was burned at the stake and died- probably thinking we was a colossal failure by the worlds measure of success and what he could see of his fruits at the time. Where were his promised blessings? Abinidi's blessings didn't end with his death. Who heard his word and testimony? Alma! In my scripture study, I'm currently in the process of writing down the ripple effect of Abinidi. Because of him you have Alma, Helam, Alma finds king Mosiah and his rebellious sons turned missionaries, Alma the younger when he has a change of heart, and I'm up to Alma the younger meeting Amulek who becomes and extraordinary missionary and we know next from the story that his father King Lamoni also converts. All of these prophets and missionaries because of Abinidi's example.

I find myself relating to Alma the older. He was a convert and immediately took off running in the gospel- literally. I'm sure it had to be a shock to him that Alma the younger was preaching against the very church that he risked his life to join. What wentwrong?Whatcouldhehavedonedifferently? Howdowejudgehissuccess. We have 2 very different endings between sons of Lehi and a son of Alma - who gets a happier ending. Does that mean Alma was more righteous than Lehi?

We can also look back at Ammon and Aaron and compare missions. Ammon was having all kinds of success while Aaron was suffering persecution and sitting in prison. You can look back to 2 prophets; Lehi and his contemporary Jeremiah. Lehi was married and had children and was commanded to leave Jeruselum while Jeremiah was told he could not marry nor have children and commanded to stay and witness the destruction of Jeruselum. Is this another case of someone being more righteous? We seem to forget constantly that the Lord has very specific things for each of us to accomplish. Those things might, on the surface, look more awesome and more successful than what someone else is called to do, they are not.

I think as members of the church we can get caught up in being shepherds. Thinking too much of our abilities to save people- and specifically our children. President uchtdorfs talk illuminated something so profound for me in his . "he will place you on his shoulders and carry you home.' it was the talk about the church that was reduced to rubble and that it was rebuilt with the burned bricks that made it look like it had scars- as a monument of hope. He used that example to talk about parable of the lost sheep and the Saviors spending time with the sinners being called into question. He then addressed our interpretation of the parable as a call to action to be a shephard. He says: Is it possible that Jesus's purpose, first and foremost, was to teach abut the work of the Good Shepherd? Is it possible that He was testifying of God's love for His wayward children? Is it possible that the Savior's message was the God is fully aware of those who are lost-and that He will find them, that He will reach out to them, and that He will rescue them? He goes on to say that it doesn't matter how you became lost "because he loves you, he will find you.'

Whether it is you who is struggling with feelings of being lost or it's your child, sibling, friend, or maybe you feel like it's becoming everyone around you, focus on the 1st 2nd great commandments. Love God and Love your neighbor. In the case of yourself, remember the process of ASK. If it is someone around you who struggles , Just love and rely heavily on the Lord and Revelation- Remember our doctrinal topic prophets and revelation. Brent H Nielson of the Seventy gave a talk in general conference called 'waiting for the Prodigal' He talks of the experience with his sister leaving the church and how their family reached out in love for over 15 years before she came back. His counsel was to 'love them with all your heart, pray, watch, and wait for the Lord's hand to be revealed.' Just as Uchtdorf talked about the Good Shepard - He will find them, he will rescue them.

If it's you who is struggling. Remember that we are individual and unique in our faith experiences. Don't judge the strength of your testimony against anyone else's. Our testimonies are highly individualized. For an example of how individual testimonies are, look at Nephi who was born with a testimony and looked to covenants and being obedient as a foundation to a testimony. Alma the younger either started out a non believer, or lost his belief for a period of time. His testimony came from being tormented with guilt which led to a change of heart. However you come to your testimony and whatever level of commitment you have to it, Remember the words of President Uchtdorf " I know of no sign on the doors of our meeting houses that says your testimony must be this tall to enter."

We are all 'missing the mark' in one way or another because it's a part of the process. Someone who is on special forces doesn't simply become a member of the team overnight. You have to build resilience and strength. We do that through our doubts and figuring out how to apply the gospel to our lives and getting it wrong sometimes. The very first prophet was Adam. He gave an example of the most simple yet profound thing we as children of God can do to make it through this training. It's found in Moses 5:5-7

5 And he gave unto them commandments, that they should aworship the Lord their God, and should offer the bfirstlings of their cflocks, for an offering unto the Lord. And Adam was dobedient unto the commandments of the Lord.
6 And after many days an aangel of the Lord appeared unto Adam, saying: Why dost thou offer bsacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me.
7 And then the angel spake, saying: This thing is a asimilitude of the bsacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of cgrace and dtruth.

If you can lead with your faith as Adam did, take that step into the dark on believing the need for the structure of God's laws restored today through a prophet- stay true to that knowledge or faith by listening and hearkening to the words of the prophets, watch general conference and look for the message that is spoken just for you.

Looking for the similitudes/the pattern of the Lord through scriptures and the words of the prophets will strengthen your faith. This wrestle is hard on our way to becoming exalted. Inheriting all that our Heavenly Father has for us.

For anyone who may feel beat down by the waves of trials, doubts, or fears; I know! I know you're tired and weary, I know you feel weak, I know it feels sometimes like good is loosing, I know the pull of the world is strong, I know giving up would seem easier. I know because I feel them all right now. I feel battle worn and like what I've done wasn't enough. I have no choice but to believe in the atonement because without it , my self appointed failures are too much to bear. I am left utterly without hope!

Remember that We don't need to be jealous of anyone else's journey- which is easier said than done- example of this is that when I was reading over some of the many talks I write for the fun of learning I became jealous of myself and what I thought I no longer was capable of that kind of understanding because I haven't done it in over a year. I imagine the feeling is much like a missionary who comes home and is suddenly just their boring ole self again. Not inspired every moment.

So if you are feeling like sitting down in the middle of the battlefield, I say - there's your sword of truth and there's your shield of faith sitting on the ground where you left it. pick them up and get back out there! we must be feasting upon the words of Christ and feasting upon the words of prophets and using the spirit of revelation to then figure out what you are learning means to you and what is required. We have a battle to win that started in the pre existence, and I want to be on the special forces team. Because of that, I know things wont be easy, but my testimony is that of trust in the Savior, because he has earned it in my life. I have done many things out of faith and not understanding, but the understanding comes to me after I have acted in faith. Just like Adam experienced. Experiment upon the Lord and then be patient and long suffering because He is worthy of our trust.

I finished this talk today, sat, around 4. We've been packing and cleaning all day. Didn't get to watch women's conference tonight, but found this on my FB feed ❤