Do It

I was moving during April conference this year and it just about killed me. I always sit down and listen to and soak up all the sessions of conference live. With technology it is easy to be able to go back and read them fairly quickly on the app, but I like to watch them first and then go back and read them. It's just my quirky method, which if I'm not careful can get me tripped up in small things because there's a danger of not going back and watching them and therefore never reading them either. Anyway, we had no internet for 2 weeks at the new house, so the farther it got away from the actual event, the harder it was to make the time to watch. I was in the danger zone, but I hate failing so it got me back on track. I am just now on Elder Whitney Clayton in the Sunday Morning session, and I am trying to finish up before we go on our cruise on Saturday.

Well, this morning it was time for Elder Clayton's talk 'Whatsoever He Saith unto You, Do It.' Imagine my delight as it was something that I had just been thinking about and taken the time to write down last night. Of course I was referring to another talk in another year's conference about trusting in the Lord and doing whatever he says, but this talk this morning....It speaks to something I discovered for myself in 2013/2014. What did Elder Clayton say? He was talking about Mary and Adam. What specifically about Adam? His offering sacrifices for many days when an angel came to him and asked him why he was offering sacrifices. It's my absolute favorite thing about Adam. He gave us a pattern for living our lives and how our relationship to God should look. Trust and faith no matter what. No matter if you understand or not, just do it!

It was 2013/2014 and I was having a family history experience. My journey really started a year or 2 before that, but anyway. We had been told that if you were only just going to the temple without taking your own family names you were only receiving half the blessings. Well, I took that a little hard because I thought I was pretty awesome for attending the temple as much as I had been. I also knew that we are all God's children, so what did it matter if I did my own ancestors or not. We are all related, right? I searched and search and asked and asked to understand this principle better. I felt like I intellectually knew, but still just didn't understand. No answer was good enough. However, I kept moving forward on the promises. I also knew from president Hinkley (I think Kimball may have been the first to talk about it and give us the 'do it' phrase) that you can't gain a testimony of anything if you don't first do it. So, I kept moving forward acting upon this principle. Still never fully understanding the why.

It wasn't until I was sitting in an endowment session (months and months later) with my first family name that all of a sudden it hit me. I had just read scripture (that I had a million times before) in Doctrine and Covenants, and then I thought of Adam. All of the sudden understanding entered my heart and a download of information came to me. I've talked about this 'download' before. It is hard to explain because it's not like I can sit down and write any of the information down. It is a language of the heart and an enlightening of the mind that cannot be translated. The only thing I was able to articulate was that it had to do with stewardship. It's funny that 1 word given at exactly the right moment, held the key to unlock the door of understanding in my mind. Now suddenly all the intellectual knowledge I had before made sense to my heart. I knew why. All the same words were there from the beginning, but now I understood them. That is precisely why we need the spirit. Without it, words are just words, no matter how brilliantly strung together.

So, now here we have Elder Clayton explaining this very process.

"God asks us to bear with Him—to trust Him and to follow Him. He pleads with us to “dispute not because ye see not.” He cautions us that we shouldn’t expect easy answers or quick fixes from heaven. Things work out when we stand firm during the “trial of [our] faith,” however hard that test may be to endure or slow the answer may be in coming. I am not speaking of “blind obedience” but of thoughtful confidence in the perfect love and the perfect timing of the Lord.

The trial of our faith will always involve staying true to simple, daily practices of faith. Then, and only then, does He promise that we will receive the divine response for which we long. Only once we have proven our willingness to do what He asks without demanding to know the whens, the whys, and the hows do we “reap the rewards of [our] faith, and [our] diligence, and patience, and long-suffering.” Real obedience accepts God’s commandments unconditionally and in advance.

Every day, consciously or otherwise, we all choose “whom [we] will serve.” We demonstrate our determination to serve the Lord by faithfully engaging in daily acts of devotion. The Lord promises to direct our paths, but for Him to do that, we have to walk, trusting that He knows the way because He is “the way.” We must fill our own waterpots up to the brim. When we trust and follow Him, our lives, like water to wine, are transformed. We become something more and better than we ever otherwise could be. Trust in the Lord, and “whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

Here we have an exact explanation of the process I went through years ago. Therefore, it can only mean that it is a true principle. One that works for everyone. One that lets you know the pattern of God, so that you can follow it. It's spiritual proof of The Plan of Salvation. It is another witness. It's hard to not have a testimony when you have experienced for yourself the same pattern. 

Another part of the talk came at the beginning, and it reminded me of my question I had asked my husband. Would anyone know how I got to where I am. Would people see a transformation in me, and want that for themselves, or am I ruining the gospel for people. I know, I'm a little crazy, but these are the things I worry about. No one wants to find that all there hard work yielded no good fruit. I don't know what I'm expecting to look like as a devoted disciple, but I worry that I won't be an effective missionary because all I can say is that the experience will be hard and most days it will suck because it's hard. Anyway, I like what he said about the Bishop trying to counsel people:

"His counsel to ward members very often included getting back to simple practices of faith, such as studying the Book of Mormon—as we were counseled by President Thomas S. Monson to do—paying tithing, and serving in the Church with devotion. Frequently, however, their response to him was one of skepticism: “I don’t agree with you, Bishop. We all know those are good things to do. We talk about those things all the time in the Church. But I’m not sure you’re understanding me. What does doing any of those things have to do with the issues I’m facing?”

It’s a fair question. Over time, that young bishop and I have observed that those who are deliberate about doing the “small and simple things”—obeying in seemingly little ways—are blessed with faith and strength that go far beyond the actual acts of obedience themselves and, in fact, may seem totally unrelated to them. It may seem hard to draw a connection between the basic daily acts of obedience and solutions to the big, complicated problems we face. But they are related. In my experience, getting the little daily habits of faith right is the single best way to fortify ourselves against the troubles of life, whatever they may be. Small acts of faith, even when they seem insignificant or entirely disconnected from the specific problems that vex us, bless us in all we do."

Most of the time our efforts to be diligent in the gospel can look totally unrelated to who we are. After all, there are lots of good people in the world, right? I heard something yesterday on my Christian radio station. With the Lord our worst days are filled with more peace and strength to overcome than someone without the gospel on their best days. That is an excellent way to put it. 

Maybe you feel like there isn't a God. Maybe you feel like your efforts didn't help you and so you gave up or want to give up. Maybe you feel like you don't need God to be good. Maybe the road seems too long. There is another song I am loving right now called Wasteland. My efforts here today were to say, yes it's hard. Yes we are living in a wasteland (Babylon), but there's a crack in the door filled with light. Hopefully my words were some light in the darkness today because I want nothing more in this life than to reflect the light of Christ in all I do and say and let my life be the proof of that. 

I'm the first one in line to die
When the cavalry comes
Yeah it feels like the great divide
Has already come
Yeah I'm wasting my way through days
Losing youth along the way

Oh if God is on my side
Oh if God is on my side
Oh if God is on my side
Who can be against me

There was a greatness I felt for awhile
But somehow it changed
Some kind of blindness I used to protect me
From all of my stains
Yeah I wish this was vertigo
It just feels like I'm falling slow

Oh if God is on my side
Then who can be against me

Yeah in this wasteland where I'm livin'
There is a crack in the door filled with light
And it's all that I need to get by
Yeah in this wasteland where I'm livin'
There is a crack in the door filled with light
And it's all that I need to shine

All of these people I meet
It seems like they're fine
Yeah in some ways I hope that they're not
And their hearts are like mine
Yeah it's wrong when it seems like work
To belong all I feel is hurt

Oh if God is on my side
Yeah if God is on my side
Oh if God is on my side
Who can be against me

Yeah in this wasteland where I'm livin'
There is a crack in the door filled with light
And it's all that I need to get by
Yeah in this wasteland where I'm livin'
There is a crack in the door filled with light
And it's all that I need to shine

Oh if God is on my side
Yeah if God is on my side
Oh if God is on my side
Who can be against me