What do you think is the purpose of Parenting? Why are families the crowning jewel of the Celestial Kingdom? What’s the purpose? Why are we doing this?
Class member: They are not my children, they are God’s children. I need to help them walk the path to return back to God.
Class member: There’s no better medium than to teach than love.
Class member: Family is something that is consistent. If you have an overall feeling of love and a family that you can turn to they always have that consistent family love they can go back to.
Class member: The ultimate thing is technically we won’t have our children forever. The goal is to make it to the Celestial Kingdom and rule with your spouse.
As I watch my children grow and raise their families in righteousness it makes me joyful.
Class member: We are trying to become like our Heavenly Father. We are his children. There is no way we can become like him without becoming parents and manage a household.
Class member: Our kids change and what worked for them when they were younger doesn’t work now.
Class member: The information changes. You bring in what our prophets are teaching currently. When we don’t have class, life is hard. It gives us hope. I’m more focused on Parenting when I take the class.
Class member: I took it lots of years ago when you first started. I probably didn’t use what I learned then. I feel like I need the Spirit with me to learn.
My main goal is to bring the Spirit each week. The Spirit is a great teacher. If I can do what I need to know he can teach you something that you need to know. We are all just trying to do our best. We always love our children, but some days we can’t understand them. Give yourself permission to have a melt down. Don’t beat yourself up when you have them.
We try to change percentages. Think about it and make Parenting a mental priority.
I want you to fall in love with being a mother or a father. I want you to cherish every moment even when they are being horrid. I hope you can develop the skills so when they are throwing a temper tantrum and just chuckle. The key to finding that joy is to give you some tools so you can handle it.
Sometimes when you are in the trenches you just don’t listen to the funny things they say. When they make a mess, take the picture before you get after them. Intellectually you are all in love with them, but I want you to fall in love with being a parent and understand what a choice gift that is.
I want to help you learn how to read Conference talks with Parenting in mind. The promise is the Lord will never leave us without telling us how to deal with it. Heavenly Father always forewarns those that are willing to listen. We are being forewarned and being told exactly how to parent and because the message doesn’t come in a job list we don’t always do it.
Some of the things you hear will not make you happy, but there are promises attached. We will try to give you tools to help you learn how to live these kinds of things.
Ponder Pad: If you will pray before you come and actually ask the Lord to bless me and you, you will be taught every week something for your family. The Spirit will tell you things that don’t apply to anything I am talking about. In class you brain can internalize 5x faster than I can speak. Write down the impressions you have. Review your notes and study your ponder and make a goal. Set a goal every week . You need to be acting and not just listening. If you will do that for 10 weeks your home will be different and you will be different.
Parent with Boldness
Write on your paper 3 things…finish these sentences…..
1. “The purpose of Parenting is….”
2. “In order to achieve this purpose the 3 things I need to do are…..”
3. “The thing I am best at as a parent is….”
Class member: Purpose…Growth and love. I need to look inward, see with Eternal perspective, and love. I care about and search to improve as a mother.
Class member: Purpose is to help children learn the gospel and return to Heavenly Father. I need to have the Spirit, patience, and unconditional love. I am empathetic.
Class member: Purpose is to lay foundation to enable children to return to Heavenly Father. I need to be an example, I need to let them make choices to see their consequences. I need to love them. If I’m having a rough day I know that I can take a step back and do it again tomorrow.
Class member: Teach my children what they need to do to grow closer to the Savior. Be kind to my children. Be the example and love my husband. I am best at keeping them safe. Every night I tell them something that I love about them.
This is the time of New Year’s Resolutions. Without setting a goal we don’t move forward. We tend to set our goals too generically. We set good goals to achieve the goal, most of the things you are doing are good. You usually only beat yourself up over what you are doing wrong.
Homework: Before next Tuesday (the sooner the better) take one of the things you have written and break it down to…how, when, where, or what. Break it down to very specific things. Then write down the how, where, what, and when and post it where you will see it every day.
Example…my goal to lose weight… 10# walk on treadmill
Example….read my scriptures…15 minutes ever day…in the kitchen…Book of Mormon.
“Will we keep pace? Will we as individuals and collectively as a church keep pace with the Lord’s hastening? Or will we insist on doing things the way they have always been done, or the ways we are accustomed to or comfortable with? Will we learn and teach the Savior’s way? Will each of us here today learn, repent, change, and teach more effectively the Savior’s way? Or will we be so entangled in the traditions and patterns of the past that we will be unable to keep up with the pace of the Lord’s hastening? If we always do what we have always done, then we will always get what we have always gotten. May I suggest that what we have always done and always gotten were good in their time—but need to improve as the Lord is quickening the pace. The Lord’s astneing of His work requires us continuously to learn, to change, and to press forward with faith in the Savior.” David A Bednar....Hastening the pace
Do we need to change something that we are doing so we can teach our children differently? Your task is more difficult.
Class member: We won’t get what our parents turned out if we do what they do because Satan has increased.
If my children parent with the tools I used it won’t work. The principles are the same, but the tools are different.
What tools does the Lord give us today to teach them?
Class member: Albert Einstein…insanity is doing the same thing every time, but expecting different results. I can’t do the same things and expect different results.
Most of you are here because you want to learn something different to do.
In the church today we have some youth that are just amazing. Then we have youth that are out there who are entitled. They want to go on a mission because that’s what good LDS kids do. They don’t know how to think or problem solve. They have been raised in good home and did everything they were told to do. The mission president doesn’t give them a list of things to do every day. You have to make good missionary days. They have to think outside the list that Mom & Dad gave them to be good. They don’t know how to handle failure. At home Mom rescued them when things got hard.
Lawn mower Mom’s…That’s the Mom that goes in front of her children and mows the path to make sure the path is smooth. Mom makes the appointments. Mom smooths out the missing assignments.
Anxieties are off the charts in our missionaries.
Lyle Burrup “Raising Resilient Children”
“While counseling missionaries at the missionary training center (MTC) in Provo, Utah, I noticed that the most common cause of emotional problems was a lack of resilience. When an intelligent, talented missionary with no history of emotional problems struggled, priesthood leaders and others often wondered why. In many cases, the missionary just hadn’t learned how to deal with challenges well. Parents can help their children avoid such problems by teaching principles that foster greater resilience.”
What is resilience?
Class member: not winning every time, getting up whenever you fall.
Your children are being raised in a society where if they play they get a ribbon or a trophy. We have taught our children that if they are there they win. We spend so much time making it nice and easy for our children that we aren’t teaching them to have any moral backbone that when they fail they quit. This is the mental attitude that is out there. I want you to understand how we create it and do you have a part in it.
In trying to protect and love our children we are buying into what the world is telling us. It is truth and the ‘philosophies of men’ combined.
I was raised in “Satan’s plan”. There was a lot of respect for authority. It was obedience because you respect authority. There is truth in that, but it goes overboard. Everyone is entitled to have an opinion, no one tells anyone what to do. We have created a generation of parents who are afraid of their children and they are afraid to parent. We were taught that we need to be the friend of our children so we can talk with them.
There is a piece of truth in that, but most of it is the “philosophies of men”. Even with good intentions we have become afraid of good parenting. We hear “everyone else in church is doing it.” We are afraid to say “No.”
I have had people tell me “I won’t tell my children “no” because it will stifle their creativity.”
You want them to want that more than anything!
Either we say “No” and we just talk through and if you don’t do that ‘oh well’. OR we say “No you can’t do that and you can’t do that”. Both sides are wrong. You don’t have to do either/or. We CAN listen, encourage, talk, but bottom line is parent! Parenting means there are some no’s.
Class member: My oldest is 5. One thing my husband has done with our kids is invite them to make choices within boundaries. You need to take a bath. You can go happy and choose your snacks or you can take a bath and I can choose your snack.
“The collapse of parenting…how we hurt our kids by treating the like grown ups” (Book)
“Most American parents are completely confused and going utterly in the wrong direction,” Sax said. “There’s a collapse of understanding what parenting involves.”
In his book, Sax offers a scenario in which parents and a 6-year-old child, who had a sore throat, came into his office. When he said, “Next I’m going to take a look at your throat,” the mother asked for the child's permission, saying, “Do you mind if the doctor looks in your throat for just a second, honey? Afterward we can go and get some ice cream.”
That led to the child refusing to have the doctor look in her throat to do the strep test and the child having to be restrained to get the test accomplished.
“It’s not a question,” Sax said. “It’s a sentence: ‘Open up and say, 'Ahh.'' Parents are incapable of speaking to their children in a sentence that ends in a period,” he said. “Every sentence ends in a question mark.”
Class member: I describe myself more on the “no” spectrum. My husband is more on the ‘let’s give them a chance to rectify it….’ What are your feelings? Where is the balance between justice and mercy?
You can’t make a blanket statement. You want me to come in here and give you the list. It depends on the age of the child, ability of the child, the maturity of the child.
I want you to get the doctrine and then you plug it into situations. We generically err at one end or the other. The older they get the more we go toward the ‘make your own choices’ spectrum. When they were growing up and I am responsible for them that’s different. Parents are to teach and to train them.
Class member: My brother has a teen who is going on a mission. He advised them that they shouldn’t be dating. He’s madly in love. My nephew is obedient and quit dating. Fast forward….now he is struggling with beings social. Everything the parents are doing are for their best interest. The things we learned and stumbled through in life make us who we are. Bishop said he needs to make his own choices.
You will have leaders that will say things to your children that you don’t agree with. Go back to the church leaders & For Strength of Youth.
Listen to your heart. The Spirit will tell you what you need to hear to parent.
Homework: Read Rise up in Strength Sisters in Zion by Bonnie Oscarson
“I worry that we live in such an atmosphere of avoiding offense that we sometimes altogether avoid teaching correct principles. We fail to teach our young women that preparing to be a mother is of utmost importance because we don’t want to offend those who aren’t married or those who can’t have children, or to be seen as stifling future choices. On the other hand, we may also fail to emphasize the importance of education because we don’t want to send the message that it is more important than marriage. We avoid declaring that our Heavenly Father defines marriage as being between a man and woman because we don’t want to offend those who experience same-sex attraction. And we may find it uncomfortable to discuss gender issues or healthy sexuality.
Certainly, sisters, we need to use sensitivity, but let us also use our common sense and our understanding of the plan of salvation to be bold and straightforward when it comes to teaching our children and youth the essential gospel principles they must understand to navigate the world in which they live. If we don’t teach our children and youth true doctrine—and teach it clearly—the world will teach them Satan’s lies.”
Rise up in Strength Sisters in Zion by Bonnie Oscarson
Some of your children are translating the “we should love everyone” to the feeling that there are no absolutes it’s all about choice. What it does is eliminate sin. There is no true right or wrong there is just choices. That is Satan’s lie!!!
Our families now are involved with or have in them someone struggling with something. We fall in the category of not teaching with boldness.
Class member: How do you teach them to love without judging?
You have to be consistent in loving the person, but not the sin that the person is living. As we go forward to the last days Satan’s lies will become more and more in your face. Our children have to be able to stand up and say this is right and this is wrong. They need to be at peace with saying I have nothing against this person, but I have problems with what they are doing. We have to teach them to feel confident in standing for what is right the world will use guilt to teach them.
We are so focused on evaluating our weakness in parenting. Think about what voice do you listen to? Is it the “I need to do better, I need to do this, etc…”
The scriptures say….
He was past feeling…
Past hearing…
He that has ears let him hear…
Most often you FEEL a prompting. I usually say “I will do that. I’ll put it on my list”. It nags on you and becomes the negative. If that is the case…be aware of what you do with feelings.
HOMEWORK: Notice feelings and be aware of what you do with them. Be aware of ‘impressions’ you get that come as feelings. Record it! Write it down!
You have been baptized. You received the Holy Ghost as a CONSTANT companion. You take the sacrament on Sunday and you get back to be a CONSTANT companion. It has nothing to do with that. It’s always there and you aren’t listening. It’s telling you what to do. You have to hear it. If you focus on your feelings and impressions. If it’s a good feeling or just your thoughts…Do it!!
HOMEWORK: Read “Lest Thou Forget” Ronald A Rasband
“Never forget, question, or ignore personal, sacred spiritual experiences. The adversary’s design is to distract us from spiritual witnesses, while the Lord’s desire is to enlighten and engage us in His work.
“Let me share a personal example of this truth. I distinctly recall a time when I received a prompting in answer to mighty prayer. The answer was clear and powerful. However, I failed to act immediately on the prompting, and after a period of time I began to wonder if what I had felt had been real. Some of you may have fallen for that deception of the adversary as well.
Several days later, I awoke with these powerful verses of scripture in my mind:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, if you desire a further witness, cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart. …
“Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?”
It was as if the Lord was saying, “Now, Ronald, I already told you what you needed to do. Now do it!” How grateful I was for that loving correction and direction! I was immediately comforted by the prompting and was able to move forward, knowing in my heart that my prayer had been answered.”
Ronald A Rasband “Lest Thou Forget”
Everyone of you have plead with the Lord for an answer and have received a revelation. I want you to write down a prompting you have had regarding anything. These are little things that you have not followed yet, but is still on the ‘to do’ list.
Pray about that which is your biggest stress right now, you pray about it and get an answer then do it quickly. By next week everyone should have had a very sacred spiritual experience. Because you have all been given the gift of the Holy Ghost you will hear them. He is giving them to you every day. It’s us that put ear plugs in sometimes.
If we will listen we may not like everything that the Holy Ghost says. I want you to know that the Lord is speaking directly to you every day. Life is hard and He knows it’s hard. He will walk with us as you do it. This week I want you to find Him this week.
When you write down an impression that is a ‘thank you’ to Heavenly Father that is was important enough to you to write it down.
Class member: They are not my children, they are God’s children. I need to help them walk the path to return back to God.
Class member: There’s no better medium than to teach than love.
Class member: Family is something that is consistent. If you have an overall feeling of love and a family that you can turn to they always have that consistent family love they can go back to.
Class member: The ultimate thing is technically we won’t have our children forever. The goal is to make it to the Celestial Kingdom and rule with your spouse.
As I watch my children grow and raise their families in righteousness it makes me joyful.
Class member: We are trying to become like our Heavenly Father. We are his children. There is no way we can become like him without becoming parents and manage a household.
Class member: Our kids change and what worked for them when they were younger doesn’t work now.
Class member: The information changes. You bring in what our prophets are teaching currently. When we don’t have class, life is hard. It gives us hope. I’m more focused on Parenting when I take the class.
Class member: I took it lots of years ago when you first started. I probably didn’t use what I learned then. I feel like I need the Spirit with me to learn.
My main goal is to bring the Spirit each week. The Spirit is a great teacher. If I can do what I need to know he can teach you something that you need to know. We are all just trying to do our best. We always love our children, but some days we can’t understand them. Give yourself permission to have a melt down. Don’t beat yourself up when you have them.
We try to change percentages. Think about it and make Parenting a mental priority.
I want you to fall in love with being a mother or a father. I want you to cherish every moment even when they are being horrid. I hope you can develop the skills so when they are throwing a temper tantrum and just chuckle. The key to finding that joy is to give you some tools so you can handle it.
Sometimes when you are in the trenches you just don’t listen to the funny things they say. When they make a mess, take the picture before you get after them. Intellectually you are all in love with them, but I want you to fall in love with being a parent and understand what a choice gift that is.
I want to help you learn how to read Conference talks with Parenting in mind. The promise is the Lord will never leave us without telling us how to deal with it. Heavenly Father always forewarns those that are willing to listen. We are being forewarned and being told exactly how to parent and because the message doesn’t come in a job list we don’t always do it.
Some of the things you hear will not make you happy, but there are promises attached. We will try to give you tools to help you learn how to live these kinds of things.
Ponder Pad: If you will pray before you come and actually ask the Lord to bless me and you, you will be taught every week something for your family. The Spirit will tell you things that don’t apply to anything I am talking about. In class you brain can internalize 5x faster than I can speak. Write down the impressions you have. Review your notes and study your ponder and make a goal. Set a goal every week . You need to be acting and not just listening. If you will do that for 10 weeks your home will be different and you will be different.
Parent with Boldness
Write on your paper 3 things…finish these sentences…..
1. “The purpose of Parenting is….”
2. “In order to achieve this purpose the 3 things I need to do are…..”
3. “The thing I am best at as a parent is….”
Class member: Purpose…Growth and love. I need to look inward, see with Eternal perspective, and love. I care about and search to improve as a mother.
Class member: Purpose is to help children learn the gospel and return to Heavenly Father. I need to have the Spirit, patience, and unconditional love. I am empathetic.
Class member: Purpose is to lay foundation to enable children to return to Heavenly Father. I need to be an example, I need to let them make choices to see their consequences. I need to love them. If I’m having a rough day I know that I can take a step back and do it again tomorrow.
Class member: Teach my children what they need to do to grow closer to the Savior. Be kind to my children. Be the example and love my husband. I am best at keeping them safe. Every night I tell them something that I love about them.
This is the time of New Year’s Resolutions. Without setting a goal we don’t move forward. We tend to set our goals too generically. We set good goals to achieve the goal, most of the things you are doing are good. You usually only beat yourself up over what you are doing wrong.
Homework: Before next Tuesday (the sooner the better) take one of the things you have written and break it down to…how, when, where, or what. Break it down to very specific things. Then write down the how, where, what, and when and post it where you will see it every day.
Example…my goal to lose weight… 10# walk on treadmill
Example….read my scriptures…15 minutes ever day…in the kitchen…Book of Mormon.
“Will we keep pace? Will we as individuals and collectively as a church keep pace with the Lord’s hastening? Or will we insist on doing things the way they have always been done, or the ways we are accustomed to or comfortable with? Will we learn and teach the Savior’s way? Will each of us here today learn, repent, change, and teach more effectively the Savior’s way? Or will we be so entangled in the traditions and patterns of the past that we will be unable to keep up with the pace of the Lord’s hastening? If we always do what we have always done, then we will always get what we have always gotten. May I suggest that what we have always done and always gotten were good in their time—but need to improve as the Lord is quickening the pace. The Lord’s astneing of His work requires us continuously to learn, to change, and to press forward with faith in the Savior.” David A Bednar....Hastening the pace
Do we need to change something that we are doing so we can teach our children differently? Your task is more difficult.
Class member: We won’t get what our parents turned out if we do what they do because Satan has increased.
If my children parent with the tools I used it won’t work. The principles are the same, but the tools are different.
What tools does the Lord give us today to teach them?
Class member: Albert Einstein…insanity is doing the same thing every time, but expecting different results. I can’t do the same things and expect different results.
Most of you are here because you want to learn something different to do.
In the church today we have some youth that are just amazing. Then we have youth that are out there who are entitled. They want to go on a mission because that’s what good LDS kids do. They don’t know how to think or problem solve. They have been raised in good home and did everything they were told to do. The mission president doesn’t give them a list of things to do every day. You have to make good missionary days. They have to think outside the list that Mom & Dad gave them to be good. They don’t know how to handle failure. At home Mom rescued them when things got hard.
Lawn mower Mom’s…That’s the Mom that goes in front of her children and mows the path to make sure the path is smooth. Mom makes the appointments. Mom smooths out the missing assignments.
Anxieties are off the charts in our missionaries.
Lyle Burrup “Raising Resilient Children”
“While counseling missionaries at the missionary training center (MTC) in Provo, Utah, I noticed that the most common cause of emotional problems was a lack of resilience. When an intelligent, talented missionary with no history of emotional problems struggled, priesthood leaders and others often wondered why. In many cases, the missionary just hadn’t learned how to deal with challenges well. Parents can help their children avoid such problems by teaching principles that foster greater resilience.”
What is resilience?
Class member: not winning every time, getting up whenever you fall.
Your children are being raised in a society where if they play they get a ribbon or a trophy. We have taught our children that if they are there they win. We spend so much time making it nice and easy for our children that we aren’t teaching them to have any moral backbone that when they fail they quit. This is the mental attitude that is out there. I want you to understand how we create it and do you have a part in it.
In trying to protect and love our children we are buying into what the world is telling us. It is truth and the ‘philosophies of men’ combined.
I was raised in “Satan’s plan”. There was a lot of respect for authority. It was obedience because you respect authority. There is truth in that, but it goes overboard. Everyone is entitled to have an opinion, no one tells anyone what to do. We have created a generation of parents who are afraid of their children and they are afraid to parent. We were taught that we need to be the friend of our children so we can talk with them.
There is a piece of truth in that, but most of it is the “philosophies of men”. Even with good intentions we have become afraid of good parenting. We hear “everyone else in church is doing it.” We are afraid to say “No.”
I have had people tell me “I won’t tell my children “no” because it will stifle their creativity.”
You want them to want that more than anything!
Either we say “No” and we just talk through and if you don’t do that ‘oh well’. OR we say “No you can’t do that and you can’t do that”. Both sides are wrong. You don’t have to do either/or. We CAN listen, encourage, talk, but bottom line is parent! Parenting means there are some no’s.
Class member: My oldest is 5. One thing my husband has done with our kids is invite them to make choices within boundaries. You need to take a bath. You can go happy and choose your snacks or you can take a bath and I can choose your snack.
“The collapse of parenting…how we hurt our kids by treating the like grown ups” (Book)
“Most American parents are completely confused and going utterly in the wrong direction,” Sax said. “There’s a collapse of understanding what parenting involves.”
In his book, Sax offers a scenario in which parents and a 6-year-old child, who had a sore throat, came into his office. When he said, “Next I’m going to take a look at your throat,” the mother asked for the child's permission, saying, “Do you mind if the doctor looks in your throat for just a second, honey? Afterward we can go and get some ice cream.”
That led to the child refusing to have the doctor look in her throat to do the strep test and the child having to be restrained to get the test accomplished.
“It’s not a question,” Sax said. “It’s a sentence: ‘Open up and say, 'Ahh.'' Parents are incapable of speaking to their children in a sentence that ends in a period,” he said. “Every sentence ends in a question mark.”
Class member: I describe myself more on the “no” spectrum. My husband is more on the ‘let’s give them a chance to rectify it….’ What are your feelings? Where is the balance between justice and mercy?
You can’t make a blanket statement. You want me to come in here and give you the list. It depends on the age of the child, ability of the child, the maturity of the child.
I want you to get the doctrine and then you plug it into situations. We generically err at one end or the other. The older they get the more we go toward the ‘make your own choices’ spectrum. When they were growing up and I am responsible for them that’s different. Parents are to teach and to train them.
Class member: My brother has a teen who is going on a mission. He advised them that they shouldn’t be dating. He’s madly in love. My nephew is obedient and quit dating. Fast forward….now he is struggling with beings social. Everything the parents are doing are for their best interest. The things we learned and stumbled through in life make us who we are. Bishop said he needs to make his own choices.
You will have leaders that will say things to your children that you don’t agree with. Go back to the church leaders & For Strength of Youth.
Listen to your heart. The Spirit will tell you what you need to hear to parent.
Homework: Read Rise up in Strength Sisters in Zion by Bonnie Oscarson
“I worry that we live in such an atmosphere of avoiding offense that we sometimes altogether avoid teaching correct principles. We fail to teach our young women that preparing to be a mother is of utmost importance because we don’t want to offend those who aren’t married or those who can’t have children, or to be seen as stifling future choices. On the other hand, we may also fail to emphasize the importance of education because we don’t want to send the message that it is more important than marriage. We avoid declaring that our Heavenly Father defines marriage as being between a man and woman because we don’t want to offend those who experience same-sex attraction. And we may find it uncomfortable to discuss gender issues or healthy sexuality.
Certainly, sisters, we need to use sensitivity, but let us also use our common sense and our understanding of the plan of salvation to be bold and straightforward when it comes to teaching our children and youth the essential gospel principles they must understand to navigate the world in which they live. If we don’t teach our children and youth true doctrine—and teach it clearly—the world will teach them Satan’s lies.”
Rise up in Strength Sisters in Zion by Bonnie Oscarson
Some of your children are translating the “we should love everyone” to the feeling that there are no absolutes it’s all about choice. What it does is eliminate sin. There is no true right or wrong there is just choices. That is Satan’s lie!!!
Our families now are involved with or have in them someone struggling with something. We fall in the category of not teaching with boldness.
Class member: How do you teach them to love without judging?
You have to be consistent in loving the person, but not the sin that the person is living. As we go forward to the last days Satan’s lies will become more and more in your face. Our children have to be able to stand up and say this is right and this is wrong. They need to be at peace with saying I have nothing against this person, but I have problems with what they are doing. We have to teach them to feel confident in standing for what is right the world will use guilt to teach them.
We are so focused on evaluating our weakness in parenting. Think about what voice do you listen to? Is it the “I need to do better, I need to do this, etc…”
The scriptures say….
He was past feeling…
Past hearing…
He that has ears let him hear…
Most often you FEEL a prompting. I usually say “I will do that. I’ll put it on my list”. It nags on you and becomes the negative. If that is the case…be aware of what you do with feelings.
HOMEWORK: Notice feelings and be aware of what you do with them. Be aware of ‘impressions’ you get that come as feelings. Record it! Write it down!
You have been baptized. You received the Holy Ghost as a CONSTANT companion. You take the sacrament on Sunday and you get back to be a CONSTANT companion. It has nothing to do with that. It’s always there and you aren’t listening. It’s telling you what to do. You have to hear it. If you focus on your feelings and impressions. If it’s a good feeling or just your thoughts…Do it!!
HOMEWORK: Read “Lest Thou Forget” Ronald A Rasband
“Never forget, question, or ignore personal, sacred spiritual experiences. The adversary’s design is to distract us from spiritual witnesses, while the Lord’s desire is to enlighten and engage us in His work.
“Let me share a personal example of this truth. I distinctly recall a time when I received a prompting in answer to mighty prayer. The answer was clear and powerful. However, I failed to act immediately on the prompting, and after a period of time I began to wonder if what I had felt had been real. Some of you may have fallen for that deception of the adversary as well.
Several days later, I awoke with these powerful verses of scripture in my mind:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, if you desire a further witness, cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart. …
“Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?”
It was as if the Lord was saying, “Now, Ronald, I already told you what you needed to do. Now do it!” How grateful I was for that loving correction and direction! I was immediately comforted by the prompting and was able to move forward, knowing in my heart that my prayer had been answered.”
Ronald A Rasband “Lest Thou Forget”
Everyone of you have plead with the Lord for an answer and have received a revelation. I want you to write down a prompting you have had regarding anything. These are little things that you have not followed yet, but is still on the ‘to do’ list.
Pray about that which is your biggest stress right now, you pray about it and get an answer then do it quickly. By next week everyone should have had a very sacred spiritual experience. Because you have all been given the gift of the Holy Ghost you will hear them. He is giving them to you every day. It’s us that put ear plugs in sometimes.
If we will listen we may not like everything that the Holy Ghost says. I want you to know that the Lord is speaking directly to you every day. Life is hard and He knows it’s hard. He will walk with us as you do it. This week I want you to find Him this week.
When you write down an impression that is a ‘thank you’ to Heavenly Father that is was important enough to you to write it down.
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