The Savior has commanded us to be perfect. (Matt. 5:48) What an overwhelming challenge! The natural man leads us down another path. There are so many things each of us needs to be doing to follow the straight and narrow that leads us to life eternal. It can be difficult, at times, to incorporate all those things into our lives no matter how much we want to improve.
We have received wonderful instruction during stake conference regarding how we can spiritually strengthen ourselves, our families, and our ward as a whole. Let me acknowledge first, that we each are unique and our situations vary greatly. The Lord tells us in Ecclesiastes that there is a time for every season. Some of us are single, some with very young children, some with illness and some with time constraints. We each do the best we can within those situations. One of the instructions from stake conference was to make sacrament meeting a revelatory experience. We were told that reverence is a key to receiving revelation. We can each pray for a spiritual experience and by promoting an attitude of reverence we can be in tune with the spirit to receive individual revelation. We were asked, where possible, to arrive early to church, leave our visiting outside of the chapel, sit quietly, and listen to the prelude music. The hymns of the restoration have a powerful spirituality about them. We were promised that we will receive answers to our prayers. They may not necessarily come from the speakers. The Spirit may communicate directly to us. We will have our revelatory experience and be renewed as we partake of the sacrament. As we are strengthened individually, our families are blessed and strengthened.
My dear brothers and sisters, I felt a strong witness that The Lord will bless us as we do what we can to heed this counsel. He desires to pour out His Spirit upon us. He desires to buoy us up and lighten the load of the world. I challenge each of us to increase our effort to receive that revelatory experience as we participate in the ordinance of the sacrament each week. We begin that experience with reverence.
We have received wonderful instruction during stake conference regarding how we can spiritually strengthen ourselves, our families, and our ward as a whole. Let me acknowledge first, that we each are unique and our situations vary greatly. The Lord tells us in Ecclesiastes that there is a time for every season. Some of us are single, some with very young children, some with illness and some with time constraints. We each do the best we can within those situations. One of the instructions from stake conference was to make sacrament meeting a revelatory experience. We were told that reverence is a key to receiving revelation. We can each pray for a spiritual experience and by promoting an attitude of reverence we can be in tune with the spirit to receive individual revelation. We were asked, where possible, to arrive early to church, leave our visiting outside of the chapel, sit quietly, and listen to the prelude music. The hymns of the restoration have a powerful spirituality about them. We were promised that we will receive answers to our prayers. They may not necessarily come from the speakers. The Spirit may communicate directly to us. We will have our revelatory experience and be renewed as we partake of the sacrament. As we are strengthened individually, our families are blessed and strengthened.
My dear brothers and sisters, I felt a strong witness that The Lord will bless us as we do what we can to heed this counsel. He desires to pour out His Spirit upon us. He desires to buoy us up and lighten the load of the world. I challenge each of us to increase our effort to receive that revelatory experience as we participate in the ordinance of the sacrament each week. We begin that experience with reverence.
