Fools Mock

The Book of Mormon is very clear about Heavenly Father's opinion of those who mock others: "Fools mock, but they shall mourn."

We do a lot of teasing around my house, but 99% of the time it makes me feel closer to others rather than hurting and dividing us. So I started wondering tonight, what is the difference between mocking and teasing?

Here's what my husband and I came up with...

1 - Teasing chooses the subject carefully. You never tease about sensitive issues (i.e. people's looks, their family, their sincere beliefs). You only tease about inconsequential things. Mocking usually cuts straight to the heart of a person.

2 - It can only be considered teasing when you have good feelings for the person, and those feelings are show in your smile and demeanor. Bad feelings are shine through like ketchup on a white dress... there's no hiding them! So never try to tease someone you're not thrilled with, the truth will be evident to everyone.

3 - There must be some show of humility for it to be considered teasing. If you can make fun of yourself in the same breath it is much harder for someone to take offense. If you laugh often at your own foibles, people will not see your teasing as an attack.

4 - Some people simply cannot stand teasing. If someone responds poorly to an attempt to tease it MUST be followed with a show of humility and a sincere expression of friendship. Then you just have to remember that person is off limits for teasing.

To wrap this up, teasing can be a great tool for making friends and creating closeness. But far to many people mock and ridicule others and call it "teasing". They are motivated by pulling someone else down in order to elevate themselves. They may laugh and say just kidding, but their true intent shines through in their comments.

I hope I never mock anyone for any reason. My stomach literally sinks at the thought of making another child of God miserable. It's so easy to do. Sometimes words seem so harmless. But I want to commit right now to never speak ill of others again, no matter how I feel about them. If I have a problem with someone, I will discuss it with the Lord and pray to be filled with charity. After all, the most unlovable people need love most.

Courage

Our Stake President said something at girls camp this week that struck me. He said, "Courage is not something we are born with, it's not something anyone else can give us. It is something we decide to have."

There are many Christlike virtues that Heavenly Father will help us with. We are told to pray for faith, pray to be filled with charity, and pray to be made clean. These kinds of things we cannot attain on our own, we are too imperfect, too fallen to get where we need to be. We need divine intervention.

I always thought of most virtues that way: you do the best you can and Jesus Christ makes up the difference, carrying you the rest of the way. But during this talk I realized that courage is different. Courage is the true test of this life. We may be right on track with the intentions of our hearts, but without courage to act on our beliefs, it means nothing. President Evans said we have to choose to act in the face of fear again and again and again to become courageous people.

Courage is the true test of this life. It is one of the only things left solely up to us and our agency. We cannot be given courage, it is something we must practice, the muscles of our character. We only need to respond to one question, will my beliefs translate into change?

Free to Choose

In 2 Nephi chapter 2 it talks about our freedom to choose, our agency. This one principle caused the division of God's children in the premortal world. It made children turn away from their eternal father, and forced him to cast them out. Why is agency so important?

Here's my take on it: Agency is the ONLY way we can grow. It is the vehicle of progression. For example, pretend you are driving down a street and you see President Monson on the street corner. He hands you a strength of youth pamphlet and says, "don't turn left up ahead." He doesn't give you all the reasons why but as you approach that turn what do you do? You have your car, you have your agency. You can do whatever you choose.

That street has it's own set of temptations and consequences, a whole life lesson only learned through experience. My theory is that the spirits who need the lesson will turn left, and the ones who don't need it, will listen to the Prophet and continue down the road. Can the wanderer find their way back? Of course. But what kind of scars and consequences will they carry? Those who wander have many hard lessons to learn. Those who don't, have a much nicer ride.

So What will you choose?

Give Place for Faith

Today in Sunday School we read parts of Alma 32. It's the faith chapter: what faith is, how you can get it and strengthen it. The part that struck me today are two words... Give Place.

Alma tells us in verse 27, "even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you even until you believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words."

I wondered to myself, what does it mean to "give place" for a portion of the word of God? Make room? Throw some other stuff away? Obviously we need to fit it in somewhere if we ever want to discover anything spiritually. What can you get rid of in your life to give place for the word of God?

Recognizing the Spirit

The Book of Mormon and modern day prophets promise us that the Holy Ghost will tell us "the truth of all things" or "things as they really are." I belive that most people live far beneath their privileges when it comes to this promise. In other words, we could be enjoying the fruits of the Spirit much more than we do now.

I think Satan has been extremely successful in his lie that we are alone. When tough questions come or difficult situations most people turn inward, falsly believing that they must face it or resolve it alone.

The truth is, we have more power on our side than we dare to imagine.

Not only do we have our loved ones and local church leaders on our side, as children of an Almighty God we have access to his eternal wisdom and love.

I have been struggling with a question in my heart for the past few weeks and yesterday I attended the temple. I opened my heart to Spirit and was filled with that familiar, overwhelming love. I have felt that love fill me countless times before, but it never fails to take my breath away. With the love came several insights and promises about the question in my heart.

I was not struck by lightning. I was not tapped on the shoulder. It was the still small voice. It sounded like my voice in my head, but it was the feeling that came along with the voice that makes me know it was from my Heavenly Father. The feeling is beautifully described in Helaman 5:30:

"And it came to pass when they heard this voice, and beheld that it was not a voice of thunder, neither was it a voice of great tumultuous noise, but behold it was a still voice of perfect mildness, as if it had been a whisper, and it did pierce even to the very soul."

The Book of Mormon and all it's teachings are true.

Always Rejoice

The Book of Mormon is full of recipes.

The recipe for repentance, the recipe for revelation,
the recipe for conversion to Jesus Christ.

Each recipe is vital to our success in becoming who we are meant to become.

Today however, I want to focus on a certain recipe found in Mosiah 4 that teaches us how we can "ALWAYS REJOICE". That sounds pretty great, but seems impossible. In my experience, if we fail to achieve a promise given in the Book of Mormon it is because we have stopped following the recipe.

This particular recipe requires some prep work (found in Mosiah 4:9-10).

It is simple to say, difficult to do:

1) Believe in God, that he exists and created all things, has all wisdom and all power.

2) Recognize that we can't understand everything that He understands.

3) Repent and forsake, or leave behind, your sins. Humbly ask God to forgive you.

Quite the prep work, wouldn't you agree? I think at some point in our lives most of us have done a version of this prep work. We were blessed with a realization of our own nothingness before God and plead for forgiveness of our sins and weaknesses. If our pleading was sincere, we felt the love of God and His spirit of peace fill our souls. If it has been a while, the prep work probably needs to be repeated.

Once the prep work is done the recipe to always rejoice is pretty simple. It is found in the middle of verse 11:

"(1)Remember, and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God and your own nothingness, and his goodness and long-suffering towards you, unworthy creatures, and (2)humble yourselves even in the depths of humility, (3) calling on the name of the Lord daily, and (4) standing steadfastly in the faith."

Then comes the promise in verse 12: "If ye do this ye shall always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God, and always retain a remission of your sins."

I defy anyone to sincerely act upon this recipe and not see the promise fulfilled.

The Book of Mormon is true.

Charity Never Faileth

So I've been thinking a lot after my lesson on sunday about "no contention" and our personal "prosper in the land". I want to talk a little more about what Heavenly Father expects of us as far as our feelings toward other people go.

When I say "no contention", that doesn't mean we just go with the flow. Sometimes we have to stand up for what we know to be right. Think of Captain Moroni (the heart throb of the Book of Mormon, Alma 48). He said that there are certain things worth defending: Family, Fellow Men, Personal Rights, Country, and Religion. He was willing to "fight" for what was right.

Wait a minute... I thought we weren't supposed to fight!? There is a difference between fighting for righteousness and the spirit of contention. The spirit of contention is of the devil. Hate is of the devil. So how do you fight for good without hating the sinner?

Look up Alma 48:20-24. Key phrases to look for - "they were compelled RELUCTANTLY to contend with their brethren" and "they were sorry to take up arms againd the Lamanites, because they did not delight in the shedding of blood." Moroni would have preferred to baptize every Lamanite and call him his brother than to go to war against them. But the Lamanites had their agency. They could not be forced to choose the right. And when their choices started affecting Moroni's people, Moroni had no choice but to stand up for what he believed. He never hated the Lamanites.

Man that would be hard! To stand up to someone who has negatively affected you without feeling bitter towards them! So what's the secret ingredient to make it possible? Charity. The pure love of Christ. Loving even the people we must take a stand against. Therin lies the only true peace we will find in this world. (See Moroni 7:45-48)

4th Nephi

Wow, so I've been reading 4th Nephi and the thing that really caught my attention this time was the turning point in the story. Here's this society that has been visited by Jesus Christ himself. He came and taught them the gospel and established His church, complete with 12 apostles and ongoing revelation. They were living in this nearly perfect society where there was no contention (What? They had marriages and families and organized religion with no contention???), the blind and lame were healed, and the 3 Diciples who were actually ordained by Jesus Christ himself ministered among them. For the first time in the Book of Mormon, the gospel is actually lived by everyone and the people are happy. Sounds like a fairy tale right? It would be, if it weren't for one big problem...

Mormon first describes their downfall saying they became excedingly rich. But they had been rich for years due to their integrity and industry. So how did their riches become toxic? It seems to me that the changing ingredient is selfishness. Mormon writes that their riches lead them to wearing expensive clothes to elevate themselves above others and "building up churches unto themselves".

You know what that sounds like to me? It sounds like they said, "I don't like this particular aspect of the church, I think I'll make my own church where that is not included." Hmmmm. Does that sound familiar to anyone? I'll be a Mormon, except for this one principle. I'm a Mormon, but some old guy in Salt Lake is not going to tell me how to dress or when to date... I'm a Mormon, but I'm not going to be a home teacher, Im far too busy... I'm a Mormon, but who needs to listen to conference anyway? They always talk about the same things...

I always thought riches were the downfall of the Book of Mormon's golden years. But I believe that it was because Satan succeeded in getting the people to focus inward instead of outward. Their priority became themselves instead of God and their neighbors. Don't get me wrong, we are supposed to love ourselves. But the great commandment says, Love GOD, then love your NEIGHBOR, then YOURSELF. That order of priority is the only way to truly live the gospel.

Nooooo!

I don't want to go to the 5th ward!! Whyyy?
The Young Women's president started to call us already!
It won't be the same!
And I still have Brittany's sleeping bag! She moved!
So many problems! And I need people to help me solve them! Guess I can't go to the other ward now :D

Finding Joy in the Journey

For everyone who doesn't know, my family and I are moving to Arizona on August 1st. I was very excited and very upset when I heard the news. As I was sitting in bed last night, I burst out crying. I was really upset to be moving away from the great ward, and my amazing friends and leaders, so I knelt down and said a prayer. I asked Heavenly Father to please help me to find Joy in the Journey, which is what we talked about all of Youth Confernce. After my prayer, I was able to calm down, and fall asleep. Now, I think I'm ok about moving. I'm still pretty sad, but now I know that I'll be alright.

I'm very greatful for the gift of prayer. I am thankful for my great ward. Thank you for all that you do for me! I love you guys!

Brittany Roberts :]

Love is all you need :)

1 Nephi 21:16 - Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.

I read that a few nights ago on a particular night that I felt slightly forgotten by the Lord. But I know that when we feel that way, it is always we who forget our Savior, not the other way around.

Anyone who reads this, I challenge you to pray tonight to feel God's love. It doesn't matter if you're in good times or bad, you need to remember how precious you are. It will make all the difference in the world. He will do anything within the bounds of His great plan to make you feel His love.

I love you all, thanks for being in my life!

2 Nephi 13:13

"The Lord standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people."

I liked this scripture because it tells us that the Lord will give us due justice according to our sins, and at the same time he will pour his unfathomable love upon us to plead for us, as our mediators. That gives me and anyone else hope in hard times; as long as we are trying our best to follow Christ and are repenting when we do something wrong, we can look forward to living in exaltation.

A friend told me the other day that life was pointless. It made me really sad that she would say that when we have so much ahead of us. So much happiness. As long as we keep our faith in Christ and his gospel strong, we can live happily in this life and the next. ^_^
--Jette