June 5, 2010

I consistently receive at least one prompting every day to study the gospel. I am not always consistent at obeying that prompting. I want to do better.

Today I will begin my gospel study with a conference talk called Our Path of Duty by Bishop Keith McMullin. Well, I read that talk and really enjoyed it. Here are two things that especially stood out to me. President Monson is quoted in saying, "If we are to fulfill our destiny and return to live with our Father in Heaven, we must keep His commandments and pattern our lives after the Savior." Those two things that I must do stood out to me. I have a good understanding of what God's commandments are and the kind of person Jesus Christ was, but I feel moved by the Spirit to begin an in depth study of both so that I feel I have a solid and unwavering faith and understanding of what they are. I believe this will help me to have a strengthened testimony and faith in why I do what I do in my life. Going along with this is having a solid understanding of exactly what I have covenanted with God to do.

The other thing that stood out in my mind from this talk was the following quote: "For prayers to be efficacious, they must be in harmony with the plan of heaven. The prayer of faith bears fruit when such harmony exists, and this harmony exists when prayers are inspired by the Holy Spirit." The emphasized part felt like there was a neon blinking sign around it. It is so important to act on the inspired promptings of the Spirit to pray because that is when my prayers will be in tune with the Lord's will, with His plan.

When I read that, I felt moved by the Spirit to pray about a concern that has been on my mind. My son, at 18 months old, enjoys grabbing my face and intentionally digging his fingernails as hard as he can into my skin. It hurts a lot and has even left sores before. When I take his hands away and say "no, that hurts," he smiles and only wants to do it more. I tried to take his hands and gently rub them on my face and say, "soft, soft," but whenever I would let go he would again dig in with a ferocious intensity. I have tried slapping his hands as punishment and emphasizing that "no! don't do that because it hurts!" but the irony of that approach hit me in the face when he once was hitting me and pinching me and I slapped his hands and shook my finger in his face and began to say, "No! Hitting is not nice..." but I couldn't finish my sentence because my hypocrisy was staring me in my face. I don't feel like it is something I should just ignore because I feel it is important for him to learn how his actions feel to other people. I want him to learn to be nice and that hitting, biting, scratching and pinching are not nice and are not things we should do to others. I have felt at a loss as to what I should do to teach him. I keep looking at pictures of the Savior and I wonder, what would He do? With still unanswered questions, I read this talk and I felt inspired to pray about this. I will obey that prompting at the conclusion of my writing.

After reading that talk, I went through the entire Ensign and I read the last paragraphs, the testimonies, prayers and blessings of our leaders. It was really powerful and really neat to read their powerful testimonies, to read what prayers for us are in their hearts, and read the powerful blessings given to us. I want to compile all of that from this past conference in a digital video format to help me remember. I then went back to the talk and read all of the scripture references referred to in the notes. I love the scriptures and I love the conference reports. I am thankful for the inspiration I received today as a result of my gospel study.