Above Yourself

When we remember to heed God’s counsel, we can be blessed with more of that counsel. Who isn’t up for a little free advice from someone who knows just what we need?

For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.

-2 Nephi 28:30

This is one of my favorite scriptures. In some ways it’s very intimidating; I know that I could always improve at “lend[ing] an ear to [His] counsel”. In other ways, it’s very reassuring. The essence of this scripture is that God will bless us with continual understanding if we look to Him. If we don’t wish to learn more, then he won’t give it to us. General Conference is coming up in a little over a week. Now is a great time to prepare for the messages that we will receive.

Life is busy, and moving by at a rapid pace. In a way, it’s good, because it means I’m getting through some stretches of hard work right now, which is hopefully my final Fall semester of graduate school. There are all kinds of projects and other work to do, which means that it’s easy to neglect other things. In that way, life moving so quickly can be bad, or at least challenging. There are all kinds of voices everywhere calling for attention, and I learned last week that I need to widen my focus away from my studies.

Last Wednesday, I was in the middle of working on a big programming project. I’m a decent programmer, but I was a little rusty. I spent all day staring at a few pages of code, and I was tearing my hair out over the smallest things. I called a classmate to figure out what I was doing wrong, and when it was time to go home, I was exhausted, but still worried about my program. He suggested that I take a little walk or find some way to think about some other stuff for a bit, which I finally did. When I got home I took a little break and played with our daughter. A few hours later, I went back to look at my program, and something just clicked that hadn’t before. I realized that our own abilities are magnified when we take little breaks and just keep working hard at something.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I can do in case we’re at the beginnings of some sort of global depression. I don’t have the power to personally stabilize the stock markets, but I do have some power to stabilize my own life. In fact, the reminder that Helaman related to his sons in the Book of Mormon applies to all of us:

And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the ^arock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your ^bfoundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty ^cstorm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.

–Helaman 5:12, The Book of Mormon

It’s up to me to live on a foundation based on Christ. Life is still busy and it’s still stressful, but there is a certain calm that comes into my life as I remember this. That’s a big part of the reason that I haven’t given up on The Book of Mormon Challenge Anniversary. How is your reading going? There’s still plenty of time to finish the challenge! I’m currently finishing 2 Nephi, so I’m a bit behind where I’d like to be, but things are still moving forward. Thanks to all of those who are reading along with me!

Three years ago, President Gordon B. Hinckley issued a challenge to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year. ReadTheScriptures.com has reissued that challenge, and I’ve taken them up on it. If you’d like to follow along with me, join our group on Facebook (search for “Book of Mormon Challenge Anniversary”).

I was glad to participate in the original challenge, even though I didn’t get going very quickly in the beginning. Although I did have to read for a couple of hours at the end of the challenge, it provided me with an experience that I won’t soon forget. My wife and I both finished just before the end of the year while we were on vacation from school, and I can vividly remember the experience of sitting at the dining room table and reading scriptures.

So far I’m just two days into my 90-day reading schedule, but things are going pretty well. You can read my earlier review of ReadTheScriptures.com to learn more, but basically this site can send you a copy of your assigned reading each day via email, which comes as a friendly reminder to read the scriptures that day. It works all of the standard words (The Bible, The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price) as well as many other church materials including Church Magazines and Sunday lessons. Here’s a quote from the newsletter about the new challenge:

Our Read the Scriptures program was inspired through the Book of Mormon reading challenge President Hinckley issued in August 2005: “I offer a challenge to members of the Church throughout the world and to our friends everywhere to read or reread the Book of Mormon.”

That was 3 years ago! We would like to issue this challenge again to all who will join us on this anniversary of the Book of Mormon reading challenge!

Join with all your friends, family, and people around the world to read the Book of Mormon once again before the end of 2008.

To quote President Hinckley: “…there will come into your lives and into your homes an added measure of the Spirit of the Lord, a strengthened resolution to walk in obedience to His commandments, and a stronger testimony of the living reality of the Son of God.”

-Read The Scriptures Newsletter, August 20th, 2008

So whether it’s online or the old-fashioned way, I encourage you all to participate in the challenge! If you’d like to join this challenge with me, feel free to join our Facebook Group. If you don’t have a copy of the Book of Mormon, you can request a free copy to be delivered to you.

At work I do a fair amount of computer programming. I don’t have the chance to look at my computer code every day, so after I let my code sit for a while, it can look quite messy when I come back to it – sometimes I realize that I’ve left out proper comments to explain the functionality to future users of the code (myself included) and sometimes I just leave things a mess. Rather than leave things a mess, I decided today to take some extra time to clean up a few things with the code. Once I did that, I noticed that I had a mess of icons on my desktop that I never used – they were just there because I hadn’t organized them to begin with. After I cleaned those up, I uncluttered my desk.

It’s a great feeling to have a clean workspace. The extra clutter in our lives draws our attention away from the things we like to focus on, and in the case of my computer code cleaning it up now can save me a lot of time in the future. The moral of the story? Cleaning things up now can make it much easier to get some real work done because it helps to reduce our distractions. It’s better to clean things up now than let them attract larger problems.

And now, my brethren, I wish from the inmost part of my heart, yea, with great anxiety even unto pain, that ye would hearken unto my words, and cast off your sins, and not procrastinate the day of your repentance;

But that ye would humble yourselves before the Lord, and call on his holy name, and watch and pray continually, that ye may not be tempted above that which ye can bear, and thus be led by the Holy Spirit, becoming humble, meek, submissive, patient, full of love and all long-suffering;

The Book of Mormon: Alma 13:27-28

If you read in the scriptures, you can see that God has many promises for us. Not all of them are specific, and we can certainly receive more promises, but he has promised us certain things when we obey His commandments. There are so many of these promises given in the scriptures that sometimes it’s hard to keep track. Elder Spencer J. Condie gave a talk this last General Conference that lists many of them for us:

The Lord’s countless exceeding great and precious promises include forgiveness of our sins when we “confess them and forsake them” (D&C 58:43; see also D&C 1:32). Opening the windows of heaven is a promise claimed by those who pay a faithful tithe (see Malachi 3:10), and finding “great treasures of knowledge” accrues to those who observe the Word of Wisdom (D&C 89:19).

Becoming unspotted from the world is a promise to those who keep the Sabbath holy (see D&C 59:9; Exodus 31:13). Divine guidance and inspiration are promised to those who “feast upon the words of Christ” (2 Nephi 32:3) and who “liken all scriptures” unto themselves (1 Nephi 19:23).

The Lord also promised that “whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you” (3 Nephi 18:20). We are promised that the Holy Ghost will be our constant companion when we “let virtue garnish [our] thoughts unceasingly” (see D&C 121:45–46). We can claim the spiritually liberating promise of fasting, which will “loose the bands of wickedness,” undo our “heavy burdens,” and “break every yoke” (Isaiah 58:6).

Those who are sealed in holy temples and who faithfully keep their covenants will receive God’s glory, which “shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever” (D&C 132:19).

– Elder Spencer J. Condie, Oct 2007 General Conference

I don’t remember ever seeing a list of promises like that before, and it’s stunning when presented like this, even though this isn’t a comprehensive listing of all the blessings we might receive. These blessings are somewhat straightforward, but sometimes we expect to receive them without any effort of our own. We should remember that we receive blessings from God when we follow His commandments:

In these latter days, the Lord revealed that “when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated” (D&C 130:21). The Lord makes generous promises, and He certifies that He will not vary from these promises, for, said He, “I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise” (D&C 82:10).
– Elder Spencer J. Condie, Oct 2007 General Conference