7-22-11 “He did deliver me from bondage”
p.43, Day 2
We’ve been having a lot more spills lately. Heavenly Father knows that this is a weak
point for me and it sends me flying. I
truly believe God is in control over the daily circumstances of my home, even
down to the children’s reactions or behaviors.
I’ve been learning to have more patience with my own mistakes because
I’ve been the one spilling the stuff!
Unpleasantly ironic. Who says God
doesn’t have a sense of humor?
2 N 10:24
“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will
of God, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto God,
that it is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved.”
conform, v.t.
[L., to form, or shape, form.]
1. To
make like, in external appearance; to reduce to a like shape, or form, with
something else; with to; as, to conform any thing to a model.
I remember a couple of years ago I was studying
with my Ward Family in a class held on weekdays to study the Ensign talks
together. I can’t really explain how it
happened, but I remember gaining a witness of bending my will to the will of
God. We were talking about prophets and
becoming self-reliant. Whatever happened
I gained a witness that following (doing in deed what He asks) the
Prophet is like holding onto the iron rod with one hand, and aligning our lives
to scripture is like holding onto the rod with the other hand. I went through an evaluation process with a
handout I got that night and marked each section with one of the following:
- Doing OK
- Need to work on
- Will have to wait for later
I made a written checklist of the things I needed
to change in order to conform my life to the council of the Prophet. It was sobering to realize where I was, and
the specifics of what I needed to DO in order to adapt myself to the word of
the Lord. I already had the desire. I was just self-deceived thinking that I was
doing what the Prophet asked, when it was only a desire or intention.
Since that time I have gone to work on conforming
my life to the will of God. I know there
are many blindnesses that I cannot yet change because I cannot see my own pride
in greater degree than I have the power to change myself in today. The part that I can do is I pray every
morning that in my studies (in my living and my learning throughout the day)
that the Lord will help me align my thoughts and actions to truth. It’s like pulling weeds. I have so many weeds I could not pull them
all in one day. But when I am able, I
work on it for a little while.
Recognizing weeds in our thoughts is like a psychological process of
weeding out the lies in our mind. I
believe that we become unhappy because we have succumbed to believe a lie Satan
planted in our mind. Believing these
lies causes depression, suicide, and many other abnormal human patterns of sadness and
destruction.
One of my many weeds that I recognized only a
couple of years ago was that I believed as a child that I was made from
inferior raw material; that somehow I was inherently flawed and it was not
possible for me to be as smart as everyone else. I went to ‘resource’ (got pulled out of class
with the regular kids to go learn in a smaller group with the dumb ones) and
was teased much as school and home. I
came to believe the mean things people teased me about and blocked out the good
things they said. About 4 years ago
there was a crack in that block because the Lord led me to go to Power
Training. www.powerwithinus.com Those three days changed my life, and opened
a door of belief for me. It broke down
the hard shell I had built around myself and helped me see so many
indescribable things. So “Now” (Hilary
Weeks) I see- at least in greater degree than I could then. Now
that I have a believing heart (at least more than I did then) I now have
learned the truth about how God sees me.
I learned for myself 1st hand from Him how He feels about me
and what He wants for me, and that was the beginning of my being able to trust
Him.
It is a slow process that requires humility (a willingness
to adapt our thoughts and actions to the word and the will of God), a willing
heart and mind, and then the grit and conviction to conquer or die- yet the
commitment to victory must be that great.
Conviction and determination grow as we do our best in today, then
tomorrow we will have more. Our will to
obey grows as we obey.
2 N 10:24 “… remember, after ye are
reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that ye
are saved.”
I guess the “law of more” is where grace comes in-
that as we do all we can do, then he blesses us with a greater power to
do. I don’t see this as a submissive
grace, like the grace of repentance that washes you clean. This is more like a working grace that we
have to earn after we get off our knees.
It takes grit and determination- however much you have today, more will
come tomorrow if you do all you can do.
Then we receive the washing-over-us-grace that increases our determination
and conviction. [When I say we, I
mean this is what I have seen happen in my own life and I know the law applies
equally to anyone else as it does to me.
Therefore it becomes a “we”.]
It is God that makes us good through this
willingness to conform, after all we can do.
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