Hello everyone!
This week I have found that I am especially thankful for the
Spirit and for the love that can be conveyed through the Spirit. We were working with some Less Active members
of the Church - people who have been members for 30-40 years, have been Branch
Presidents, and haven't been to church in 20 years. It is really sad to see how they let things
of the world take hold of their hearts and that they don't have the Spirit with
them anymore.
We had an interesting encounter with one brother in
particular: his heart was especially
hardened. he is a lawyer, and at the
beginning of the lesson he was practically yelling at us. He said he wasn't really free, but I felt
impressed to ask him if he was going to go to church this week. He was a little perturbed that I would ask
him right after he said he wasn't free, so he started talking about how he
needed to choose if he was going to be with God or against him. He went off about how the world is changing
and how when he was 20 and a new member he looked up to others for sources of
strengthening his testimony, how then he was persuaded much easier. I am not completely sure that he even
believes it anymore. But all that kept
running through my head was "truth never changes". We are told over and over by modern day
prophets and apostles of our Lord that God's standard never changes even when
the world's do so rapidly. Over and over
again in the Scriptures we are told that God never changes and if He does He
would cease to be God. I also had the
thought to share with him the Scripture in Mosiah 3:19 :
19 For the natural
man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be,
forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and
putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of
Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient,
full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to
inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.
He was so hardened to the Spirit -so caught up on
intellectual knowledge that he had forgotten what the most innate and tender
feelings we could ever feel felt like.
The Spirit is that which connects our Spirit to God and helps us to
build upon the most sure foundation. It
is true: the world is changing. It is going downhill steadily and it is
increasing speed. Yet, things of the
world cannot satisfy. As Elder Perry
would explain it, we are the wheat and the evils of the world (the tares) are
so closely sown in. We can't simply
ignore them - they are surrounding us.
So what we can do is prepare to defend ourselves against these things
before we are face to face with a choice.
"A steward managing the field must, with all his or her
power, nourish that which is good and make it so strong and beautiful the tares
will have no appeal either to the eye or the ear. How blessed are we as members
of the Lord’s Church to have the precious gospel of our Lord and Savior as a
foundation on which we can build our lives."
I know that as we prepare ourselves against the storms of
the world by building our foundation upon Christ's Gospel, we don't have to
worry about the tares, because we will be prepared to face any storm. We will be as the wise man who built his
foundation upon a rock. We may not be
wise as to things of the world, but with what really matters, we will be
sustained our whole lives through.
And the best part?
This man eventually did open his heart, at least a little. He finally agreed to come to church on the
30th. It is a step in the right
direction!!
Miracles can
happen! We just have to believe.
I love you all!
Sister Norrell
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