My talk

It's long, but if you're bored...here's the talk I'm giving on Sunday.

Pascal said “The heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of.” In other words, things that seem illogical will make perfect sense once your mind catches up to what your heart already knows.

Alma 37:37 says “Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good.” It doesn’t say counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will tell you all the details at once with complete explanations of everything you need to know so you can go forward without restraint. No, we must do as Nephi did and go forward being led by the spirit. We must exercise faith in what our heart, or our spirit, knows is true. This is the difference between the spiritual and the temporal.

Nearly every big decision I’ve ever made has been prompted by the spirit. About seven years ago, I thought I had my life all figured out. I had been dating a guy that was a new member. Since he was older than 19, he didn’t think he’d go on a mission, but after a year in the church he changed his mind and started preparing for a mission. I was 20 at the time and figured I could finish school and work as a photographer to save for my own mission the next year.

I went ahead and accepted a job as a traveling photographer. It was perfect, I didn’t have to worry about rent and other bills because I was on the road about 3 weeks of every month and the company paid for my hotel and other traveling expenses. When I wasn’t on the road I stayed with family. I traveled all over the NW and was very much enjoying my job. The pay was excellent and I was able to save quite a bit. After about 6 months on the road, however, I started to get a nagging feeling. I recognized it as the spirit telling me that something needed to change. As I prayed and read my scriptures I kept coming back to the same feeling. I needed to serve.

Since I was traveling, I was unable to hold a calling in my home ward. I went to church each Sunday wherever I happened to be, but I wasn’t in any one ward in order to serve. As the feeling intensified I decided to just go with it. I put in my 2 weeks notice and got ready to settle down again. My last job was close to my Aunt’s house which was where I was living at the time, so I was able to attend the singles ward where my records were.

My first day back, I ran into the institute director. He asked me if I would play the piano for the institute choir, and I agreed. After all, that’s why I quit my job. I was supposed to serve.

While all this was happening in my life, Dave had been attending BYU. He too, had an illogical prompting to leave school in the middle of a semester and go back home to his parents. So, without much thought, he packed up his Volkswagon Rabbit and drove home.

My first week playing the piano for the institute choir, I met Dave. Two weeks later, he proposed and 5 weeks after that, we were married in the Seattle Temple. Now, six years and three kids later, I’m so glad that we were both doing the things we needed to do to be close to the spirit and able to follow it’s promptings. However illogical they may have seemed at the time.

Dallin H. Oaks said: “We seek spirituality through faith, repentance, and baptism; through forgiveness of one another; through fasting and prayer; through righteous desires and pure thoughts and actions. We seek spirituality through service to our fellowmen; through worship; through feasting on the word of God, in the scriptures and the teachings of the living prophets. We attain spirituality through making and keeping covenants, through conscientiously trying to keep all the commandments of God. Spirituality is not acquired suddenly. It is the consequence of a succession of right choices. It is the harvest of a righteous life.

In the Gospel, there are a lot of good things we can be doing. By seeking spirituality, we can know what good things we should be doing for our own progression. We need to remember that just because something is right for us, doesn’t mean it’s right for somebody else.

We all know the story of Mary and Martha. Luke, chapter ten tells how the Savior came to a particular village:

“And a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part.”

Mary hath chosen that good part. Not the better part, not the right part, the good part.

The definition for good is: Being positive or desirable in nature; not bad or poor. I believe that Mary and Martha were both doing good things that they felt prompted to do. Serving the Savior with her food and hospitality was not the wrong thing to do. Martha may have needed a slight attitude adjustment, however. Maybe if she had simplified the meal, so that she wouldn’t feel resentment towards her sister for not helping, then they both could have done what they felt was right and both benefited from the presence of the Savior that much more. Neither was wrong in her choice of action. They were both good and the right choice for their individual progression.

We all make choices with the aid of the spirit that can result in different answers. For example: How long should we wait to have children? One couple feels they should start right away, another couple feels they should wait a few years. If the couples have spirituality in their lives, then they will receive the right or the good answer for themselves.

Some may ask, how do we know that the answer we received is from the spirit? D&C 9 teaches us how to recognize an answer to our prayers. We’re told that we should first, study it out in our mind. To me, this means studying the situation both spiritually and temporally. Read whatever you can and search your feelings. Then, we must ask if the answer we’ve come to is right. If it is, we will receive a burning in our bosom. If it’s not, we’ll receive a stupor of thought. For me, that means confusion. If I’m trying to make a decision and I feel conflicted in the answer, then I know it’s time to re-evaluate.

We’ve been taught that Satan can masquerade as an angel of light. So how can we know that the answer we received is from the spirit of God? You know those Sunday school answers? Pray, read your scriptures, and go to church. If we are baptized and following those simple commandments such as prayer and scripture study, then we maintain the light of Christ in our lives. We will have the ability to discern whether our answer comes from God or from Satan. D&C 96:36-37 says “The glory of God is intelligence, or in other words, light and truth. Light and truth forsake that evil one.” So, if we are living our life in accordance with God’s commandments, then we will maintain the light of Christ. Satan does not have that light. He can not give us the feeling of peace in our heart that the spirit of God can.

I had a lesson in this recently. I saw a midwife through my most recent pregnancy and was planning to give birth in an off-site birth center. I had felt all along that the best thing for this baby was for him to come naturally, without any medical interventions. My babies don’t waste any time once I’m in labor, so when my water broke, we headed right to the birth center. Once we got there, we found out that I was in what they call prodromal labor. It means that the contractions aren’t doing anything. So, we waited, and waited, and waited.

Something like 95% of women will go into labor on their own within 24 hours after their water breaks. However, the longer you wait, you increase the risk of infection to the baby, so most doctors will give you a drug to get labor going well before that 24 hour mark. After about 12 hours I found myself battling the temporal against the spiritual. I was making my husband, my family and my friends incredibly nervous because I insisted on going with my heart on this one. I asked for a blessing and was told that this baby would come naturally and to be patient. I clung to that promise as the hours continued to tick by.

Night came and I made the decision to keep waiting. We were home and I just kept praying that it would turn out okay. I knew I was doing the right thing though. Proverbs 3:5 says “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” My own understanding was that I was increasing the risk of complications by waiting, but I had to trust in the Lord. After all, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness and faith. I definitely had longsuffering, but I also had peace.

Finally, after 32 hours, and with more prayer, I made the decision to go to the hospital. I assumed that once I got there I would be given that drug to induce labor, but Heavenly Father held true to his promise. As were driving to the hospital, I went into labor. By the time we got there I was close to delivering. He was born about 30 minutes later, naturally, with no medical interventions. When he was born, he had some complications that needed the extra staff that the hospital had to offer and we discovered, based on his heart rate during contractions that if I had gotten that drug, it could have ended in a c-section and I personally wasn’t prepared for something like that. So when it was all said and done, it finally made logical sense. But getting to that point was difficult.

Exercising spirituality in our lives can also prepare us for things to come and give us the knowledge and empathy we need in life. When my daughter was about a year old, I got that nagging feeling again. This time I felt that it was about a child of mine. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew that something was going to happen to one of my kids that I wasn’t going to like. I also knew I didn’t have to worry about either of the kids I already had.

I asked my husband for a blessing and was admonished to pray and read my scriptures and attend the temple often for preparation and understanding. So I did. About six months later, I got pregnant. From the beginning, I knew that it was this child that I had been warned about. We had an ultrasound and saw the baby. We saw and heard the heartbeat and everything looked fine so I tried to put it out of my mind. That pregnancy ended in a miscarriage during my second trimester.

Because I was prepared by the spirit, the initial blow of losing my baby was slightly less forceful. Since then, I’ve seen blessings that have come from that trial. My marriage was strengthened and I gained empathy. I was able to be there for my sister, when she had a miscarriage a year after I had mine. I understood in a way that other people couldn’t and I had a new understanding of spirituality and allowing God to work through me.

Dallin H. Oaks said “To be spiritually minded is to view and evaluate our experiences in terms of the enlarged perspective of eternity.”

First Samuel, chapter 25 tells a story of a woman who understands spirituality. She understands the eternal consequence of actions and intercedes in order to give someone else the opportunity to re-evaluate what he’s about to do. Her name is Abigail.

To paraphrase, after David slew Goliath, King Saul became jealous of him and tried to kill him. David had to escape into the wilderness and sustain himself. While there, other men, mostly fugitives, gathered to him.

While they were in the wilderness, David and his men protected the shepherds and flocks of a rich man named Nabal. They could have taken the sheep for their own sustenance, but they didn’t. The time came for Nabal to shear the sheep and gather some for food. The provisions that David and his men had were running low and they thought that their service to Nabal would be rewarded.

When it wasn’t, David sent ten young men to Nabal to remind him of their service to him and his household and ask for some provisions. “And Nabal answered David’s servants, and said, Who is David? And who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants now a days that break away every man from his master. Shall I then take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men, whom I know not whence they be?”

David and his men were understandably upset with this response and prepared to go in and battle Nabal to get provisions. One of the ten young men had told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, what was going to happen and she, being spiritual in nature, was able to intervene. Abigail took two hundred loaves, two bottles of wine, five sheep, five measures of parched corn, a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs and went with her servants to David and his men.

Once she arrived she bowed down before David and offered him the food that she brought and begged him not to fall upon Nabal’s household. But she was not only doing this to save her husband and her house. She was close to the spirit and understood that David must not carry that anger towards Nabal in his heart which would cause him to kill without cause.

“And David said to Abigail, blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet me: And blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand.”

Abigail understood the eternal significance of what was happening because she was living her life in a way that kept her close to the spirit. She was able to be an instrument for the Lord and help him do his work on this earth.

One of my favorite scriptures is 2 Nephi 9:39. It ends “Remember, to be carnally minded is death, and to be spiritually minded is life eternal.” The first letters of the last five words in that verse are S, M, I, L, E. So, to remember that to be spiritually minded is life eternal, just smile.