Well, hello ladies and gentlemen!
We are over half way there!! How was your week of listening to music? I really hope you gave it a try! I am excited to hear from you all! I can't even describe how much music impacted my week. I listened to the awesome Spotify list Tava made us, and the beautiful music on the Mormon Channel at work all day long, and at home for hours and I felt the Spirit so much stronger all week long!! What a blessing, especially on a really busy, frustrating week at work. Music really soothed my soul!! I hope it was wonderful to you too. I am definitely going to act like every week is music week from now on. I hope you had fun reminding yourself in the mirror, that you are a beloved child of God too!! That was hard for me to remember but when i did it, it felt great!
Ok- this week is FOCUS ON THE SCRIPTURES week. Think about Lehi's dream and what led to the tree? The WORD of God! The scriptures! We need to hold onto them steadfastly! Christ himself is also "The Word" and he will guide us to the tree. He is the tree too. He's pretty much everything! Here are my thoughts and my testimony of the importance of the scriptures...
There are not enough exclamation points in the world to let you know how important it is to read your scriptures every day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MY STORY! This is what I wrote in my journal on Oct. 25th 2003, about how my love of the scriptures developed and what it did for my life...
“On Sept. 1st this year, 2003, my life began to change. It was the day I finally listened to the prophet and really started reading the Book of Mormon. The day before, during church, President Morgan had challenged us to get our degree from the Preparedness University [a fun program our stake did to help us live the gospel more fully] and gave us a list of what to do. He said “this list is not just for our degree but these are the things we need to do to bring us and our families to Eternal Life." That really struck me, how nice.. a “to do” list.
Then after church my visiting teaching companion [and dear friend], Trudy Barrett and I were visiting Heather Nava. She [Heather] was moving 3 days later to be near her husband from whom she was separated and to see what they should do. Trudy told her she had made it through the toughest times in her life by reading the scriptures ½ hour every day. [Trudy had been abused as a child yet she was one of the sweetest, happiest, most genuinely loving people I had ever known] She said it brought her great joy! When she said that I thought to myself, “I could use that, I struggle, I could use more joy.” [at the time I was struggling pretty seriously with bulimia]. So because of those two reasons I began personal scripture study and family scripture study. ½ hour on my own, starting in Alma and read about 2 pages with the family each morning, (starting in 1st Nephi Ch. 20).
An unexpected and amazing flood of events continued from there.
That next week I felt so alive, so happy, so aware of the Lord. The more I read the more I was amazed by what was written in the scriptures. It was like I had never heard it before. These stories were amazing and I wanted to be just like Captain Moroni. I prayed before I read, I didn’t want to waste my ½ hour so I prayed to understand it, to know what I should be learning from it and to know that it was true. Over the last 55 days I have gained such a strong testimony and learned so much.”
And that was just the beginning of a major healing process for me that changed my life forever and it was just that one thing that I changed to start with. The closeness to the Spirit, my new relationship with God and my Savior led me where I needed to go and I was healed. Trudy Barrett helped me so much with that process, not just in her inspired encouragement to turn to the Book of Mormon for healing, but she also listened as I talked to her for hours about my problem and she gave me much needed comfort and encouragement. She even told me just to ask Heavenly Father if he could heal me... and he did!
A year and a half later, on the evening of June 30, 2005, Trudy, who was only 29 years-old, was killed in a single car accident in Utah. The next day our neighbors, the Gwilliams, knocked on our front door and told us of the terrible tragedy. I was so stunned, I couldn’t even cry. I just walked upstairs to my room and found my precious Book of Mormon, and sat on my carpet in a pool of warm sunshine and read Jacob chapter 5, the longest and perhaps most beautiful chapter in the Book of Mormon.
It brought me such solace and comfort to read that day and to know that Trudy was with God, with the Savior whom she loved so deeply. I imagined her walking around heaven trying to find and introduce herself to Captain Moroni, Nephi, Alma and all the other incredible leaders in the Book of Mormon that she admired. I can’t wait to see her again and thank her for all that she did for me. For sharing her strength with me and telling me (even though she was really telling Heather) where I could turn for healing and for drastically changing the direction of my life forever. She even gave me a big present when I told her I was completely healed from the eating disorder. She said, "This is a huge deal! You deserve a gift!" She framed the words of a song that she knew I had a very special spiritual experience listening to; the Michael McLean song, "Will He Really Answer Me?" and I still have that hanging on my bedroom wall. She wanted me to always remember that He heard me and He answered! What a sweet friend.
The beautiful Trudy Barrett with one of her two sons.
Even if you aren’t struggling with an eating disorder like I was, we live in a fallen world and being separated from God is kind of like being ill with a sickness and the scriptures are like medicine. We need a little each day to feel better! It builds our relationship with God, Christ and the Spirit, and the more I study them the more I feel like I have a little fortress of protection around me.
SCRIPTURE POINTS: This week give yourself points for putting EXTRA time and effort into your scripture study. Please think about implementing any of these ideas to change up and enrich your scripture study…
- Read for 30 minutes. Don’t race through pages, just set an amount of time and absorb the meaning of what you are reading during that time. - Have a colored pencil with you every time you read and color any word or phrase that catches your attention, that you want to be able to find later.
- Write in the margins of your scriptures so you can remember how particular scriptures relate to you in your life, or any inspiration that comes to you while reading.
- If you always read your scriptures, try listening to them instead. You can listen to all of the scriptures online at http://classic.mormonchannel.
- If you usually read them from an electronic device, go get your paper copies for a change. Reading the words and having them in ink and paper in your hands, has a special feeling. And being able to highlight and write notes on the pages is pretty great!
- If you usually read from paper copies, try and read from an electronic device. Being able to follow any footnote link, or get more clarity from the Bible dictionary with just the tap of your finger is so fun! It’s so fun to follow a train of thought through many different books and it’s so easy on a device. I love digitally highlighting things, or making my own cross-references too!
- Instead of just reading from front to back, try studying a certain topic instead. See what the scriptures have to say about faith, or grace, or parenting. This is really easy to do these days with electronic scriptures but you can also do this the old fashioned way as well. It will enrich your learning.
- Keep your little notebook near you when you read and record a few thoughts on what you learned.
- Say a prayer before you start to read, that you will know what God wants to teach you from the scriptures that day. Then when you finish reading, pray again and tell him what you think you learned and ask him if that is right. (This is what Elder Richard G. Scott recommends to receive personal revelation from the scriptures).
- Read the scriptures together as a family.
- Read your scriptures where your children can see you! They need to know where you get your strength from.
- Leave your scriptures open out on the table or counter after you are done reading them. They have a healing affect. I heard Tad Callister (a general authority) and his wife interviewed on the Mormon Channel and his wife said that the scriptures have such healing power that she leaves them open on her table during the day after she finishes reading them. I’ve done this as well and that’s another good reason to have paper copies.
When you are reading remember that you are basically reading someone’s journal. These are the most important things that the prophets of their times thought that their people should know and that all people throughout time needed to know. That’s why they were written down and preserved. Precious information!!
Ok- Time to get going! Enjoy the NEW SURVEY below! I changed all of the questions! I hope you like them and that we get some great feedback. Thanks so much for sticking with this! I love you all dearly!!!
Lots of love!
Sarah
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