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Browsing Tag: Bible

Faith,Lessons Learned

Diligence

posted on : April 12, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

I have a 16-year-old daughter with Down Syndrome.  She is an amazing person who was born with faith and when I tell her something, she believes me.  She loves going to church and participating in Sunday School and Young Women’s classes, and she takes seminary classes through her high school.  She always reminds me to do family scriptures and prayer and I know she reads her scriptures on her own and says her prayers each night, and she always remembers to ask for a blessing on her food- even in a restaurant.  Sometimes after she gets home from school when she’s had seminary or after a Sunday School class I will ask her what the lesson was about or something that she learned.  Her reply is always said with a little frustration “I don’t know.”  I can ask her several questions to try to prompt her memory but she genuinely doesn’t know what was talked about.  In some ways it’s even more remarkable that she persists in doing these righteous behaviors since she doesn’t remember what she’s taught or read. I have thought about her diligence in attending these classes and doing her own personal reading and remember the scripture in the Bible from John 14:26 which says in part “…the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance…”  The knowledge is in there and some day, because of her diligence, she will have all things brought to her remembrance through the Holy Ghost.

Faith,Lessons Learned

The Answers to Life’s Questions

posted on : March 19, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

Any time I have had a question or a big decision to make I have found my answer by reading my scriptures. Many years ago my husband and I were trying to decide about buying a house.  It would entail taking on considerable debt, and debt scared me then and still does now, and also leaving a house we had just finished remodeling and I thought was about perfect. We had put a ton of work into the yard and it seemed a little like the garden of Eden to me.  We had managed to get the house and the yard just about perfect for us. The new house we were considering was on 4 acres of land and had a nice barn on it.  For years my husband and I had talked about finding a home on some land for us to spread out on.  He had grown up on a couple of acres of land and had great memories of building forts and climbing trees and other kinds of things kids like to do.  He wanted the same thing for our kids, and he really liked the barn.  It would give him a place to build things, something he loved doing. The house was nice and would give us extra room for our large family.  It was a hard decision to make but we decided to put an offer on the house and as usual I turned to my scriptures to receive confirmation or not as I prayed fervently.  This time though I thought “there’s no scripture that says go buy a house or don’t buy a house” so I thought my prayers would have to be answered some other way.  I continued to study my scriptures hoping that I would receive my answer by immersing myself in spiritual things.  One day as I was studying I came across a verse in D&C 45:65 which says in part “gather up your riches that ye may purchase an inheritance” and the print seemed five times the size of the other print and I felt the confirmation that the decision to buy the house was the correct one, which to me is always an amazing process to me.  It amazes me because it is an overwhelming concept that God knows who I am, and can and will answer my individual prayers. It was a great relief to get an answer and to know we were on the right track.  I also learned that there is a scripture that says “go buy a house” and that the scriptures provide the answers to all of the questions of life!

Faith,Lessons Learned

House Built on a Rock

posted on : February 19, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

Once when I was reading the account in Matthew 24:24-27 of the wise man who built his house on a rock and the foolish man who built his house on sand I noticed for the first time that the rain fell on both houses.  The wise man’s house was able to withstand the rain while the foolish man’s house was washed away.  Somehow I had always assumed that the foolish man’s house was the one that got rained on even though in plain English it says that the rain fell on both houses.  This realization caused a paradigm shift.  Rain, or troubles, fall on everyone and the difference is the foundation upon which I am built.  Thank goodness for the gospel of Jesus Christ that gives me a firm foundation.

Church

Praying Over Everything

posted on : September 14, 2017 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 2 Comments

In both the Bible and the Book of Mormon we are taught to pray. In Luke 18:1 we are taught to pray always and in Alma, in the Book of Mormon, Amulek teaches us that we should pray over everything including the crops of our fields.  Many years ago I bought 2 grapevines and planted them in my back yard.  My husband built a little fence for them to grow on, and my neighbor, who had grapevines, told me that I needed to prune them.  She gave me instructions on how to prune them and I went to work.  I had her look at the first one I pruned to see if I did it the right way and she told me that not only I had done it the wrong way and should have waited until March, and that the vine would bleed to death.  She then showed me the proper way to prune the grapes on the other vine, which I waited until March to do.  Worried about the dying vine I decided to pray about it.  I prayed that despite my ignorance in pruning it that it would live and I would yet be able to harvest grapes from it.  I prayed about it for several months, even after properly pruning the other vine.  I continued to pray as they leafed out and grapes appeared. Come October I had beautiful grapes and not only did my grapevine not die it produced double the grapes than the one that had been properly pruned.  I enjoyed making jelly and bottling juice because I knew that my prayers had been answered.  Of course our “crops” today are usually not grapes but the jobs we do.  We can pray about our efforts at work and for help with specific problems related to not only our jobs but all areas and aspects of our lives.  Prayer works!