GENERAL CONFERENCE

 

“A message given to a General Authority at a general conference – a message prepared under the influence of the Spirit to further the work of the Lord – is not given to be enjoyed. It is given to inspire, to edify, to challenge, or to correct. It is given to be heard under the influence of the Spirit of the Lord, with the intended result that the listener learns from the talk and from the Spirit what he or she should do about it.”

-          Dallin H. Oaks, “The Dedication of A Lifetime”, CES Fireside for Young Adults, 1 May 2005

I will add just one thing. We should not look to General Conference to teach us how to be better mothers, fathers, neighbours, citizens….or how to be successful in any of our endeavours, overcome our weaknesses, addictions and sins and ‘to further the work of the Lord’. We should look to General Conference to tell us what we need to know here and now how to develop the Christ-like attribute that we need here and now. This is all that matters…because in the process of becoming like the Saviour, one attribute at a time, we become good mothers, fathers, neighbours….we overcome our weaknesses, addictions and sins, we become a success overall and we further the work of the Lord.

This is His Church…a shelter from the storm that is seeking to swallow us, a place that seeks to embrace us and keep us under the shadow of His wings. A place that is preparing us for the day “when He shall appear and we shall be like Him” (Moroni 7:48). This is all that matters……

Thou art our everlasting God

Jehovah, our King,

Hide us under the shadow of Thy wings

That we might not cause Thee sorrow;

And help us wait for Thee

In the dawning of tomorrow. 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Clouds of Glory by Greg Sargent)

GIFTED

“I remember the Prophet arising to preach to a large congregation in the grove west of the Temple in Nauvoo. He stated that he would preach on spiritual gifts…..Joseph stated that every Latter-Day Saint had a gift, and by living a righteous life, and asking for it, the Holy Spirit would reveal it to him or her.”  (Amasa Potter, “A reminiscence of the Prophet Joseph Smith”, Juvenile Instructor, Feb 15, 1894, p 132)

Nobody would know this concept better than Joseph who had only a grammar school knowledge of reading and writing and yet had the ability to translate records written centuries before in a language of which he had no knowledge. The fact that Joseph had this gift was attested by Mormon who wrote on the title page of the Book of Mormon that the golden plates would be interpreted by the gift of God. This gift of God was the gift of translation given to Joseph Smith (Teachings of Presidents, Chapter 9: Gifts of the Spirit)

The latter-day witness came from Oliver Cowdery: “These were days never to be forgotten – to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awakened the utmost gratitude of this bosom! Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated with the Urim and Thummim…..the history or record called “The Book of Mormon” (Joseph Smith History 1:71 - From a letter from Oliver Cowdery to William W. Phelps, Sept 7, 1834, Norton, Ohio)

The gifts of the spirit are given for the purpose of developing traits we lack and need to have, not only for our benefit but most importantly for the benefit of the Church for it is for this purpose they are given (D&C 46:10:29). They are also a tool for overcoming weaknesses: “…..if any of us are imperfect, it is our duty to pray for the gift that will make us perfect. Have I imperfections? I am full of them. What is my duty? To pray to God to give me the gifts that will correct these imperfections.” (“Millenial Star, April 1894, pp 260-61).  

I have taught several lessons over the years on the gifts of the spirit as outlined in D&C 46.  The last time I taught it I decided to seek a gift I needed to help me overcome  a long-standing weakness.  As I pondered about it I realised I didn't know which gift was needed for me to have for this particular weakness so I decided to pray about this and ask which gift I should seek.  I knew the answer that came to me was straight from above because I would never have come up with it in those words on my own. 

I tend to have a somewhat dogmatic manner at times and this has troubled me over the years and has created clashes with people which necessitated later apologies.  This weakness also makes me detest unfairness and causes me to stand up for myself even in less important situations such as customer service. 

The gift I was told to pray for was the gift of 'forbearance and self-restraint'.  As I contemplated this definition of the gift I realised I had other weaknesses that could be overcome with this gift.  It was rather humbling to discover I had so many weaknesses that they could be grouped into a whole category.

I thought obtaining this gift was going to be a simple matter of praying for it and one day I would wake up with this gift under my belt ready to take on the world.  Unfortunately, it didn't prove to be that simple.  I prayed many weeks for this gift and one day I had another 'customer service' incident that left me feeling less than good about myself.  I was wrongly done by and I gave as good as I got.  I walked away thinking I really could have used the gift of forbearance and self-restraint that day and wondered when I was going to get it.  As I thought about it, I realised what I had been doing wrong. 

As Ether 12:27 tells us, weaknesses are designed to bring us to God that we might be humble. I lacked that humility in receiving this gift.  What I needed to do was humbly call upon God for my gift in the moment that I needed it and then act in faith as if I had it. In other words, some effort on my part was needed as well.

I realise it can be very hard to make yourself call on God in the moment when you are facing your weakness instead of giving into it because a lot of our weaknesses come with payoffs, payoffs that we enjoy and more than often want. The key is desire.  When the desire becomes greater than the payoff, you are half way there.  When you no longer want to be the person you see in the mirror, you are ready to change.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Translation Process by LDS Art)

 

BEING WEAK PART 3

 In my previous posts I have written that the weakness of mortality was given to us to bring us to the source of all power, that source being Christ. Discovering this truth in mortality is like stepping back in time behind the veil. Unless we understand on a deeper level that we need the Saviour to enlarge our capacity, we will not be able to overcome our mortal shortcomings and navigate our mortal journey successfully long term.

 Here is the crux of the matter. It is one thing to know that we ‘should’ give up our weaknesses and another having a desire to do it. It is difficult to WANT to give up some weaknesses because they usually come with pay offs. None of us indulge in weaknesses that don’t give us something in return.

 The desire makes this process so much easier. Developing that desire becomes easier when we yield our hearts to God on consistent basis. The closer we come to God, the more desire we have to improve ourselves. Then it becomes easier to hand over all your stumbling blocks.

I have found something helpful to do is to replace “I should” with “I choose to” every time I am  faced with the behaviour I want to change.  When I adopt the thinking that I am choosing to give something up, I don’t feel cheated of that behaviour and its pay off. None of us like to feel that we are ‘forced’ to do something. There are no feelings of pressure when you tell yourself that something is your choice.

Expect some discomfort in giving up your buddy weakness you cosied up to for so long. Comfort zone is difficult to give up. Neal A. Maxwell called this process ‘spiritual surgery’, the giving up of the natural man is a ‘painful severing of pride from the soul’ (In Conference Report October 1987).

But here is the greatest motivation to do so: “...bridle all your passions that ye may be filled with love…..”  (Alma 38:12)

The more stumbling blocks that we remove from our path to righteousness, with the Saviour’s help, the more we will rise to higher ground where an elated state of being exists. When you come to this higher ground you come to understand what the love of God really is because you will be filled with it. Our weaknesses with all their pay offs do not compare with this state of being EVER.

  

A river of peace floods my mortal being

I struggle to contain such a merciful gift;

With grace You enlarge

the sparse capacity of my heart

And righteousness moves within me

 as the waves of the sea;

I love You more dearly

I serve you more freely

I become what I alone could never be.

 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: His Grace Is Sufficient by Greg Collins)
 

A GLIMPSE UPWARD

I have carried with me a sense of powerlessness my whole adult life. I know I did not bring this with me from my pre-existance because I know instinctly this is not who I am. I am not a powerless person yet the sense of powerlessness has been the bane of my life and has held me back from my fullest potential and greater success in this life.  I consider my spiritual life well developed but anything of temporal nature has been a struggle for me and fulfillment in many ways has eluded me. This sense of powerlessness has damaged my self-esteem and robbed me of self-belief to the point that I have many times felt I have been a failure in my life. Recently the frustration of this noose around my neck reached its peak.

I have known for some time that this weakness had come to me from many generations of my family who were poor oppressed European peasants, that had existed from the time of the feudal system to socialism, and who believed they could never rise above their station in life. I had seen this powerlessness perpetrated in my family throughout my childhood and early adulthood in Europe. I have known my family's thoughts, their false beliefs and their words of affirmations that invited suffering into the lives of my immediate family. From the time that I have received the Gospel in my life, I have not been able to understand why I was born into this lineage. I am the different one, the one that seeks and knows and loves God. The one that has largely departed from my roots. My recent sense of frustration over my life sent me to my knees where through bitter tears I spat out to God that I hated my family and all the generations I have come from; that I hated who they were and what they have saddled me with. I had never expressed such venomous thoughts before, to myself or to others, let alone to God. I begged to understand why I was sent into this family and why I carried their burden.  Within half an hour of my prayer, my heart and mind were flooded with immense understanding.

When the Saviour said  'my sheep hear my voice' (John 10:27) he was referring to those who are so spiritually advanced that they  recognise and wholeheartedly embrace the truth when it is presented to them. Bruce R. McConkie taught it is a spiritual gift that was developed in pre-existance. I was 16 when I sought and immediately accepted the Gospel into my life. I count myself as one of His sheep. What has all this got to do with my ancestors? It was given to me to understand that those who are His sheep are often sent to families who need a spiritual shepherd to help them with their unbelief. I came to understand that the sense of powerlessness in generations of my family had blinded them to a 'hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal' (Moroni 7:41); that what once was a temporal has now become a spiritual stumbling block.  I came to understand that no amount of saving ordinances which I can do here in the temple can do anything for them unless this sense of powerlessness was removed  so they can believe that they can rise to godhood.  I came to understand that my long held desire to bring souls unto Christ had more to do with generations of my family than with any other people I can yield influence over living here during my life time. I came to  understand that it is up to me to eliminate this feeling of powerlessness in my life and therefore eliminate it from generations past and generations to come. This made me understand that what we do and overcome in this life reverberates throughout generations that have been and the generations that are yet to come; that it reverberates through the genetic cord which binds us and unites us in a collective effort to rise to our potential; that what we achieve and overcome here in mortality echoes throughout eternity. I came to understand that we are one and that the power to lift one another to higher ground that we might all become co-heirs with Christ is one of the greatest tender mercies of the Lord.

Living by faith is a hard road. Glimpses into heaven such as these however make the journey bearable and the road illuminated. They propel us upward and above the world. They open our hearts to the witness of the plan of salvation and the reality of our real home. They make us know who we are; that we belong to Him who has loved us and made us free, to Him who has prepared heavenly mansions for our eternal abode; Him who has spiritually begotten us as His sons and daughters; Him who has made the immortality and eternal life of man possible; the Saviour, the Redeemer, the Everlasting Father, the Almighty God, the Son of Righteousness, the Great I Am, the Lord of Glory, the King of Kings, the Stone of Israel. All glory be His forever.

"Hast thou not known?

Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God,

the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth,

fainteth not, neither is weary? 

There is no fathoming of his understanding.

He giveth power to the faint;

and to them that have no might 

he increaseth strength.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary, 

and the young men shall utterly fall:

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;

they shall mount up with wings as eagles;

they shall run, and not be weary;

and they shall walk,

and not faint."

- Isaiah 40:28-31

HE WHO HAS PAVED THE WAY

The Inspired Version of the Bible records that at the onset of His mortal ministry and following His baptism, Jesus was 'led up of the Spirit, into the wilderness, to be with God': "And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, and had communed with God, he was afterwards an hungered and was left to be tempted of the devil" (Matthew 4:1,2, Inspired Version, italics added). In the King James Version of the Bible, it is recorded that he was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Bruce R. McConkie makes it clear that this was not the case: "Jesus did not go into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil; righteous men do not seek out temptation. He went 'to be with God'. Probably he was visited by the Father, without question he received transcendent spiritual manifestations. The temptations came after he 'had communed with God', 'after forty days.' (McConkie, DNTC, 1:128; see also Mosiah 3:7). The King James Version in Matthew 4 continues to record that Jesus was taken by the devil here and there to be tempted of him. The Inspired Version constantly corrects this in the footnotes stating that the Spirit took Jesus and set Him on the pinnacle of the temple and an exceedingly high mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. This is an extremely important point we need to take notice of. If we did not have the Inspired Version we would be convinced by the erroneous account of the King James Version that the devil had the upper hand with Jesus and that he has the upper hand with us. This is simply not true. The devil has no upper hand in anything. He is simply an upstart and an outcast. He has no power over the children of men except what they give him. He cannot take away anyone's agency or make anyone do his bidding and he most certainly cannot take us anywhere. His only dominion lies in temptation. That is the extent of his power.

I heard an evangelist say on TV recently that the adversary has no power on his best day to take us out on our worst day. This is a sobering thought considering he is so well practiced and considering how well he knows us from pre-existence and from observation. Unknowingly we have taught him where our worst weaknesses lay by our repeated misuse of agency. He knows the traps, the pitfalls, human foibles and all weaknesses. So how can we be more powerful than him? Because of two things:

1. We have a body. This is our biggest advantage. We have kept our first estate and now we are on the second leg of our eternal journey. We stand to gain eternal life. He has already lost that chance. He stands to gain nothing for when all this is over he will be nothing. Isaiah said this of him: "Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake the kingdoms?" (Isaiah 14:15,16). In the end Satan will be stripped of the limited power he now has and his reign of horror on this earth will be over. For now he is considered 'the god of this world' but he will once again be just an outcast. 
2. We have once before chosen the God of Glory over Lucifer. We have the power to continue to choose Him who delivers us from the sting of sin and death and offers us ultimate freedom. When God revealed Himself to Moses, Moses beheld His glory and was taught of his divine origin as God repeatedly called him, 'Moses, my son'. When God withdrew, the devil appeared on the scene and wanted to be worshipped also. True to his character, he sought to make Moses believe he was lesser than he was by calling him 'son of man' (Moses 1:12). Satan knew that if Moses believed he was the son of God, he would also believe that he had God's power at his fingertips and could therefore resist him. Moses was not to be confused, however, and he pointed out to Satan that he had no glory, only darkness, and therefore he had no power over him (1 Moses:15) and by his conviction he was able to cast him out of his presence. When Jesus resisted the three temptations of the devil He proved to those who follow Him that all power to overcome lay within Him. We as his followers and disciples, through our faith on Him and by the virtue of our agency, have access to this power to overcome and conquer the enemy of all righteousness.

It was after the Saviour had made his covenants with the Father through baptism that Satan came to tempt Him. So it is with us. Often when we are baptised into the Church, we think we are safe and have 'arrived'. Nothing could be further from the truth. The adversary will work on us, the covenant people, more than he will work on those who have not made sacred promises to God. More often than not his temptations will come in three ways that he tempted the Saviour with: 1. a temptation of the appetite; 2. a yielding to the pride and fashion and vanity of those alienated from the things of God; 3. a gratifying of the passion, or a desire for the riches of the world or power among men (David O. McKay in CR, Oct 1911, p. 59). We who are his targets need to be vigilant at all times to recognise the subtle slide into sin that he constantly lays before us. Why? Because by it we stand to lose a lot. Here is a clear explanation of this fact:

"Repentance is, frankly, just plain smart, because sin makes you stupid. Stupid because you are deaf, dumb and blind to the ways of the Lord. Stupid because habitual sin drives the Spirit away, leaving you outside the protective influence of the Holy Ghost. Stupid because it makes you incapable of drawing upon the powers of heaven. Being stupid costs a lot. Sin costs a lot too. It can cost time, money, peace of mind, progress, self-respect, your integrity and virtue, your family, the trust of those you love, and even your Church membership. Sin is just plain stupid. And the cost is off the charts. So repent now. Repent daily. If you want to be sanctified, repentance is not optional" (Sheri L. Dew, You Were Born to Lead, You Were Born for Glory, BYU Speeches, December 2003)

We are powerful beyond our capacity to understand. This power is shown in the moments of our choices. The power within us comes from God. It is His gift to all those who commit to follow Him. We cannot afford to give this power away for it has the potential to crown us with eternal life and endless glory. We want this, we have always wanted this. We are His children who are destined to wear the crowns of godhood. He has paved the way and by it made us powerful enough to conquer and overcome through His sinless sacrifice. The path is straight, the road smooth, the journey easy if we walk it following the footsteps before us. The Atonement is the key and it can make us brilliant and holy and glorious beyond anything we can ever imagine (Cathryne Allen, How to Use the Power of the Atonement, November Blog 2013). Use it, call upon it and trust in it. The reward is yours and it is waiting.

"And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me."  (Moroni 7:33)