Spinning Like a Wobbly Top

The default when we are born into this world is that we all experience the Lord’s Peace continuously. It is given to us in the Northern Threshold and it is incredibly sustaining. We may not even realize we are being supported in this way until we separate ourselves from it by centrifugally spinning outward into NW and NE extremes. His Peace wanes as we increase the width of the arch of our spin. We move centrifugally instead of centripetally – our arrows point outward towards the imbalance instead of inward towards the balance.

"For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light is Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

"And the Spirit giveth light to every man that cometh into the world; and the Spirit enlighteneth every man through the world, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit." -D&C 86:45-46

In order to best understand what I'm talking about in this post, you should have previously read these posts:

I Have a Tale to Tell

I Learned My Lesson Well

I Know Where Beauty Lives

It Shines Inside You

The Secrets I Have Learned

Somebody Save Me

In 2006-08, the Lord taught me about these concepts. I learned about the semantic meaning behind the words Peace, Energy, Faith, and Sacrifice. 

Peace

Peace is comfort, spiritual nourishment, and rest. It is when we feel loved, cherished, cared for.

Energy

We experience an outward flow of Energy, which is somewhat painful when we voluntarily sacrifice for others.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is when you expend effort and forego personal comfort in order to provide Peace for someone else. You parent in Mercy. Mercy is Justice over Time. You give your kids a space and time to learn, make mistakes, and grow. You do not exercise an excessive amount of Justice upon them. But you do train and educate them so they can learn higher-level functional relationship skills over time because God's Justice (the objective reality we all live in) incrementally increases over time.



Faith

We experience Peace when we put our Faith and trust in someone who has the will and capacity to help us bear our burdens – someone who voluntarily sacrifices for us. We hope to be parented in Mercy. We hope to have a space and time to learn, make mistakes, and grow. We submit ourselves to be trained and educated so we can learn higher-level function relationship skills over time.

I capitalize these words in my writing because I was trained to choose one word out of many synonyms to represent a semantic concept. That has been hard because every word adds a different brushstroke of meaning to my visualization of each of the variables.

Voluntary Sacrifice

Learning about these concepts helped me to understand that I needed to be sacrificing for my kids in Mercy. Mercy is just another word for the Northern Threshold. So, learning my role for them was very helpful. Parenting in Mercy is hard. It requires muscle, strength, sacrifice. It is supposed to hurt, but not be overwhelming. When I strive to parent centripetally in the Northern Threshold, I experience both the pain of Sacrifice and the Savior’s Peace, which when balanced is Joy.

It was important for me to understand that there was no other way for me to experience Joy. No one else could give it to me. Not even the Savior. I could experience his Peace, but without my Voluntary Sacrifice, I could not experience Joy. And I craved the Joy. I didn’t want to just sit around a feel comfortable because that actually turns into boredom and depression, which is the Northeast side of the Compass. I will talk about that in my next blog post. In this one, I will focus on the Northwest side.

Northwest Parenting

So, I already was sacrificing for my kids. In the 90s, when I was living in New Jersey and then later in Westminster, Colorado, the sacrifice parenting required of me was at the top of my NW threshold. Too often it escalated into overwhelming.

I’ll compare Sacrifice to running. In order to be a parent at the level I understood that to be, I was continually required to sprint at the top of my zone, and I was hitting my spiritual heart-rate-max too often. And this exhausted me. It made me feel like a total failure. I looked around at other moms “running beside me” that seemed to not be struggling at all. They were in the center of their zones. So, what the heck was wrong with me?

I wanted to keep up. I wanted to be a good mom. I had planned it that way. Why couldn’t I do this?

Even though I was struggling so intensely, I would not leave my post. In looking back, I see myself as Horton the elephant in the Dr. Seuss story, “Horton Hatches the Egg.” I was definitely as stubborn as he was in my commitment to stay home with my kids no matter how difficult the sacrifice.

“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An Elephant’s faithful one hundred percent.”

The storms and other sources of adversity that threatened to push me out of my nest were not only coming from external sources, but they were also coming from an intense internal source. I’m saying that my own inabilities over-intensified the way I felt more so than the storm itself. I wasn’t as patient and long-suffering as Horton. My parenting skills needed work. There were many times when my performance was subpar. I needed to be educated, retrained, strengthened, re-loved, re-parented in order to weather these storms more like Horton did. 

His Re-Parenting Process

It helped me immensely when the Lord showed me how to diagram my Processes (Faith and Sacrifice) and Effects (Peace and Energy) using a Compass as a metaphor. It empowered me with the knowledge of what was happening inside of me and how I could control it.

Northwest

He showed me that this is what was happening when I veered off into the Northwest:

Too Little Peace

I experienced hunger, discomfort, and unrest. I could not feel loved, cherished, or cared for. This is where the intense desire to be saved was coming from.

Too Much Sacrifice

I was Sacrificing too much for how little Peace I was receiving (or had received growing up). I didn’t anticipate motherhood being that hard. When conflicts arose, I didn’t know how to resolve them in a functional way – in Balanced Mercy. And this is all relative. I wasn’t completely dysfunctional. The issue was that I wasn’t happy with the level of my functionality. It seemed to sharply conflict with the eternal person that I really was. Thus, the intense battle within me. I needed to increase my ability to voluntarily sacrifice, but I didn’t know how. I needed to learn more Justice over Time = Mercy.

Too Much Pain

There was too much Energy flowing out of me because I was trying to parent my kids in the NW with too much Justice. I experienced too much stress. I was expecting too much of them and myself too soon. I didn’t know how else to do it. This was how I was raised. I mean, I didn’t like the disciplinary methods used upon me when I was a child and knew I should not discipline like that, but I didn’t realize that my expectations of children were one of the products of being raised like that. This was my understanding of Justice and Mercy. I definitely was not able to see that I was even contemplating these concepts at the time. But in hindsight, I could see that I was constantly trying to figure them out. While I would not let the abuse pass down upon my children if I had anything to do with it, I wasn’t yet able to figure out this Justice and Mercy thing. Therefore, I was a wall against the intense internal Justice that I had been raised with. It was continuously trying to force me to pass this onto my children, but I fought it like crazy to stop it. So much internal conflict.

Too Little Faith

This is where my relationship with Jesus Christ came in. I didn’t know that he had my back. I didn’t know how interactive he could be in my life. When it came to the day-to-day motherhood routine and all the little conflicts that arose between me and my kids, I didn’t realize I could trust him. I didn’t know about his Mercy for me. I had heard all of my life about Jesus Christ. I had loved him from a distance. I just didn’t know what his Atoning Sacrifice had to do with me, how it applied to me. And I didn’t know his governing style. So, I had too little faith in him. 

The Northwest side of the Semantic Compass is Fear or Anxiety. The Result was that I was spinning like a wobbly top ready to topple over.

My Epiphany

In the Spring of 2009, I was working on a writing project. I had been working on it for 3 years and it was crazy that I hadn’t yet been able to finish it. It was like being in a single college course and working on a single paper that I could not seem to complete even after 3 years. Yet, I would not give up on it.

It had been a very intense project. I had been consistently praying about it and receiving guidance since 2006. I was writing about the atonement of Jesus Christ and how that related to the central structure of story. I had taken a deep dive into the scriptures and had worked to develop my communication relationship with the Lord because it brought up a lot of questions in my mind. I was writing down his answers but was expected to organize and summarize what he was teaching me into something coherent.

It was evidently my weaknesses that were holding me back from being able to do that.  I came to the point where I felt like I needed to directly ask for help to break through whatever was holding me back. I needed to know why it was taking me forever to finish. What was I missing? Where did I need to grow or change in order to finish it?

I had read somewhere that setting a date was a critical part of the goal achievement process. After considering it for a time, I decided that maybe that was the missing piece. I needed to set a date, do my part, and leave the rest up to the Lord. 

My birthday was coming up in a month, so I decided to make that the due date. I prayed for God’s help and felt his confirmation that he would. I put my trust in him and over the next month, after taking care of my home and family, spent the rest of my time on the project. 

My birthday came. Despite hours of work, I still hadn’t come anywhere close to finishing it. But I held out hope that some kind of epiphany would come. The day was filled with the normal motherhood tasks. Additionally, my daughter had to go to a dress rehearsal for her upcoming dance recital and we were there for hours. The environment was distracting. I couldn’t write. My mind was tied up in knots. By the end of the night, I realized there would not be an epiphany and I wasn’t going to finish the project.

I was pretty upset. I cried. This was a failure. I knew I had not been negligent in doing my part both in my duties as a mother and as a writer. I went to bed still tied in knots and feeling a reaction of rebellion in my heart in response to the rejection I felt from the Lord.

Over the past three years I had developed a relationship with Him as I was studying his life and Atonement, which had brought me more joy than anything I had ever experienced. While I studied his life, he started “studying” mine in return. He spent a lot of time on me, answering my questions, retraining me, listening to me, and helping me overcome a lot of imbalanced behaviors. I could not choose to be angry with him, yet He knew that I had to deal with my pain. 

Normally, in a conflict I would allow myself to become angry with the other person whether it was someone in my community, my parents, a sibling, my husband, or a child. But He had trained me to bring this kind of conflict to him in prayer and we would deal with it together instead of my reacting to it and making the conflict worse. We had developed this pattern where I would come to him and get all my emotions off my chest. He would listen and empathize. I could actually feel this happening and hear his comforting counsel. It was always what I needed to hear. Once I felt better, I would ask him how I could have handled the situation better and we would walk through it. The next time the same kind of conflict came up, I was better prepared to handle it in a more balanced way. 

But this time, he was the person who was hurting me. 

The next day, I wrestled with my emotions. I was confused and on the edge of anger. I could sense him following me around as I cleaned the house, asking me what I was going to do about this. I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t let go of the anger, but neither could I hold it against him. Letting go was basically saying, “It’s okay that you’re hurting me.” And it wasn’t okay. But holding it against him was sacrificing the relationship we had developed. I knew he was a perfect God and if anyone was out of balance, it was me. But that twisted me up even more.

It was in the afternoon that day that I decided what was most important to me.

There are a million songs that sing about love conquering all. I felt it was literally impossible to forgive the pain. It was like giving up my life, but because of my love for Him I had no other choice. He had changed me from the person I used to be and saved me from all the bitter consequences I used to live in. He had helped me to love again. He had made me sweet where I used to be bitter. I was able to love my kids and myself only because of Him. I could not and would not give up this relationship. I had to let the pain happen without retaliating. So I did. I free-fell backwards. I just let it hurt. I submitted. I forgave. I repented. And in doing this, I was a strong-willed child again, but this time for the sake of love, I used that will to voluntarily accept the pain.

There is this song called “Waterloo” by Abba. You can listen to my aerobics instructor version here: Waterloo. The lyrics go like this:

At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender

And I have met my destiny in quite a similar way

The history book on the shelf

Is always repeating itself

Waterloo, I was defeated, you won the war

Waterloo, promise to love you forever more

Waterloo, couldn’t escape if I wanted to

Waterloo, knowing my fate is to be with you

Waterloo, finally facing my Waterloo

I tried to hold you back, but you were stronger

And now it seems my only chance is giving up the fight

And how could I ever refuse

I feel like I win when I lose

It turns out I did have an epiphany that year for my birthday.

Why Worship?

When I was younger, I didn’t really warm up to the idea of worshipping someone. It made me feel uneasy when I thought of it. I think it’s because if we worship someone who turns around and abuses and neglects us in Pride, our inclination to worship turns into Envy or Fear. I don’t like to Envy people. I stay away from people I fear. And I don’t like to be treated with Pride either. And that happened all too often for me. When I admire someone’s strengths, gifts, or talents, I don’t want it to be about jealousy, fear, or shame that I don’t have what they have or that they are going to take advantage of me. I want it to be about appreciation, love, respect, and gratitude. And it usually includes learning from this person how to develop the same strengths, gifts, or talents.

Being able to evaluate accurately the strengths, gifts, and talents that others have is a strength in and of itself. How could we value them if we did not have the gift of spiritual sight and appreciation? And of what value are strengths, gifts and talents if they are not honestly accepted and appreciated by at least one other person?

I didn’t realize until a number of years ago that worshipping someone was an integral part of my happiness. I had come to a point in my life where I didn’t really admire anyone. I mean I admired certain qualities and characteristics of others here and there but there wasn’t any one person whom I just stood back and went, “Whoa, that is ultimate beauty!” No one really made my heart sing. I didn’t realize at that time that I wanted and needed it to sing more than anything else in the world. My focus was mainly on developing my own strengths, gifts, and talents and wanting to be appreciated for them. But regardless of many years spent on these goals, I was not reaching any kind of fulfillment. I have come to understand that not knowing well enough anyone with a sufficient level of the qualities I deeply admired was the cause of my non-fulfillment. But at the time, I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I just wasn’t happy. Waves of depression would sometimes wash over me for no apparent reason. And this became more frequent as time went by, no matter how much I tried to develop my own strengths, gifts, and talents.

It was around the years 2003-2004 (about 32-34 years old) when these questions and thoughts came frequently into my mind: “Who is Jesus Christ?  You say that you worship him. You’ve taken upon you his name through baptism. But who is he? Do you really know what you worship?”

“Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.” ~John 4:22-23

“For unto such hath God promised his Spirit. And they who worship him, must worship in spirit and in truth.” ~JST John 4:26 (see footnote a)

That’s when I started studying him more directly. I made the New Testament apart of my daily scripture study. I had been reading “The Kingdom and the Crown” series by Gerald Lund, which helped me understand the New Testament much better. It gave me the background on the individual groups of people in Jesus’ society such as the Pharisees, Sadducees, Publicans, Scribes, Lawyers, Priests, etc. These all can be summarized into the Jewish Leadership of his day. They were the Causes of the Jewish world masquerading as the Priesthood Leadership chosen by God. So with this foundational understanding, I was able to see much better what Jesus was up against. Seeing his opposition, enabled me to see his strength and all I could do was marvel at it. Whoa, that is ultimate beauty! 

He was like a professional baseball player hitting home-runs off of every curve ball he was pitched. Some people like to watch a lot of professional sports. And I will admit that it is quite enjoyable to watch the performance of individuals who have developed a high level of proficiency in a given talent. But to watch the performance of a Man-God who has developed a high level of proficiency in the talent of humanity—relationships, the soul, the life, how to handle the Tempter’s Pride and Envy without deviating from Confidence and Humility, and all that means the most to every living being on this earth—is the climax of my entire existence.

It was like reading a story about a character that inspired me to the point of changing my entire life. I saw Him going through trials that were intensely difficult and no one around him knew just how difficult they were. But I did. I knew he was the Son of God, the Savior of the World and many of those he came to save were treating him like dirt. I knew the behind the scenes story. I knew his value and saw how people should be listening to  him. He came to heal them, teach them, warn them, show them. But many treated him with disrespect, contempt or just completely ignored him. Many eventually had the gall to kill him. Yet they owed him their lives. And can you believe they had the TOTAL BLESSING of seeing him perform IN PERSON? IN PERSON!!! What lucky bums! And did they worship him? Oh, how I wish my life were in his days! I’m hoping that I was watching him from heaven and some day I will be able to remember it in all of its glorious details.

“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.” ~John 8:56

“For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.” ~Matthew 13:17

“And now we only wait to hear the joyful news declared unto us by the mouth of angels, of his coming; for the time cometh, we know not how soon. Would to God that it might be in my day; but let it be sooner or later, in it I will rejoice.” ~Alma 13:25

“Dearest children, holy angels
Watch your actions night and day,
And they keep a faithful record
Of the good and bad you say.” 
~Dearest Children, God Is Near You

In reading his story in the New Testament, I watched how he responded to all this. I saw how he didn’t force his identity upon them or force them to appreciate what he was doing for them. He just continued to do everything he was sent to do in love and compassion. Yet there were times when he censured certain people. He corrected them. But knowing him, I knew he was doing that out of love for them (like a good father would), not out of self-protection or Pride/Envy resentment. He knew the direction they were headed. He knew the hell they were going to live in for eternity if they kept going on that pathway. It was his eternal motivation to save them from living in that hell eternally while still allowing them to retain their agency.

With the gift of the Holy Ghost I was able to liken his opposition to my own. I saw that people were still acting like the Jewish Leadership of his day. I was being thrown curve balls similar to the ones that he was thrown. It’s important to recognize this to be able to understand why I feel the way I do when others treat me with Pride/Envy—Abuse/Neglect (even when it is subtly and fiery-snake-ally done) and to know what I should do in response. So when I saw how Jesus felt about them and then how he responded to them, I was able to liken that to how I felt and how I could respond to them. This was the beginning of the escape from my prison. He showed me how to get out. He unlocked the door for me. His truth made me free.

“And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.” ~Numbers 21:8-9

“We need women who can detect deception in all of its forms.” ~Bonnie L. Oscarson

“I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.” ~Isaiah 42:6-7

Listen:  “He Showed Me How” by David Archuleta

In 2006 (35-36 years old) when I started studying the structure of story, I remember seeing two distinct stories or structures emerging in my mind:  The Pride Story and then His story (I think I called this the Truth Story). Subsequently I’ve named it all kinds of other things like Desire Obtainment, Conflict Resolution, Paradoxical Living, Summarization and Expansion, Faith/Sacrifice/Confidence/Humility, Balance, the Heart Compass, the Zone, the Threshold, the Safe Place, Mercy—the balance between Justice and Time, the Covenant or Commitment, Steadfastness and Change, and the Servant—CPER X Days 1-7. These are all the concepts I write about. And it is all in efforts to describe the dynamic balanced nature of our Savior Jesus Christ that has been slowly but surely taking form in my mind. At one point I recognized I was actually studying the Atonement of Jesus Christ and he was showing it to me in a way I had never seen it before. The scriptures were the predominant text but then with all my endless questions, He took it and showed me himself from a perspective that was so amazingly beautiful that I couldn’t even believe someone this wonderful existed!

“Can't close my eyes
I'm wide awake
Every hair on my body
Has got a thing for this place
Oh, empty my heart
I've got to make room for this feeling
So much bigger than me” 

~“Can’t Take It In” by Imogen Heap”

“This constant contrast [the dynamic balance of her Son] before her eyes only deepened in the heart of Mary the ever-present impression of ‘all those matters’ [sayings], of which she was the most cognisant. She was learning to spell out the word Messiah, as each of ‘those matters’ taught her one fresh letter in it, and she looked at them all in the light of the Nazareth-Sun.” ~"The Life and Times of Jesus The Messiah” by Alfred Edersheim, pg 173

Wow, what a blessing for Mary to be able to see with her physical eyes our Savior’s choices, actions, mannerisms, reflexive behavior, and facial expressions! But it’s interesting to hear Edersheim describe what he believed the development of Mary’s relationship with her Son looked like. I believe we all have the potential to come to know Him, his inclinations, desires, impulses, and ways of thinking through the Spirit regardless of what age we live in. And when we do, I think it happens line upon line similar to Mary’s experience. I know that has been true for me. 

I remember on many days after I finished studying about him and had to go back to doing the dishes. I looked at the framed picture I had of him that was sitting on the windowsill above the sink and often said in my mind, “I know who you are.” And when I said this, I felt the worship. Feeling worship is something that can’t be faked. I can’t do fake. I have been censured for attempting fake worship. It makes me feel so gross. This worship was not fake. All my heart wrapped around him and I just shook my head in acknowledgment of his utter and complete beauty. Then something happened in return, which surprised me. I saw or rather felt him looking back at me. Now some people, when they are aware of your admiration, stick out their chin and walk away from you in Pride. They treat you like, “Ya that’s right. Worship me. But I won’t give you the time of day to notice who you are.” Other people will respond in Envy—just deny it when you compliment them or try to defer it. He wasn’t doing that.

There were two things he was doing. The first was he acknowledged my acknowledgment. He was telling me that what I was seeing was indeed the truth about him. And he wasn’t denying it. He wasn’t embarrassed because of my worship. He was accepting it and just standing there right in front of me receiving it full on. My admiration was pretty intense but he received it like it just fit into his puzzle perfectly. And wow, that just doubled my worship!

The second was that he was admiring me back. He was appreciating my admiration. He was grateful that I was taking the time to know him for who he really was. And it did take time. Time and sacrifice of other things I could be doing and could be partaking of. He was thankful for my love. I could sense that it gave him Peace and Energy. To explain this in words doesn’t compare to the feelings that filled me during these sacred moments or to the Joy that was steadily increasing in intensity and sustainability in my heart over time. And this is what made the depression go away. This relationship and the development of it. It also is what filled me with the Desire to become more like him. It totally filled me with Charity. I had the capacity to love, to forgive, to sacrifice more than I had ever done before in my life. The anger that I had felt so predominantly in my heart as a reaction to my personal opposition went away too. It was total freedom!

“Whatever you do
I'll do it too 
Show me everything 
And tell me how 
It all means something
And yet [EVERYTHING] to me 
I can see there is so much to learn 
It's all so close
And yet so far 
I see myself 
As [He] see[s] me 
Oh I just know there's something bigger out there[!]”

~"Strangers Like Me" by Phil Collins from Disney’s Tarzan

I'm not saying I was way far away from Him before. I had been reading my scriptures daily since I was 14 years old and praying daily since I was about half that age. I had been attending church since I was born and was baptized and received the Holy Ghost at age 8. I had been striving to apply what I knew of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for many years. I had received my temple endowments and was married in the temple. Yet I realize now that what I had needed throughout all the years of my life previous to this point was to COME CLOSER to worship, admire, and praise our Savior Jesus Christ to the point that my heart was satisfied. I had to put in the work to study him, to examine him more closely in the records we have of him. I had to say, “Whatever you do, I’ll do it too. Show me everything, tell me how.” I had to start attending the temple more frequently and learn from that higher level "university." That’s worship—finding out who he is and why he did what he did and then striving to implement the same way of living into our lives. That was the foundational process I needed to engage in consistently in order to obtain Sustainable Joy. The Result of worshipping Him with all my heart, might, mind and strength, was the beautiful feeling that came and stayed in my heart so that nothing was more important to me than keeping it there.

“When we worship, we open our hearts to the healing power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Our lives become the token and expression of our worship. My brothers and sisters, spiritual experiences have less to do with what is happening around us and everything to do with what is happening within our hearts. It is my witness that true worship will transform ordinary Church meetings into extraordinary spiritual feasts. It will enrich our lives, broaden our understanding, and strengthen our testimonies. For as we incline our hearts to God, like the ancient Psalmist, we “enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: [we are] thankful unto him, and bless his name.” ~Bishop Dean M. Davies

Sustainable Energy

So let’s break worship down to summarize the steps:  The study and pondering of the life of Jesus Christ triggered my worship feelings—my admiration. And that admiration triggered our Savior’s reciprocal love for me. I could feel it, sense it. I became aware of it. That was amazing! That triggered my motivation to keep it there by learning how to respond to the opposition, blessings, and responsibilities in my life as he responded to his. It provided motivation to shut down the Pride/Envy Story. The two stories—His Confidence/Humility Story and Satan’s Pride/Envy Story—cannot reside in the same heart simultaneously. I have learned that if I fall short of spending the amount of time and depth I need to worship him, I lose consciousness of his love for me and my love for him. Subsequently the Charity inside me for others wanes—the engine stops running so smoothly and sometimes even stops all together. I must choose to sacrifice my time to studying Jesus Christ consistently to the level that sustains me. I have learned to sacrifice other conflicting choices to do this. Worshipping Jesus Christ fuels the engine of Charity, which is the source of Sustainable Joy. I have found no other way to obtain fulfillment so utterly and completely satisfying.

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

"And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

"And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

"Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

"Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

"Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

"Charity never faileth:"

~1 Corinthians 13:1-8

“I am acquainted with Church members who accept as true the doctrine and principles contained in the scriptures and proclaimed from this pulpit. And yet they have a hard time believing those gospel truths apply specifically in their lives and to their circumstances. They seem to have faith in the Savior, but they do not believe His promised blessings are available to them or can operate in their lives. I also encounter brothers and sisters who fulfill their callings dutifully but for whom the restored gospel has not yet become a living and transforming reality in their lives. We come to know the Lord as we not only believe in Him but also believe Him and His assurances.” ~Elder David A. Bednar