Inspiration

This week I wanted to take the opportunity to share a poem with you that I have written about the Savior, Jesus Christ. I originally wrote this as a song and set it to music, but I am not happy with the music portion of it yet. However, I am happy with the words and I thought it might be something you could use somewhere in a lesson or as a discussion for Family Home Evening. I hope it inspires you in some small way and that you are able to feel the spirit as you read it.

Because He Loves Me
By Brenda Emmett

I like to think of long a-go, of a time before my birth.
To when the Savior, Jesus, walked upon the earth.
I picture Him with His disciples while at Galilee.
And how He stilled the waters of the stormy sea.
With power and compassion, He commanded, “Peace, be still.”
The winds and waves calmed at once to obey the Master’s will.

For Jesus did work miracles, He touched so many lives.
He healed the blind, the sick, the tired; He gave them peace of mind.
And if I exercise my faith, I know that I will see
The miracles He performs each day because He loves me.

When Jesus healed two blind men, their eyes began to see.
He healed the ten lepers, from illness they were free.
When He raised up Lazarus, He showed His power over death.
And again with Jairus’s daughter, when she rose and took a breath.
In Gethsemane, and then the cross, He paid for all our sins.
Then three days later he amazed us all when He rose again.

For Jesus did work miracles, He touched so many lives.
He healed the blind, the sick, the tired; He gave them peace of mind.
And if I exercise my faith, I know that I will see
The miracles He performs each day because He loves me.

Lord, Jesus, is my Savior. He is the Son of God.
He is there to help me hold the iron rod.
I feel His love enfold me when I kneel to pray.
His example shines before me each and every day.
And as I try to be like Him, I know that I will see
The miracles He gives each day because He loves me.

For Jesus did work miracles, He touched so many lives.
He healed the blind, the sick, the tired; He gave them peace of mind.
And if I exercise my faith, I know that I will see
The miracles He performs each day because He loves me.

One of the things I have been thinking about lately, is about our testimonies of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. With everything that is going on around the world, it is more important than ever to hold to the rod and strengthen our testimonies and faith in Jesus Christ. It is important not only for ourselves, but for our families. One thing that comes to my mind, is this question: Are we intentional in our testimonies?

What do I mean by intentional in our testimonies? The word intentional means to be done on purpose or with intention. Are we focused on what our testimonies are and understand what they mean to us? Do we have a purpose for our testimony? Or do we find ourselves coasting along?

It is easy to get distracted by the things of the world. It is easy to lose our focus. We may find ourselves just going through the motions in the gospel. This is a dangerous place to be. We need to not only understand the gospel message, but we need to feel it as well. If we don’t we are entering into dangerous territories and if our course is not corrected, we may not find our way back on the path.

It is perhaps prudent and wise to take inventory of our spirituality. Are our actions matching our words? Are the things we are doing in our lives, reflecting who we really are? Are we emulating the light of Christ? Are we exercising the muscle of our testimony?

It has been said that what we do not share, we will lose. Are we sharing our testimony with others? Are they seeing our testimony in how we handle ourselves? Are we a walking and talking example of what a daughter or son of God should be?

Are we casual with our testimonies? When we say we know the church is true, or the scriptures are true, or that we know that we have a Prophet in these latter-days, or we express our gratitude or knowledge of the atonement of Christ, or that we know we are children of God–are we casual with those words? Do we say them just to say them? Or do we really reflect on what they mean before we say them? Do we feel the Spirit when we say them?

Having an intentional testimony will give you power over darkness. It will lead you to safe harbors in this sea of life. It will allow the Lord to speak to you within your heart and you will be able to act to guide yourself and your family to safety in a world full of turmoil. Do you have an intentional testimony of the Gospel? If not, it is time to start working toward having one. If you do, then keep exercising that muscle, so you can be that light shining on a hill.

One of my concerns as a parent and teacher in the church is how to help others develop and strengthen their personal testimonies. While it may seem overwhelming when you look at the task as a whole, the Lord has given us simple tools to cultivate his light in our souls. Just as we would never expect a seed to grow without nourishment and care, we should not expect a personal testimony to grow up overnight. We live in a world where everything is available in an instant. However, developing a personal testimony takes time and commitment. It takes work.

While we cannot make someone develop a testimony of the Gospel, we can help them to nourish it and to recognize their opportunity to grow one. I think perhaps this is the most difficult to do when we are dealing with a troubled teen or even a willful spouse or parent. The most important thing is to never lose hope and never stop being an example of the Lord’s light.

One of the things I have noticed when working with the youth is that often they do not recognize when they have a testimony. Sometimes the most important thing that we can do as parents and leaders is to help them to learn to recognize the influence of the spirit. Never discount even something that they or we may deem as a small thing. Just as you don’t need to actually eat an entire cookie in one bite to know that it is good, you don’t need to read the entire Book of Mormon to know that it is good. We should continue to daily read it, but the Lord never intended for us to swallow the entire scripture course in one sitting. It takes time.

Once you have learned to recognize the spirit, then everything else will fall into place in due time. Remember that our desired timeline may not be the same timeline that the Lord has in mind. He has said that by small things he accomplishes great things.

Here are some things that you can do to continue to develop and nurture your testimony:

PRAY

When we take the time to talk with our Heavenly Father, we invite His spirit into our day. We can pray about most anything that we may need or desire. Do not be afraid to discuss everything with your Father. He loves and cares about you. He is interested in your life. He wants to help you. Ask. Don’t be afraid to share your desire for a testimony with Him. He will be glad to help you. If you are praying for someone else to develop a testimony, share your concerns with God. He will help you to know what to say and do when the time is appropriate in His eyes.

READ

Take the time to read your scriptures daily. He has given us His words to help us enrich our lives and develop our testimonies. Many times we will find the answers we are seeking in the words that He has already provided to us. Really search the scriptures and devour the words that are contained therein.

Also take the time to read the church magazines and conference talks. These will help enrich your mind and allow the spirit to be present in your heart.

LISTEN

Take the time to listen to talks from church leaders. The talks that we listen to each General Conference are inspired and are there to aid us in becoming more valiant members of the Gospel.

Listen closely to the promptings of the spirit. The spirit will speak to your heart and mind the very things that the Lord wishes you to know.

IDENTIFY

One of the most important things we can do is to identify the spirit in our lives. I cannot stress this fact enough. If you need ideas of how to identify the spirit, then I invite you to ponder the words we find in Galatians 5: 22-23. Here we are given the fruits of the spirit. “But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”

Another of my very favorite scriptures concerning the spirit is found in Jacob 4:13: “…for the spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not. Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls.”

SERVE

When we help others, we invite the spirit to be with us. We demonstrate the love of the Lord to those we are helping and allow the love of the Lord to work within us.

When we do all of these things, we are providing the nutrients we need to help our testimonies develop and grow. They may seem simple, but the Gospel IS simple. We just tend to make it difficult.

Remember that the Lord expects us to learn “line upon line, precept on precept.” As we do this, our testimony will grow and bloom. We will be able to stand tall and strong against the winds of the adversary and we will be able to help others learn to do so too.

A couple of years ago, I shared a personal story during a lesson I taught in young women. I told them I called it the Parable of the Chocolate Chip Cookie. The story really made an impact on the girls in our ward, and they termed that year, the “year of the chocolate chip cookie”. There have been many references to this story since I shared it, and I thought perhaps you might enjoy it as well.

When I was a missionary, I served in Southern Spain. In my first area, my companion and I were assigned to work with hundreds of less active members. Our first task was to figure out who we needed to work with first. And so our chocolate chip cookie project began.

We decided that in order to make contact with each less active member, we would make cookies for each of them. Who could resist a fresh baked, homemade chocolate chip cookie? We thought we might just have a few less doors slammed in our faces when we offered such a sweet treat as well. We prayed about our idea, and presented our plan to the Lord. We felt good about our idea, and began to make the necessary arrangements.

We sat down with our recipe and figured out what we would need to make our hundreds and hundreds of cookies. It didn’t take long for us to discover that we only had enough money to purchase exactly half of our ingredients. We weren’t sure exactly how we were going to make this happen, but we knew we needed to give all we had for our project. So we went forth and purchased half of the required ingredients, deciding to have faith that the Lord would help us make it happen.

With anticipation, we mixed up our first batch of cookie dough. Now, there weren’t chocolate chips readily available to purchase, so to make chocolate chip cookies required a little more effort on our part. We had to purchase chocolate bars and cut them up into chunks to make our own chips. Then we added those chunks to our bowl of dough and folded them in with our wooden spoon.

Once we had our first bowl all mixed up, we bowed our heads in prayer and prayed over it and once again expressed our desire and plan for the cookies to our Heavenly Father. We also explained we only had enough money to purchase half of the required ingredients, but that we knew it would somehow all work out.

We took a small teaspoon and put little drops of dough onto our cookie sheet. Then we put them in the oven and to our surprise and delight, when we removed the baked cookies, they were BIG and perfect cookies, instead of the small tiny ones we were expecting. This continued on and we got dozens and dozens of large chocolate chip cookies out of a single batch of cookie dough. Our bowl of cookie dough seemed to be endless. It was a modern day version of the loaves and fishes miracle.

As we baked hundreds and hundreds of cookies, our kitchen table began to be completely covered. We had several layers of cookies and there wasn’t a speck of table to be found. And still we baked on and on. Only on the rare occasion did we need to stop and mix up a new batch of dough. Those few occasions were memorable as we were tired of looking at the same dough and just needed to have a break by mixing up a new one to look at for awhile. Amazingly, we had ingredients left over. How was this possible except by the hand of the Lord?

While the cookies baked, we hand wrote scriptures on slips of paper that we could attach to the bags of cookies we would deliver. Then we put a cookie for each person in each household into a plastic sandwich bag, tucking the scripture inside. Since we had so many cookies to deliver, we enlisted the help of the other missionaries in our city to help us get them all delivered and determine which families we should start meeting with first.

Amazingly, none of the missionaries had a single door shut in their face. Though not everyone was ready to make changes and come back, they were accepting of the contact. Everyone was happy to get cookies and were amazed to get cookies that had chunks of chocolate in them. They had had cookies before, but not chocolate chip cookies. They didn’t know what they were missing.

This is the same with the gospel. The people we meet and know that don’t have the gospel in their lives, or have stepped away from the church, are missing the chocolate chips in their lives. They might have what they feel are really good cookies that they enjoy. But they don’t know what they are missing and that those cookies are supposed to have chocolate chips. It is up to us to bring them the chocolate chips and help them to see what they can add to the cookies of their lives with the chocolate chips of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Don’t forget the chocolate chips in your cookies…What you have may taste good, but you don’t know what you or others may be missing. Help others find the chocolate chips of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Perhaps one of the most difficult teaching moments that we face as parents is teaching our children which activities are appropriate for the Sabbath. With a seemingly endless supply of activities that we may feel are not appropriate for Sunday, what is a parent to do? The trick is to be creative and find ways to invite the Spirit into our homes while the kids are having fun. If you are looking for something just like this, you may want to try a game that my family created while I was growing up called Scripture Scrabble.

This is a game that quickly became a hit for both young and old. It truly turned an ordinary board game into something extraordinary. In fact, I have used it successfully over the years with several youth groups and they have delighted in sharing this game with their families.

Here is what you will need to play this game:

One Scrabble Board Game
One set of scriptures for each player

Now the rules are simple. You begin the game just as you normally would a game of Scrabble. The letter tiles are placed face down and each player draws the required number of letters and then tries to come up with words to place on the game board. The players work in creating and building words off the words that are already placed on the game board and earn points for them. While that is all there is to it in regular Scrabble, this is where it begins to vary in Scripture Scrabble.

In order for a player to be able to place down a word and receive points for it, then they must either find a reference to it in the scriptures and share the scripture, or they must share a gospel principle with the other players that is centered around the word they choose to place on the board. Also, where proper names and places are not allowed in regular Scrabble, they are acceptable in Scripture Scrabble. If a player chooses to share a gospel principle, then they must be convincing in their explanation or the other players can deny the player the full points that the word would bring. Instead, they would only be allowed ½ of the normal points.

This is a great way to get everyone thinking about how the gospel can be centered around seemingly ordinary, everyday things. For instance, one of our favorite words over the years was the time I played the word carrot. It was worth a lot of points. I was just a youth at the time and I had learned to be creative in this game. I could have taken the obvious answer and said how carrots were a vegetable and we should eat plenty of fresh vegetables in keeping with the Word of Wisdom. But I didn’t go there, because I wanted to ensure that I would receive the points and my family could be brutal at times. Instead, I chose to use the analogy of how carrots are planted by a tiny seed and grow when they are nurtured. The same is true of our faith. It is planted by a tiny seed and when we nurture it with the things that help it grow, like reading our scriptures, attending our church meetings, serving others, and saying our prayers, it can become full grown and help us and others. It was a much longer explanation at the time, but you get the idea.

The most important thing about this game is to have fun and jumpstart your brains with the gospel. There are many things that are taught by playing this game. A greater knowledge of the scriptures and gospel language are just a couple of the things your family will learn. So grab that Scrabble game off of your shelf and see what your family can create while playing a game of Scripture Scrabble together.