Failing to Act

If you are like me, sometimes you will receive a spiritual prompting from the Lord on the changes that you need to make in your life. At least, I assume I'm not the only imperfect person out there that God is shaping and improving.

If you are also like me, sometimes the changes you need to make are something you have struggled with off and on for a while. Such as, daily scripture study and personal prayer. Nothing "huge" necessarily, but something important that sometimes is forgotten about for a day or two, and then it slips out of habit again and you forget about it entirely for a while.

Recently, I asked God how I could improve and what He needed me to do in my own life. Between Stake Conference and General Conference, I received my answer. I was given a longer list than I anticipated, but I knew that those were the changes that God needs me to make. I wrote them down and vowed to myself to follow through.

Nearly a month later, I haven't been doing quite as well as I should be. I still forget, I procrastinate, and I put other things first sometimes. God is very loving and patient with us, thank goodness, because I was reminded again today about the things I had committed to changing. However, the reminder came in a different form than the list I had received before: this was a chastisement on the lack of priority I gave to the changes I need to make.

This was the thought that came to me and that I wrote down this time:

"No matter what else my schedule demands of me, I need to prioritize acting on what God has asked me to do. In the eternities, it will be more important for me to have acted on what God asked me to do than getting any degree, taking any test, finishing any paper, or accomplishing any other temporal achievement.

God doesn't want me overburdening myself because He knows that if I do, I will have a hard time keeping the things that He wants me to do in my life. If I don't have time to still do the things God asked of me and add _______________ to my schedule, then I don't have enough time to add _________________ to my schedule. I need to reserve my time for God as I have already covenanted to do.

When God corrects me, I need to act on that correction as if my very soul depends on it, for as far as I know, it may."

Changing isn't always easy, and sometimes acting on the "small" changes God needs us to make gets put on the back burner while we focus on the "more important things". I testify that there is nothing more important than acting on the promptings that we receive from God. I know that this is true. May we all have the courage to "go and do" the things the Lord commands of us.

In the name of Jesus Christ,
Amen.

A God Who Weeps

One of the most powerful things that I have learned in my life is that my Father in Heaven weeps. He cries for us and with us. And, more important to my learning of this, He weeps with ME! I learned this after an evening spent in tears, begging God to fix my body so that I could have a baby. This could have been any trial, any unrealized blessing... I asked my husband for a blessing, hoping to hear that the trial was over and that the blessing was forthcoming. What I received was much different. I was told that God always keeps His promises, and that someday I would be able to look back and understand why I am going through this trial. I knew that meant that God was not going to take it away just yet, but someday He would make it clear why I had to go through it.

During this blessing, I received a prompting that I felt so strongly that I remember it more than what my husband was saying just then. It was this: "God cries with you." Every time that I had cried to God, weeping, begging, pleading, a loving and merciful Father in Heaven was there, listening to me, seeing my pain, and crying with me. He took no pleasure in causing me pain by withholding blessings and prolonging a trial that I had not brought on myself. I believe that this is true of trails we have brought upon ourselves as well. No matter what brought it on, our Father in Heaven does not like watching His beloved children suffer. He is our God, our Father in Heaven, our Abba (a Hebrew term that, in English, would mean roughly the same as Daddy). No matter how far we have strayed, He is still our Father. He still loves and aches for us when we are hurting.

However, He loves me enough to not give it to me just yet. He knows why I must go through this painful journey, and He knows that someday I will be happier, stronger, and better for having gone through it. This trial is a part of His Plan of Salvation for me.

Until the day that God has foreordained this trial to end and the windows of Heaven to open up and pour out the blessings I have asked Him for, God stands with me, crying when I cry. Even though He already knows when the blessing is coming, even though He knows why we must go through it and can see how much stronger and happier we will be because of it in the long run, He still cries with us during the meantime, listening to us, loving us, and supporting and sustaining us.