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Oct 2023: Preparing a Temple-Ready Generation
The Lord is hastening His work. This is evident in the increasing nymbers of temples being built and the ever increasing emphasis on temple covenants.
What can we do as parents to raise temple-prepared children? How can we foster a desire in them to have the temple as their highest goal?
Pray for your children - President Nelson recently taught us about how as covenant makers we are promised special help and power from him. Pray for your children often, and ask that Heavenly might provide them with compensatory power and aid, to compensate for the increased darkness and difficulty of the times we live in. I truly believe the lord will move mountains for our covenant children.
Be Temple Examples: Attend the temple yourselves as frequently as time will allow and make sure your children know it. When you come home from the temple, be cheerful. Let them see the effect the temple has on you.
Take them to the Temple: At least a couple times a year, schedule time as a family to do proxy baptisms with your children that are old enough. Don’t wait for or rely on Ward level temple trips. Due to scheduling and other limitations, those will be sparse. So be in the temple with them.
Teach and reteach the plan of salvation: Sometimes we forget to teach the foundational basics. Be sure they understand who they are, why they are here, and where they are going.
Make your home a temple: … where the Spirit can reside, be active defenders at the gate. Let nothing in that would distract them or contribute to worthiness issues. Pornography in all of its forms will prevent them from attending the house of the lord and making higher covenants. I cannot stress enough this point. It is the scourge of our time and it is affecting both youth and children. It’s starting earlier and earlier. Make sure your homes are free from this at all costs and be active defenders at the gate.
April 2023: “The Zion Heart”
Lesson Summary:
As Latter Day Saints, we have a special responsibility to prepare a Zion people for the Lord’s return and to develop within ourselves a “Zion Heart”.
What is Zion?
Zion is a people, a place, and a state of the heart.
Zion people are those who are “pure in heart” and who are willing to make and keep covenants.
Zion is “Anywhere the Saints gather”.
Wards and Stakes are “Zion” in as much as they are a training and preparation grounds to live Zion principles and receive ordinances and make covenants.
A Zion state of the heart, or a “Zion Heart”, is a condition that depends mostly on how we treat each other. The people of Enoch and the Nephites of 100 A.D. are our examples (see Moses 7:17-18, and 4Nephi 1:2-3,15)
What enabled and motivated these people to take care of one another and to have such unity? - “The love of God dwelled in their hearts” (4Nephi 1:15).
Love is what motivates us to take care of eachother and is essential to developing a Zion Heart.
“We ought to have the building up of Zion as our greatest object” - Joseph Smith.
If the building of Zion is “our greatest object” then we ought to be engaging in it.
The Lord blesses us disproportionately (in our favor) when we take even small steps to care for one another.
Bishop’s Challenge:
These 4 “small step” actions are powerful tools in helping us develop the Zion Heart:
Be ministers to one another - Reach out in love and kindness to others regularly. You don’t need an assignment to do this. If someone is on your mind, then reach out. If no one is on your mind, pray that Heavenly Father will put someone there and have the courage and faith to reach out.
Donate generous fast offerings - Every dollar you donate is used for one singular purpose: To bless someone in need and to ensure that the poor among us are looked after. If you aren’t donating currently, begin contributing today. If you are contributing, ask yourself if you could donate more. Visualize who you might be helping.
Begin branching out - In the coming weeks, make a sincere effort to approach and talk to someone in the ward you don’t know or don’t know well. This is a higher and holier way of socializing.
Make it a priority to forgive - If you harbor hurt or unkind feelings towards anyone else, work with your Heavenly Father to forgive that individual and mend the relationship if possible. Search your heart on this one and be honest with yourself and the Lord.
Scriptural References:
John 13:35
“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
Mosiah 18:8-9
8 And it came to pass that he said unto them: Behold, here are the waters of Mormon (for thus were they called) and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light;
9 Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life
Isaiah 58:6-7
6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
Moses 7:17-18
17 The fear of the Lord was upon all nations, so great was the glory of the Lord, which was upon his people. And the Lord blessed the land, and they were blessed upon the mountains, and upon the high places, and did flourish.
18 And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.
4 Nephi 1:15-17
15 And it came to pass that there was no contention in the land, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people.
16 And there were no envyings, nor strifes, nor tumults, nor whoredoms, nor lyings, nor murders, nor any manner of lasciviousness; and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.
17 There were no robbers, nor murderers, neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.
Matthew 6:14-15
14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
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