Prayer & Scripture Study

If you want to talk to God - pray.

If you want God to talk to you - read the scriptures.

Casual, occasional chats with Heavenly Father and quick skimming through holy writ will not likely open up the channels of heaven to help us find His will and guidance for our lives.

Your Health

To be in great fiscal health is much like being in great physical and mental health. It allows you to do more and be more, and it permits you to live your life free of constant pain and bondage.

Human Capital

Human capital is the most valuable capital in every company, 

no matter what industry it is in.

Are You Happy?

We know that emotions are contagious. Research by Harvard’s Nicholas Christakis and UC San Diego’s James Fowler has shown that happiness is contagious, for example. If you have a friend who is happy, the probability that you will be happier rises by 25%. One can only image what a few more happy friends could do for an individual!

Deliberately or Accidentally?

If you were never presented with some advantage to be gained by dishonesty, such as recognition, or money, or a better grade on a test or avoidance of punishment or embarrassment, you could never develop integrity. 

If no one ever offended you, you could never learn to forgive or internalize mercy. 

Were you never wearied by the annoying behavior of another or the repeated failures of someone else you could never become patient. 

Were you never subjected to the appetites and passions of the physical body for food, for water and for sexual fulfillment you could not develop self-mastery. 

Without opposition the plan would be frustrated, you could not progress and the purpose of life would be unachievable.

In short when you choose to follow Christ you move forward and assimilate attributes of light; when you do not, you move backward and acquire attributes of darkness.

Can you see, have you seen, who you want to be? What will happen if you don't plan? What will happen if you have no vision of who you want to become?

There are two ways of evolving: deliberately and accidentally. You can either decide who you want to become and deliberately work toward that end, or you can just go with the flow and become whatever life makes of you. In that event, you will become whatever the fickle circumstances and forces of life and society will make of you; whatever is currently considered to be popular or in; whatever is easiest. But, whatever you become accidentally it will not be nearly the full measure of our potential. You will become just someone, somewhere in the middle.

-Lawrence Corbridge 

Tolerance and Love

We must recognize at the outset that there is a difference between tolerance and tolerate. Your gracious tolerance for an individual does not grant him or her license to do wrong, nor does your tolerance obligate you to tolerate his or her misdeed. That distinction is fundamental to an understanding of this vital virtue.

Neighboring factions, whether they be identified as groups or gangs, schools or states, counties or countries, often develop animosity. Such tendencies make me wonder: Cannot boundary lines exist without becoming battle lines? Could not people unite in waging war against the evils that beset mankind instead of waging war on each other?

Risks of Boundless Tolerance

An erroneous assumption could be made that if a little of something is good, a lot must be better. Not so! Overdoses of needed medication can be toxic. Boundless mercy could oppose justice. So tolerance, without limit, could lead to spineless permissiveness.

The Lord drew boundary lines to define acceptable limits of tolerance. Danger rises when those divine limits are disobeyed. Just as parents teach little children not to run and play in the street, the Savior taught us that we need not tolerate evil. “Jesus went into the temple of God, and … and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers.” Though He loved the sinner, the Lord said that He “cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.” His Apostle Paul specified some of those sins in a letter to the Galatians. The list included “adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

“Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, … wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

“Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.”

To Paul’s list we might add the regrettable attitudes of bigotry, hypocrisy, and prejudice.

“We call upon all people everywhere to recommit themselves to the time-honored ideals of tolerance and mutual respect. We sincerely believe that as we acknowledge one another with consideration and compassion we will discover that we can all peacefully coexist despite our deepest differences.”

Taken from “Teach Us Tolerance and Love” by Russell M. Nelson. 

Complete discourse available at:

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1994/04/teach-us-tolerance-and-love?lang=eng

February 2016

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