One thing that was on my mind before conference was a quote by C.S. Lewis in his book The Great Divorce (a must read), He said "In the end there are two kinds of people, those who say to God thy will be done and those to whom God says thy will be done." I found this quote to be true we can either align our will with Gods and enjoy the consequences or we can have it our way and suffer the consequences. After all God is all knowing and only wants the best for his children and again he knows what is best for his children. So coming in to conference I was slightly discouraged at the difficulty of the task ahead of me. It sounds so easy to do the right thing but when it came down to it I always seemed to find a excuse not to do it. Thankfully conference gave me some good advice and encouragement on the subject.
First, Boyd K. Paker said "Be not afraid, only Believe". This meant a lot to me because I realized that one of the things holding me back was my fear of failure. I thought that if I tried to do Gods will and failed then I would be worse off then if I didn't try. This is not true and I felt the Gods love at this time and reassurance that any effort I put in he would be proud of and any failure I made could be repented of.
The next thing that helped me I believe was by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. I don't know how many of this he said exactly, but I got the impression to keep in my journal each day ways that I did Gods will and ways that I did my own will. Doing this has helped me realize my progress and inspires me to improve each day by realizing what areas of my life I am weak in. But to do this you must remember that you are only human and God loves you no matter what, because at least for me the mistakes side can get pretty big. But I know that I can repent and through the Atonement of Christ I can be better the next day. -Eli "the blog master's brother"Tidwell
Well said Brother. This is a topic that has been on my mind for quite some time. I remember always hearing Elder Maxwell talking about "submitting your will to God" and it is something I have always desired so much to do but it feels sometimes like I fall shorter every day. In Elder Maxwell's book "Not My Will But Thine"(also a must read) he addressees this he said, "Despite our innate longings for the ideally good and beautiful, it is so easy to be caught up instead in the cares and things of the world". So why is it that despite our wanting to so desperately we constantly fall short of submitting our will to God?
ReplyDelete-Travis