The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ

This post is a continuation of my thoughts about President Ezra Taft Benson's talk on The Book of Mormon.

President Benson reminded me that the coming forth of The Book of Mormon was preceded only by the First Vision of Joseph Smith, which was the visitation by God the Father and Jesus Christ to the boy prophet. The Book of Mormon preceded the restoration of the priesthood from the hands of John the Baptist and from Peter, James and John. It was published a few days before the restoration of Christ's church in the latter-days. It was given to us before the revelations of the degrees of glory, celestial marriage and work for the dead, which were given in the Doctrine and Covenants.

It surprised me to read this order of events. I don't normally think of the exact order in which these important events occurred, but have been surprised each time I remember that this is how it happened.

The Holy Bible (the "holy" was for Emily :) ) contains the Old Testament and the New Testament. Another word for testament could have been translated as covenant from the Greek text. A covenant of what? The promises that God has made with His children in different ages for their salvation, based upon their obedience. The Book of Mormon's title was extended to include Another Testament of Jesus Christ. It contains the fulness of the gospel or all we need to know about God's commandments for our eternal salvation.

Awesome.

Actually, "awesome" doesn't exactly cover it. There are times when my favorite word comes short of capturing the magnitude of my feelings. This is one of them. I guess I should say "eternal awesome" and that might do it. You be the judge. :)

President Benson summed up the gift of The Book of Mormon in a way that really hit home to me. He said that it is a gift from God to us that is greater than the industrial and technological advances of our time (and remember, he said this 25 years ago), medicine, flight and space travel. I marvel and wonder at how far technology has come and what we as a human race have achieved with it. And this book of scriptures is much greater than all of that. Why? Because it will bring us to God when none of these other things can or will.

For 1000 years, Book of Mormon prophets poured their hearts and souls into writing their testimonies of the gospel of Jesus Christ onto golden plates for our use. They lived a long time ago - from 600 BC to 400 AD. The truths they wrote are for us today, not for their descendants back then. In fact, Nephi knew that the civilization of his posterity would come to an end and be destroyed by the Lamanites (we talked about that in Sunday School today). These ancient prophets wrote to us, the gentiles and the members of the house of Israel. Wow, what faith that these children of our Heavenly Father had!

I have committed myself to reading through The Book of Mormon again this year. There are 239 chapters and 531 pages so I plan to read about one chapter per day in my personal study. Our family has been reading one column per day for a while now and we're on page 189. The other day we talked about finishing for our first time as a family. We can do this by increasing what we read to two columns and we'll finish by the end of the year.

We talked about the blessings we have received from reading and how many more blessing we'll enjoy from the Lord's hand. Our kids are excited about it and that makes us (Angie and me) very happy!

Awesome!

I love The Book of Mormon. It has changed my life and it strengthens me every single day that I read it. The more effort I put in, the greater the reward. I know it is a true book of scripture and contains the true gospel of Jesus Christ. I am grateful for this talk from President Benson. It has strengthened my testimony.

Setting Goals, the S.M.A.R.T. Way

For the past few years my family has had awesome home teachers. (Home teachers are the way the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints check up on each other and help out when and where they can through monthly visits and regular contact.) The past two New Years brought a really good lesson on making goals. It wasn't a lesson to put on any pressure of, "Hey, you can do more!" but was a clear message about what makes a good goal.

If you know me well then you know that I'm all for starting something important at any time of the year. New Year's Day is the time when lots of people decide to make resolutions and change their life in dramatic ways. These are usually really great ideas to lose weight, exercise, spend more time with family, etc. The problem that I see here is that people (and I've been guilty of this) make spur-of-the-moment goals and haven't really figured out what it's going to take to accomplish them. Long term success is what we're really shooting for so why not make it count? Short term effort shows itself in busy gyms and weight rooms in January that drop to typical levels in February. Diets don't work one month at a time. Neither does learning a new job skill or quitting a bad habit. (Ok, well, in some cases it might!)

Here's what I learned from my home teachers. It's pretty clever!

S.M.A.R.T.

The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.

Specific means to be clear in what you want. Being unclear in your direction probably means you will be unclear in evaluating success or failure.

Measurable. Make it so you know if you accomplished the goal or not. "Eat less ice cream" sounds like a good idea for a healthier lifestyle, but if you don't put something quantitative on it you won't know if you ate less. And my guess is that you'll eat more just because you are thinking "ice cream" all the time. Maybe that's just me.

Attainable. Set a goal for something that you can reach. Some people say stretch for something difficult so you really work at it. That's fine. For myself, I recommend stretching a little at a time since I have my hand in so many things at once. If I set out to do something too lofty in lots of areas I'll just burn out. Just like the weight lifters who abandon the gym before February. I've done that a bunch of times.

Relevant. Do something that's important to you. Maybe you want to learn a new skill or improve one that you already know. Do you have a good reason for setting the goal? Good. Then go for it.

Time-bound. This the one that I forget. Have a time frame so that you can set a pace to sew all those quilts, finish that chain mail armor or write the last chapter in your novel. Does the end date have to be Dec 31? Nope. It can be Dec 25, July 15, April 6 or Jan 31. It could also be on your birthday, your anniversary or  the summer solstice. I have a hard time working on a short term goal because there's a part of me that thinks I should keep working on important things. However, if I am S.M.A.R.T. then I'll have created an goal with an outline that improves me in some way and I should feel happy with the end result. It doesn't have to take 365 days to do that (or 366 days this year).

Another trap I get into is hanging onto old, outdated notions. The completion-ist part of me things I have to complete everything I think of starting. If I don't cut out the old, it only bogs me down. My to do list stagnates, gets lost under a pile of more recent to do lists and then gets tossed into the recycling bag once I clean off my desk and realize I don't have time for the old list.

That's no good.

I'm learning to cut my ties to those old things that actually hold me back from doing bigger and better (relevant) things. Life changes and so do priorities. Let go of old ideas and don't look back.

2012 Goal: Write 3 Blog Posts Every Week

After Briggie was born, Angie and I went weeks without realizing that our companionship study was totally forgotten. We usually read before bedtime (our bedtime) and that time was now one of the busiest times of the day. So we dug out the Ensign magazine (October edition) that we had been reading and continued where we left off.

The October 2011 Ensign has a lot to do with The Book of Mormon because of a talk that President Ezra Taft Benson (1899-1994) gave in General Conference. October marks the 25th anniversary of his great talk and it was pretty awesome to read it. It's powerful. It's so important that it is was reprinted in its entirety.

There are several things that I want to blog about from his talk, but way too much for a single post. In an effort to say what I want to say, I'll split it up among a few posts this week. They might not be the only topic I write about this week because of some other things I want to say about New Year's and goals. And that brings up my other point, which is my goal to write 150 blog posts this year. That's about 3 per week. I think I can do it if I spread out my thoughts on one topic over a few posts.

I'm excited to talk about The Book of Mormon. Hopefully you'll come back during the week to read more. I plan to put a reminder post on Facebook and Google+ just once per week (Sunday nights) and that you will remember to come back during the week to see more posts. Click around for posts you haven't read yet. Comment, Share and Like whatever you want to pass on. This blog is reaching more people than I expected. :)

Family Home Evening: New Year's Resolutions

We have family night every Monday evening. Last night we taught our boys about working on goals and personal improvement. We talked about what talents we are each good at and what we might want to work on this year. Angie felt that we should focus on improving something that we are already good at and really excel at it. Many other years we work on things we are weak at, trying to become better at something important. Both seem like good ideas to make a well-rounded person. I was actually pretty surprised at the suggestion, but it was a very great lesson and we set some really great goals.

Part of our lesson focused on saying what talents other family members have. It's great to praise others for what they bring to the family and to the world. Everyone feels special and important. It's also easy to see that we are all different. We are all created in the image of God who gave us these talents.

Then we taught the parable of the 10 talents to our boys. Jesus gave this parable to teach that we are all given different talents, or skills, and that we are responsible how we use them. We believe that we'll one day report to the Lord on how we used our talents. Here's the parable as we told it to our boys.

A rich man went on a trip for a long time. Before he left, he gave his servants some money. One servant was given five talents, the next two talents and the other one talent. The servants knew the master would come back and ask what they did with the money. The first servant worked really hard and earned another five talents. The second worked really hard and earned two more talents. The last guy was really nervous about losing his single talent and getting in trouble. He hid his talent so he could give it back when the master returned.

When the rich man returned from his trip, he asked his servants to report. Two men doubled what they had been given and were each blessed by their master. "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things" (Matthew 25:23). The fearful servant gave the talent back to the master. He got quite the rude awakening. He thought he would be praised for not losing the money, but heard this reply. "Thou wicked and slothful servant" (Matthew 25:26).

Ouch.

The lesson we should learn from this parable is that we have all been born with different talents (and a different number of them). We will be blessed for using our talents and we should work at improving ourselves and earning/learning more talents. Imagine how amazing it will feel to hear these words from the Master, "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things" (Matthew 25:23).