And the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and lowliness of heart; and because of meekness and lowliness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God.
Include the following items in a box with the following titles and scriptures attached on a piece of paper:
• Blanket: A comforter, John 14:26
“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you”
• Light bulb/flashlight/candle : A LIGHT, which functions as a teacher and a guide. D&C 84:46.
” And the Spirit giveth light to every man that cometh into the world; and the Spirit enlighteneth every man through the world, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit.”
• Soap: A sanctifier, we become clean and more purified as we continually repent to have the Holy Ghost in our lives. 3 Nephi 27:20
Now this is the commandment: Repent, all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day.
I divided the class into 3 groups and had each group reach for an object in the box. Each group looked up the scripture and discussed ways the Holy Ghost was like the object. They presented in front of the class their object and explaination. Here is a worksheet they filled out as each presented:
Here is a handout that goes with object lesson, pdf download available below:
I believe our souls are inherently seeking divine guidance that will lead us personally to true and lasting peace, happiness and success in all areas of our lives.
The great news is that we are not alone in this earthly journey! We are children of a God that is happy and eager to impart His wisdom, light and guidance that will lead us along our way to become beings greater than we could have even imagined ourselves!! He wants to lead us to success–most likely not in the way our puny human minds imagine it, but only as a deeply loving, all-knowing, all-powerful Father understands it. Success in a far greater and deeper way than we even thought possible!!
How is this done? How in the world do we tap into that Heavenly knowledge that can direct us back to spiritual success? How do we train our mind, body and soul to seek out the living water of truth available to us instead of accepting and following every other voice, impulse and direction that is fighting for our attention? How do learn to LISTEN? To that sweet, gentle, still small voice of the Spirit that will guide us to truth and righteous?
” And now, verily, verily, I say unto thee, put your atrust in that bSpirit which leadeth to do dgood—yea, to do justly, to walk humbly, to gjudge righteously; and this is my Spirit. Verily, verily, I say unto you, I will impart unto you of my Spirit, which shall aenlighten your bmind, which shall fill your soul with cjoy; And then shall ye know, or by this shall you know, all things whatsoever you desire of me, which are pertaining unto things of righteousness, in faith believing in me that you shall receive.” D&C 11:12-14
Removing Spiritual Blocks We need to remember that God’s plan is NOT to hold back guidance that will lead us to greater happiness. But He simply CANNOT communicate what is needed if we are unwilling to listen or not in a position to listen. Think ‘spiritual toddler.’ If we are having a ‘tantrum’ over a trial, we most likely won’t listen to a loving parent who genuinely wants to assist us. This happen much more than we are probably willing to admit. Just like it would be like in leading a small child we gotta be that calm child, who is finally eager to listen, who isn’t crying wildly in frantic panic, who isn’t just concerned about getting ‘her way’. Elder Henry B. Eyring said, “Many of us, in moments of personal anguish, feel that God is far from us. The pavilion that seems to intercept divine aid does not cover God but occasionally covers us. God is never hidden, yet sometimes we are, covered by a pavilion of motivations that draw us away from God and make Him seem distant and inaccessible. Our own desires, rather than a feeling of “Thy will be done,”2 create the feeling of a pavilion blocking God.” Read his talk.
Living a life to have a connection with the Spirit. I cannot think of better way to receiving guidance from God than to revolve our daily efforts in striving to keep and listen to the Spirit. It means being humble enough to listen to that quiet voice that speaks right into our hearts to practice patience, to forgive oneself and others, that feeling that sweetly nudges us to listen closer and more empathically to our loved ones, that split second thought that says to know not indulge in gossip when the moment arises, that gentle feeling that encourages us to let go of our anger or frustration over someone or a situation. It tries to communicate with us ALL DAY LONG but if we are too distracted, too stressed, too busy, too tired, too consumed with worldly pursuits and entertainment it is SO easy to miss, so easy to be totally desensitized and disconnected from it. But if we but make small efforts day by day to invite the Spirit, to keep it in the forefront of our hearts and minds, to take care of our bodies, to read the truths found in scriptures, and talks and church magazines, to manage our emotions, to keep a clean mind and heart, then we will open communication from heaven to help us with our questions, concerns, decisions and it is AMAZING the feeling and life we can have for ourselves. “It is important that our daily activities do not distract us from listening to the Spirit.” -Richard G. Scott, read his talk about “Obtaining personal revelation and inspiration for your life”
Understanding what it feels like and what it means to receive revelation and divine guidance. I believe that when we speak of REVELATION, we can make it out to seem to so big and sometimes so sensationalized that we can miss that we have already received guidance or miss the answer that Heavenly Father is trying to communicate with us. Even though there are incredible stories of faith found in the scriptures and even in our church culture of receiving answers to prayers, most of the most miraculous experiences are quiet, personal, and seemingly undramatic. The truth is that our seemingly anticlimactic answer to our long time pleas and prayers, if we open our hearts of understanding, can hold even more deep and much more powerful influence in our personal lives and lives of others than the most sensationalized, awe inspiring, mouth dropping answers and miracles performed in history!!
“And it came to pass when they heard this voice, and beheld that it was not a voice of thunder, neither was it a voice of a great tumultuous noise, but behold, it was a still voice of perfect mildness, as if it had been a whisper, and it did pierce even to the very soul—”
My personal experience with receiving inspiration and guidance I think and ponder about a subject and that I’m curious about/ have questions about or need direction with. When I am connected to the spirit, I feel like my thoughts are heighten, my mind is expanded to understand things in a broader eternal perspective. But it is not with my continual and conscience desire to know, ponder and understand truth.
Heavenly father rarely just dumps revelation out of nowhere (though at times it may seem sudden). He wants to direct us to the answer thought by thought, feeling by feeling, process by process, line upon line as it says. It is like a treasure hunt where we continually gather evidence, clues along the way as make decisions and press forward. We learn bit by bit as we are willing and ready to receive it. As we receive it we can feel the truthfulness of a principle.
God allows for this type of learning because when we come upon the answers through our own diligent seeking and willingness to receive, those answers become a PART of us. We have made an effort to be taught by the Holy Ghost. When it communicates with us it goes straight to the heart, not as an external passing thought but to the deep and spiritual part of our being that swallows and accepts truth for itself and becomes an integral part of our nature as we continue to apply the truth we have learned. It is receiving and experimenting by putting it to the test, trusting in God and in ourselves. It is a learning process, it is a journey.
I love Elder Bednar’s analogy (here is a great vid on it) on receiving light. I believe that revelation be sometimes received in all three ways that he explains (light switch, sunrise, and foggy day). We can have a light ‘switch moment’ or aha moment of what we should do. Then we have to move forward to make that decision in our lives step by step, noticing more and more guidance and understanding (like a sunrise). Yet we may be traveling as what may seem a fog day, not know everything ahead of us, trusting with each step with what we can see and having faith that are moving in the right direction.
I was searching my brain on how I could represent what happens to us spiritually when we sin and how repentance is such a beautiful gift that is given to us to cleanse and help us come to know greater levels of happiness and come to know our Father in Heaven. I’m excited to share this object lesson that came to my mind as I was pondering ways to illustrate this concept. Enjoy! This goes with this YW lesson, here are my additional thoughts, insight and handout that goes with the lesson.
Stress Ball or Sponge (cut out like a heart if desired)
Here is the basic written out from of the video:
I’m going to attempt to illustrate to you with an object lesson how repentance can help us everyday and how it is a key part of feeling and living in an abundance of real peace love and happiness.
This foamy stress ball heart represents our heart. (if you are try to do this object lesson you can use a sponge–cut out like heart even)
In its purest form it is moldable, teachable, humble and clean which makes it totally receptive to the spirit, inspiration and communication from God. It is happy, free and at peace.
The fact is that our hearts don’t always remain as such because we are human and that makes us selfish and mistake prone.
Our Heavenly Father wants us to grow in varying degrees to change, develop learn and use our agency wisely.
He allows life to present us with many opportunities for us to experience growth.
But who knows why exactly we do this but in our fear, pride, limited understanding, want to protect ourselves, our resistance against change, selfishness our impulse to do it our way we place barriers between us and the spirit by hardening our hearts (i’m using playdoh here and putting it over the heart)
We refuse to listen to what is best for us for all those reasons.
But in our rebellion we have blocked that communication from our Father in Heaven and our true happiness.
The hardening of our hearts invites sin. Those hard parts have block us from spiritual understanding. ‘
Our hearts still long to ‘feel’ something so selfishly we start to do things that bring some temportary satisfaction but bring great sadness to our Heavenly Father and ultimately ourselves.
Little things like gossip we do because he feel like we are at least better than someone else. (place a bean in the play dough after each statement)
We treat with others with anger because it helps us feel dominion over someone else
We hold grudges because we feel some kind of symbolic victory.
We may even turn to putting harmful things into our bodies because we feel momentary relief or satisfaction.
Or may even comprise our moral standard because we want to feel something with someone.
But all those things have only created a greater barrier against our true happiness and receiptiveness to the light and love of our Heavenly Father
“Wickedness was never happiness”
I heard someone once add, “But people often don’t do wicked things for wickedness sake but because they confuse it for happiness.
All those ‘sins’ are just cheap substitutes for happiness.
The awesome new is that we can be cleansed of all these yucky sins, these behaviors and attitudes that weigh us down and block us from feeling real happiness.
God wants so badly for us to feel His love but it cannot penetrate our souls if we have but barrier around our hearts.
The scriptures speak of His arms being open, 2 extended, 3 stretched out, 4and encircling. 5 They are described as mighty 6 and holy, 7 arms of mercy, 8arms of safety, 9 arms of love, 10 “lengthened out all the day long.” 11
He wants us to repent, turn around, come back, change, be clean so he can communicate his love, guide us, strengthen us and empower us.
Once we are humble enough to realize we have offend God and made choices that have blocked his spirit and we have gain a desire to return, Christ can come in. If we do our part to repair the harm we’ve caused, He can simultaneously come in a repair and heal our hearts from sins with the power of His Atonement. We can be purified, cleansed and sanctified (become as saints only through the power of Christ). YAY!!! (Remove play Dough until clean)
When are hearts are clean, we can be more fully receptive to the spirit, guidance and feel greater happiness, peace and love.
I’m finding that Daily repentance is not a feeling of continually feeling guilty and weigh down by my less than perfect efforts but it having a penitent heart that is eager to improve and willing to change. So during my day I notice that my heart and mind do get hard and unwilling by things I may think or do but a penitent heart is one that is quick to come back, to remove pride, throw away thoughts and behaviors that and ‘blue barriers’ that prevent feeling the spirit. To realign, repent, change, forgive and move forward toward God because that is where I can best enjoy an abundance of peace and happiness.
” I love it when people tell me to repent! ” said no one ever. Who likes to be told they are doing things wrong and to to change their ways? Um. Not many.
I taught a lesson for the Young Women in my church titled, “Why is Jesus Christ important in my life? As I was thinking about how to best explain why Jesus Christ matters and what He can do in our lives, I put together this object lesson. It uses:
It describes how the balloon is us, our spirit or soul. The purpose of the ballon is to be filled and to rise up and come closer to Heaven and ultimately live with Him again.
When come down to earth we forget our purpose and often just noticed that we are deflated and need to do something about it. Most of us are motivated by not having enough.
We don’t have enough money so we work hard to earn more. (add a few beans after each statement)
We don’t have enough things, so we do what we can to get more toys and material things.
We need more people to like us and think we are the coolest, so we revolve our efforts around impressing others.
We need to just DO more with our lives, so we cram our lives full of activities, tasks, to do’s to the point we are just crazy BUSY.
In the end all those things are semi-satisfying, but not really, right? We are still deflated. In fact all those ‘beans’ have become quite a burden in our lives. We start resenting our efforts because even though we worked so hard, someone else still has more! More money, more things we want, accomplishes more than we do!
All we know is that we are exhausted and not really satisfied with our lives.
Christ says: Verily, verily, I say unto you, I will impart unto you of my Spirit, which shall enlighten your mind, which shall fill your soul with joy;
He’s saying, ‘I am what you NEED and what you’ve been looking for the whole time!’
When we start letting go of some of the worldly things and desires (start dumping some beans out) and we start making room for Christ and His spirit, He can fill our SOULS up! (Blow up balloon)
Something of totally different substance, not material things. Something that actually fills us up!! He helps us feel satisfied at whatever level of progression we are in. We can feel like we are enough, have enough so we are more willing to serve, give, share and love others (see “Feeling Enough” post). We are filled with the desire to better serve God and seek His truths. It’s not that we stop entirely what we were doing before but rather we become wiser about what we choose to do and begin doing things with perspective, purpose, love and with the Spirit. We are happy and fulfilled but as the balloon continues to be filled up, our souls and capacity to receive more love, joy, light, understanding, wisdom EXPANDS.
In the meantime, He also lightens our burdens, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matt 11:28)” He helps us get rid of all those attachments to worldly things, let go of ideas that weight us down, doubts, fears, guilts. He purifies us to the degree we are willing let Him in our lives. (Hold on to open end of ballon and start to carefully get rid of more beans)
As this is happening, we also begin to rise. Christ helps us rise to our potential, and to God.
Without Christ, we could not have a relationship with God. He is the piece, the bridge, our advocate with the Father. God actually needs us to ‘be perfect’ but we simply can’t be perfect by ourselves, so that is WHY we COMPLETELY need a savior in our lives. Christ is that savior, that lived a perfect life, that atoned for us, died for us, resurrected for us, and is WILLING and WAITING to impart His endless perfection with us, to COMPLETE us, to make us whole, PERFECT us so we can have and enjoy a connection with GOD, here IN THIS LIFE and be able to live again with Him in the next!! Mutual theme comes to life! “Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness” (Moroni 10:32).
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6)
One the of the greatest life skill we and our kids can learn in this life is how to deal with our emotions. Dealing with our feelings in a healthy way is key to achieving a sense of wellbeing and vital in creating healthy relationship with others and ourselves.
In the video above I illustrated a sun and it represents all our good and happy feelings. Feelings that communicate that we are happy, lovable, competent and important. Basically any feeling that is warm and yummy to us and that help us feel our real worth. It is always available to us.
A build of up negative feelings creates a cloud between us and good feelings we could have. It essentially ‘blocks’ out the sun. Many times we even believe that the ‘sun’ (or good feelings) don’t exist because of the cloud that is not letting happy feelings in.
How to deal with the yuck inside. Releasing the rain, letting the clouds part, go.
Learn ways to help you channel out the yucky feelings. I have found journaling what I’m feeling and resolving to feel peace again in writing helps does wonders! Going for a run to clear out my head is a great way too. Speaking an argument outloud in another room just to get it out of me (instead of on a person) has the same effect without hurting me or another person. If there is a lot of tension, CRYING helps me release much of that build up. Whatever you do, your job is to:
1.validate your own feelings: I feel this way and it is ok to feel anything. Feelings, though strong, potent, vivid and real are NOT facts. Negative feelings can lie and distort reality.
2.Release the emotion, get the yuckies out. (cry, run, punch pillow, scream in closet, journal it out.) Take POSITIVE action with negative Feelings. Your negative feelings will strongly tell you otherwise but you are can be incharge of what you do.
3.Then let it go by not blaming anyone: not yourself, situations or others. FORGIVENESS of others AND YOURSELF is the most freeing thing you can possibly do. It heals and helps you move forward.
4. You will feel more calm and ready to better conquer the outer battles
Remember, own your feelings but don’t let them own you.
My fabulous friend Erin (in the video) teaches the Recovery International (RI) method to mothers and helps us learn how to turn around our negative and insecure thoughts around whenever we feel ourselves getting worked up (raise your hand if you get worked up over stuff!!!). It has worked wonders in her own life! I have personally have learn SO much from her and Dr. Lows (RI creater) methods and readings. I highly recommend it to anyone. For more info, go to her fb group, here is the official RI website explaining more and here are some ‘spots’ (truths that help turn our thoughts around).
The Rain can help you Grow
Anytime we release that negative emotion in a positive way and turn our feelings around, we GROW! We receive greater strength and wisdom to deal with negative emotions for the next time we encounter them. Our self control rewards us with self-respect and confidence. Our relationship flourish. We enjoy greater happiness! We can feel the sun again!