I have really been slacking lately, and I have no excuses, really. Just that I have been lazy and inattentive to the things that matter most, and I am repenting and trying to start fresh (it seems like this is a cycle with me – but better a cycle of trying to be better than giving up).
Which brings me perfectly to Elder Dallin H. Oaks’ talk from April General Conference (and I better get studying the rest of these talks – October is just around the corner!).
When I was dating my husband, my prayers each night and morning were so fervent – my greatest desire was to return to live with Heavenly Father, and the subject of my prayers was pleading with Heavenly Father to help me have the right desires and the right actions to live with Him again. I was studying the scriptures a lot, and studying the gospel a lot, and then I got engaged and I prepared to go to the temple. When I went through the temple for the first time, and then again after I was sealed to my husband for time and all eternity I thought to myself, “This is it – this is what I needed to do. Now I have what I need to get back to Heavenly Father.”
Of course, those temple ordinances aren’t free-rides to the Celestial Kingdom. It’s been over five years since I made those covenants in the temple, and I am realizing all too well that it is really easy to forget that desire that burned in me before I received those ordinances. I want to keep that desire burning.
Elder Oaks quoted Elder Neal A. Maxwell in his talk, who said, “…what we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity.” I want to make sure that I am desiring the right things.
One of my favorite scriptures is in Alma 32 when Alma promises the people listening to him that if they “can no more than desire to believe” they can receive a testimony as well. It reminds me of the father who brought his crippled son to the Savior, and upon the Savior’s questioning of his faith, the Father said, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” This part of the gospel is one of the most hopeful to me, because I want to believe and do so many things that are so hard. But I know that if I can but desire to believe them and desire to to do them, then the Lord will help my unbelief and will help faith and a testimony develop and grown in my heart.
How do you keep your desires on the right things? Do you sometimes desire to believe things? Do you feel that desire working within you to grow to faith and testimony?
