The Holy Ghost and Scripture

The scriptures have been given to us because through reading and living them the holy ghost is invited into our life. However, there is a catch, in order for us to read the scriptures for understanding and spiritual growth we must have the Holy Ghost already with us. So how do we get the spirit to be with us in the first place? The answer is through personal prayer. This is the reason we pray always, even before reading scriptures. Prayer combined with obedience opens the spiritual gateway for the Holy Ghost.
Knowledge of scriptures is good just as knowledge of the Holy Ghost is good. However, knowledge is not enough. Knowledge of purity is good, but living a pure life is much better. In the same way, knowledge of the gospel is good but living the principles and doctrines found in the gospel is much better. It is my belief that when we are at the judgement bar we will not be quizzed on our scriptural knowledge. Instead we will be asked what we did with the knowledge we have been given.
What this means to me in my personal life is when I read the scriptures I must experience a call to action. I must feel a strong connection to the spirit every time I read the scriptures; if I do not, then I am doing something wrong and I need to change. The Holy Ghost testifies of truth and calls us to action when it is needed. Whenever I behave in an unchristian way the spirit withdraws. When I subsequently read the scriptures I do not feel the spirit strongly until I take action and repent. Sometimes I forget, and when I sit down to read the scriptures I don't feel the spirit strongly. I then pray and ask Heavenly Father what it was I did that causes the spirit to withdrawal. Once I ask with sincere desire, the Holy Ghost brings to my remembrance the action I took that needs to change. This then allows me to repent and feel a powerful witness of the spirit which I can only describe as the most amazing feeling of joy I have ever experienced.
The savior distilled all the commandments given to us down to two fundamentals: love God and love our fellow man. I believe this can be reduced even more: follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost in all things.

Marriage Logically

Posted this on Facebook on Saturday, October 16, 2010 at 10:19am

Edited and re-written here: Same Sex Marriag

Home Teaching Route

    Here is my home teaching route for the Ashton Park ward I just received this month: Teresa Rosas, Suzanne Selvidge, Stephan Jiu (pronounced: Steve Jew), and Eugene & Laurie Kempter.
    My home teaching companion is Shon Mc Adoo. Shon and I have already seen Steve, and I called and left a message with Eugene. That leaves Teresa and Suzanne. Steve and Eugene are strong members in the ward. In fact, I have worked with Eugene in the past for my responsibility of calling and reminding people to come for building clean up on Saturday mornings. Eugene has the responsibility of cleaning the building every Saturday along with several other people who I have the responsibility of reminding a few days before. The other two people I home teach are less-/non-actives; Teresa and Suzanne. The Elders Quorum president, Trevor Lamb, said that for the less actives one way we could get our foot in the door is through emergency preparedness. We could ask the people we home teach if they want their contact information available to the church in case of emergencies.
    I just went by Teresa and Suzanne's house today. I first went to Teresa's house but, surprisingly, the address does not exist. Next I went to Suzanne's house, which luckily existed, but was not able to talk to her directly. After ringing Suzanne's door bell a gruff looking man came to the door. I asked if Suzanne resided at the residents and was pleased to learn she was but couldn't come down because she was still sleeping. I got her phone number though, and will be calling her to set up a home teaching appointment later today. Today is looking pretty good.

General Conference talks

I am so grateful that all the General Conference talks can be found online. I have been listening to the conference talks on my iPhone and finding ones I like the most. Once finding one I really like I look it up on-line, pint it out, mark it up, share what I learned with my family, and save the marked up PDF in my Dropbox.

As of Aug 22 I have now been putting my marked up conference talks on a separate blog. I no longer keep my conference talks in Dropbox.

Love My Familiy

I love and miss my wife very much right now. We just tried Family Council last night as directed in the talk Becoming Provident Providers Temporally and Spiritually and MOM: Everything I Need To Know I Learned In Family Council. Unfortunately it didn't go so well. We will work a bit harder to make it work this coming Sunday though. I have been listening to the General Conferences on my iPhone (really listening, not just passively hearing them talk) and have come to love reading their lessons to my family in the evening. I am so very grateful for the living Prophets we have in our day. I get to go home teaching tonight! I will be sharing Elder D. Todd Christofferson's talk on Moral Discipline. I am very excited to share the spirit in another member's home.