5/1/2018 - Section 93:19-30

May 1, 2018

Section 93:19-30

Progress, Growth, Worship, Grace, Truth and the True Church,

V 19 is very much like the prayer I offered before I started my reading today, or probably better stated: it is very much an immediate answer to the prayer I offered before I started my reading today: “I give unto you these sayings that you may understand and know how to worship, and know what you worship, that you may come unto the Father in my name, and in due time receive of his fullness.” And, very appropriately, v 20 continues to teach and promise, saying that if I keep His commandments I SHALL be glorified…and I SHALL receive grace for grace…(which, from yesterday’s study where I learned that grace is  “the merciful kindness by which God, exerting his holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection, and kindles them to the exercise of Christian virtues.” I don’t need to be worried about making big leaps of improvement. I just need to be working every single day to be just a little better, just a little more loving, just a little more understanding, just a little more faithful, just a little more prayerful… And I know that if I keep to my daily prayers and my daily dips into the scriptures and my nightly reports to Heavenly Father, then that course will lead me directly back to Him and Home and Love and Progress…Eternal Progress.

Bruce R McConkie was describing worship when he said, “…it is to walk in the light as he is the light, to do the things that he wants done, to do what he would do under similar circumstances, to be as he is. To worship the Lord is to walk in the Spirit, to rise above carnal things, to bridle our passions, and to overcome the world….”

I love v 24’s definition of truth: “And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.” Isn’t that exactly what the gospel is? True truth never changes. A wonderful thought from Brigham Young, who once said that if he could do but one thing to bless the Saints, he believed it would be to give them ‘eyes with which to see things as they are’. (Journal of Discourses) Those are the words I use in my prayers, for that is my ultimate goal.