The Power of the Word

This week's lesson was chapter 8 out of the Ezra Taft Benson manual, and Alison did a fantastic job teaching it. I loved all the "Once Upon a Time" and "The Hobbit" dragon references.

We started off by discussing some examples of challenging times in our own lives (school finals, work, self worth issues, loosing testimony, infertility, pornography, etc.) and talked about that scripture in Revelation 12 where Satan is described as a dragon and the Church is described as a woman. Dragons are powerful, but we can beat them.

The power of the word of God will help us beat Satan and the temptations he throws at us. For clarity, we talked about how the word of God could be scriptures, personal revelation, and the words of the prophets and apostles. The power of the word of God comes when we fortify ourselves with the word, arm ourselves with the spirit, and hold fast to the good.

Some blessings that come from listening to/reading the word of God:

1. Stronger relationships with family members who read with us
2. Solidify family roles (let husband lead family scripture study and prayer)
3. Internal happiness and peace
4. Change hearts and soften hearts
5. Communication improves when you share your ideas and thoughts about the scriptures
6. Progression

The word of God is a gift, and we should love and treasure the words. We will be happy if we let them govern our lives.

At the end of the lesson we all made goals relating to our own personal scripture study. Feel free to set your own goals if you weren't able to make it to the lesson today! I know I have so much I need to improve when it comes to my personal scripture study habits.

Living Joyfully in Troubled Times

I loved the Relief Society lesson this past Sunday, the spirit was so strong, plus Shelly did a great job teaching.  :)

We learned about lesson 4 from the manual, about how we can live joyfully in troubled times. We talked about how hope, optimism and peace work together to help us out during times of trouble. With all three, you don't necessarily know what is going to happen to you next, but you can hope that God is directing your life and will help lead you where you need to be. You can be optimistic that things in the future are going to be good. Then with those two things in place, you can feel peace that everything will be okay. Even if you are not happy in the moment, at least you can feel calming peace.



It makes me think of how Christ was there to help Peter when he saw the waves around him and started to doubt. He will always be there for us, and if it doesn't stretch out his hand to lift us up, it means he wants us to realize that we can do hard things all by ourselves - we can swim!

One of the last things that was mentioned was that when times get hard, we all need to stick to two things:

1. Our marriages
2. Our membership in the Church

Both of these things involve covenants we have made with God and with other people (our husbands), and if we hold on to both, can be a firm foundation that will keep us floating when the troublesome waves of life get too high and rough.