Mormon Musings

How can we become the men and women--the Christlike servants--the Lord needs us to be?  How can we find answers to questions that perplex us? If Joseph Smith's transcendent experience in the Sacred Grove teaches us anything, it is that the heavens are open and that God speaks to His children.   The Prophet Joseph Smith set a pattern for us to follow in resolving our questions.  Drawn to the promise of James that if we lack wisdom we may ask of God, the boy Joseph took his question directly to Heavenly Father.  He sought personal revelation, and his seeking opened this last dispensation. In like manner, what will your seeking open for you?  What wisdom do you lack? What do you feel an urgent need to know or understand? Follow the example of the Prophet Joseph.  Find a quiet place where you can regularly go.  Humble yourself before God.  Pour out your heart to your Heavenly Father.  Turn to Him for answers and for comfort.   President Russell M. Nelson

From what we can draw from the Scriptures relative to the teaching of heaven, we are induced to think that much instruction has been given to man since the beginning which we do not possess now...We have what we have, and the Bible contains what it does contain: but to say that God never said anything more to man than is recorded, would be saying at once that we have at last received a revelation: for it must require one to advance thus far, because it is nowhere said in that volume by the mouth of God that He would not, after giving what is there contained, speak again; and if any man has found out for a fact that the Bible contains all that God ever revealed to man, he has ascertained it by an immediate revelation. Joseph Smith, Letter to The Church March 1834 

 "Tell me what amusements you like best and whether your amusements have become a ruling passion in your life, and I will tell you what you are."  Joseph F. Smith

 “What are you actually and specifically deprived of by serious gospel living?” Ponder these several examples. By complying with the revealed Word of Wisdom, you are much more likely to be deprived of lung cancer, and surely deprived of becoming an alcoholic. You are much more likely to miss out on AIDS if you keep the seventh commandment and refuse to use drugs. Before you die, my young brothers and sisters, you will thank Heavenly Father many times for the advantages of abstinence! Regarding certain destructive things, abstinence is so much easier than moderation! Meanwhile, you will see those about you who are surfing life’s pleasures indulgently. They will eventually crash against the reefs of reality. By responding to the strong gospel emphasis on education, you will also be deprived of being ignorant. You will be deprived of that large dose of human despair that “cometh because of iniquity” (Moroni 10:22). You will also miss out on the exhausting and finally futile calisthenics o

God’s ways of educating our desires are, of course, always the most perfect. . . . And what is God’s way? Everywhere in nature we are taught the lessons of patience and waiting. We want things a long time before we get them, and the fact that we wanted them a long time makes them all the more precious when they come. In nature we have our seedtime and harvest; and if children were taught that the desires that they sow may be reaped by and by through patience and labor, they will learn to appreciate whenever a long-looked-for goal has been reached. Nature resists us and keeps admonishing us to wait; indeed, we are compelled to wait.   Joseph F. Smith

When the Latter-day Saints make up their minds to endure, for the kingdom of God’s sake, whatsoever shall come, whether poverty or riches, whether sickness or to be driven by mobs, they will say it is all right, and [they] will honor the hand of the Lord in it, and in all things, and serve Him to the end of their lives, according to the best of their ability. . . . If you have not made up your minds for this, the quicker you do so the better. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 1:338