Mormon Musings

The education then of our desires is one of the far-reaching importance to our happiness in life...God's ways of educating our desires are, of course, 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. Joseph F. Smith

The Gospel teaches us to be happy, to have faith rather than fear, to find hope and overcome despair, to leave darkness and turn toward the light of the everlasting Gospel. Boyd K. Packer

There is no doubt, if a person lives according to the revelations given to God's people, he may have The Spirit of The Lord to signify to him His will, and to guide and to direct him in the discharge of his duties, in his temporal as well as his spiritual exercises.  I am satisfied, however, that in this respect, we live far beneath our privileges. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 12:104

Our eventual place in eternity turns on whether our knees bend or shake and what we think and do in daily life. Neal A. Maxwell  

  “I suppose there would never be an apostate, there would never be a crime, if people remembered, really remembered, the things they had covenanted at the water’s edge or at the sacrament table and in the temple.” Spencer W. Kimball The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball , ed. Edward L. Kimball (1982), 112.

 "I am excited to report to you that I am enjoying the scriptures more than ever. I have read a lot in my life—thousands of books, I’m sure. But rarely do I encore reading except for the holy scriptures. Therefore, I am even more anxiously engaged in the restored gospel than ever because the restored gospel is so engaging. It really does get a grasp on our minds, and there is no end to the exploration that one can make of it. It is, as I said from this pulpit years ago, an “inexhaustible gospel.” To be anxiously engaged really does mean that we are engaged intellectually as well as spiritually, and life in the kingdom, as you all know, is also very engaging."  Neal A. Maxwell BYU Devotional, January 1999

In modern revelation we are told very frankly, brothers and sisters, that “when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated” (D&C 130:21). I don’t know how it is for you, but I have felt so often in my life so greatly blessed for what little obedience I have given. My conclusion with regard to that verse is that the Lord’s ratio of blessings to our obedience is a very generous ratio indeed. He is so quick to reward us, so quick to reassure us, and so anxious to take delight when we serve Him. So if you puzzle over that verse, as I have in life, including in recent times, the only bottom line I can give you is that the ratio of blessings to our minuscule obedience is a very, very generous ratio indeed. Neal A. Maxwell https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/neal-a-maxwell/sharing-insights-life/