Eating with the Pigs

In stake conference today one of the counselors talked about when he was a boy him and his friends would sit on the fence and watch the pigs eat. The man that owned the pigs would buy day-old twinkies and ho-hos to feed the pigs. He would just dump them in with the wrappers and all. The young boys were disgusted at first but after a while they became hungry too. They would grab the twinkies that didn't have too many holes in the bags or didn't look too bad.

He related this story to the fact that if we sit and "watch the pigs" too often we will become like them. We need to be actively engaged in a good cause and not be sitting with the pigs.

My dad always would recite a poem and this is it:

One night in late October,
When I was far from sober,
Returning from the bar with manly pride,
My feet began to flutter
So I lay down in the gutter
And a pig came near and lay down by my side.
A lady passing by was heard to say:
"You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses,"
And the pig got up, and slowly walked away.

How Far In Are You?

Today I listened to my new stake president talking about a story in Ezekiel. It really stuck out to me.

In Ezekial 47:1-5, Ezekial sees water pouring forth from the temple of the Lord. At first the water is only ankle deep. A little farther on, the water is up to the knees and it continues to rise until it is a mighty river that must be swam across.

The water Ezekiel sees is living water, or the gospel of Jesus Christ. The point of this whole thing is that we need to decide how involved we are going to be in the gospel. How much are we going to let it affect our lives? It is easy to go through the motions and only let it touch us to the ankles or maybe to the knees. If we are going to return to live with God and become like him, however, we must swim in the deep river - we must live the gospel at all times, not just while we are at church.

Everyone of us has a personal decision to make as to how committed we are to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We can live it on Sundays and while we're at Church activities, or we can make the gospel a part of who we are.

The question is, how far in are you - how committed are you? It's a good question to keep asking since the answer quite often changes from day to day.

When You Read Quickly

My parents ward has a challenge going on for this summer. The challenge is to read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover between June 1st and September 1st. I actually finished it the very beginning of August. I haven't read the Book of Mormon in that short of a time for quite a while.

Reading it that fast definitely gives a different perspective than other ways of studying it. You can see more of the common threads and overarching themes that run through the entire book rather than getting bogged down in the details of the individual chapters and stories.

Some of the things that stood out to me were:

1. You have to serve the Lord in order to truly be happy.

2. God will try everything He can to get nations and individuals to repent and return to Him.

3. God will never force people to repent - but if they don't, they end up losing everything.

4. God loves us - collectively and individually - He knows who we are and cares for each of us.

5. Jesus Christ provides the only way for us to be truly happy and inherit eternal life.

6. Jesus Christ truly is the Savior of the world.

I already knew all of these things, but it was good to have them reinforced once again in such a powerful way. I'm grateful that I took that challenge. Spending so much time in the Book of Mormon has brought an added measure of the Spirit into my life. The Book of Mormon truly is "Another Testament of Jesus Christ."

Going to the Source

My ward is having a Teacher Development course every other Sunday during Sunday School. Yesterday we talked about teaching pure doctrine and staying away from speculating on things we don't really know about.

Jenn brought up an experience we had in Beloit. There was a family who was inactive, and had been through numerous sets of missionaries. When we got there, this family said they had a question that no missionaries had ever been able to answer to their satisfaction. They wanted to know what had happened to the gold plates after Joseph Smith was finished translating them. Apparently, the previous Elders had told them they weren't sure, but they thought that the current prophet had possession of them. So this family wanted to know why the prophet didn't just show everyone that he had the gold plates - it would make it easy to prove that the Book of Mormon was true.

I opened up the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith's testimony - at the very end he says that when he was finished translating the plates, the messenger (Moroni) took them back, and still has them. Then we talked about why God would want it done that way - so that we have to rely on faith instead of sight.

I wish that people would take Alma's example to heart - his son Corianton had a question about death and the resurrection - and Alma didn't know the answer - so he told him that, then he told him what he did know. That's how we should be - don't lie and make things up when you don't know the answer - say you don't know and then try to find out what the answer is! The best way to do that is to go to the source - the scriptures.