Good Morning or Good Afternoon or Good Evening,
this post should take three minutes to read from start to finish.
This post focuses on a April 2009 General Conference talk, and it is called "Learning the Lessons of the Past" from Elder M. Russell Ballard. This post is part two and I would like to share with you some highlights while I was reading the talk.
Elder Ballard has mentioned the following;
"In every dispensation, God’s loving desire to bless His children is manifest in the miraculous restoration of the gospel truth to the earth through living prophets. The Restoration of the gospel through the Prophet Joseph Smith in the early 1800s is only the most recent example. ... The 179 years that have passed since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was officially organized have been extraordinary by any measure.
... We live in an era when the boundaries of good taste and public decency are being pushed to the point where there are no boundaries at all. ... Certain factions of society seem generally mistrustful of anyone who chooses to live according to religious belief.
And when people of faith attempt to warn others of the possible consequences of their sinful choices, they are scoffed at and ridiculed, and their most sacred rites and cherished values are publicly mocked. ... More importantly, what impact will the lessons of the past have on the personal choices you make right now and for the rest of your lives?
The voice of the Lord is clear and unmistakable. He knows you. He loves you. He wants you to be eternally happy. But according to your God-given agency, the choice is yours. Each one of you has to decide for yourself if you are going to ignore the past and suffer the painful mistakes and tragic pitfalls that have befallen previous generations, experiencing for yourself the devastating consequences of bad choices.
... With all my heart I hope and pray that you will be wise enough to learn the lessons of the past. ... You don’t have to follow the path of Cain or Gadianton in order to realize that “wickedness never was happiness” (Alma 41:10). And you don’t have to allow your community to become like Sodom or Gomorrah in order to understand that it isn’t a good place to raise a family.
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| "Learning the lessons of the past allows you to build personal testimony on a solid bedrock of obedience, faith, and the witness of the Spirit." |
Learning the lessons of the past allows you to walk boldly in the light without running the risk of stumbling in the darkness. This is the way it’s supposed to work. This is God’s plan: father and mother, grandfather and grandmother teaching their children; children learning from them and then becoming a more righteous generation through their own personal experiences and opportunities.
Learning the lessons of the past allows you to build personal testimony on a solid bedrock of obedience, faith, and the witness of the Spirit. Of course, it’s not enough to learn these lessons as a matter of history and culture. Learning the names and dates and sequence of events from the printed page won’t help you very much unless the meaning and the message are written in your hearts.
Nourished by testimony and watered with faith, the lessons of the past can take root in your hearts and become a vibrant part of who you are. And so it returns, as it always does, to your own personal faith and testimony. ... That is how you know. That is how you avoid the mistakes of the past and take your spirituality to the next level.
If you are open and receptive to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit in your lives, you will understand the lessons of the past, and they will be burned into your souls by the power of your testimonies. And how do you get such a testimony? Well, there’s no new technology for that, nor will there ever be.
... You gain a vibrant, life-changing testimony today the same way it has always been done. The process hasn’t been changed. It comes through desire, study, prayer, obedience, and service. That is why the teachings of prophets and apostles, past and present, are as relevant to your life today as they ever have been.
That you may find joy and happiness and peace in the future by learning the great and eternal lessons of the past ... wherever you may be ..."
If you would like to read the whole talk, here is the link below.
Stay Tuned until next time.
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