Julie Harward - Pine Valley Branch

The article I have chosen is by David A, Bednar..."IF YE HAD KNOWN ME"...My whole desire is to truly know my Savior Jesus Christ and this talk pointed out some ways for me to actively work on that.  I loved where he asked, do we only know about the Savior, or are we increasingly coming to know Him? We are told that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and that we cannot come to the Father but by Him. We come to know the Father as we come to know His beloved son. What a beautiful circle that is!  David talks about 4 ways for us to do so...1.By exercising faith in Him...by relying upon Him and all His ways, then we begin to know the Savior.  As our faith in the Lord increases, we trust in Him and have confidence in His power to redeem, heal, and strengthen us. True faith is focused in and on the Lord and always leads to righteous action. He tells us that we are to be "doers of the word, and not hearers only." This takes on a very personal note to me, let me share my experience about this. I serve in the temple as an ordinance worker, one day one of the members of the temple presidency asked how I liked my new calling? I said; "What calling?" He just smiled. I went home and in my evening prayers, I told Heavenly Father that I did not want a new calling in the temple, I just wanted to keep doing what I was doing. The next morning as I awoke to get ready to serve in the temple, these words kept rolling over and over in my mind..."BE YE DOERS OF THE WORK AND NOT HEARERS ONLY." As I got to the temple, I asked a friend if she knew where that scripture was found? She went and looked it up, it was in James 1:22 and it read; "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." But to me, it had been said; "Be ye doers of the WORK"....later that same day, I was called to work as one of the coordinators, and I knew what the Lord wanted me to do! He had chastised me in a most loving way. This talk also goes on to say that we become acquainted with the Lord and His voice as we study and feast upon His word, pray to  the Father in His name, with real intent and seek for the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. 2. Follow Him...following the Lord includes emulating Him and through the atonement become like Him. He marked the path, led the way, and set the perfect example. Doing enables us to receive an actual knowledge that the course of life we are pursuing is in accordance with God's will. 3. Serving Him...We come to know Him as we serve Him and labor in His kingdom. As we do so, He generously blesses us with heavenly help, spiritual gifts, and increased capacity. He never leaves us alone. Then our desires align with His desires and purposes, and helps us to "not ask that which is contrary to His will." We grow to love those in whom we serve, what a blessing this is to me!  I learn that serving others is serving God, I grow to love Him and all my brothers and sisters, seeing them as He sees them. This is the pure love of Christ, this is a true Zion. We have been told to pray to the Father that we may be filled with His love, that we may become like Him and that when He comes, we may be like Him. 4. Believing Him...Do I believe what I know? Believing Him with my whole soul comes as I press forward along the covenant pathway, surrendering my will to His, and submit to His priorities and timing for me, because it is always the way of my happiness. Believing Him, accepting as true His power and promises, which always brings, perspective, peace, growth, joy into my life. I loved this talk and it always has been and always will be my goal, to truly know all that I can about the Lord...my way of happiness.