Keeping Your Spiritual Balance

"Here is a picture of my wife, LaDawn, and me. She was a teacher here when we were courting. Sometimes in conversation with friends someone will make a comment about a fact that is new to me. I might say, “I didn’t know that. That is very interesting.” My wife always delights in saying, “You didn’t know that? Why I learned that in the fifth grade!” The reason she says that is because I skipped the fifth grade. The teachers at my school moved six of us from the fourth grade to the sixth grade. During the year they realized their mistake and so I spent two years in the sixth grade but no time in the fifth grade—a serious gap in my education. 

Now I mention kindergarten and fifth grade for this reason: too many people are trying to solve the serious complex problems of life with a sketchy, superficial, fifth grade understanding of gospel doctrine. This is not only unwise—it is dangerous. So here is the question: Are you smarter than a fifth grader? Getting an academic education is important––a high priority in life to be sure, but it is not even in the same ballpark as getting an education in gospel principles.

Don’t neglect your education in the things of the Spirit. Don’t you dare settle for a kindergarten or a fifth grade education in the doctrines and principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You will be wise to devote a significant portion of time, energy and effort to a serious study of the doctrine and principles of the gospel so you can apply them with skill every day of your life. Some of you are strong in subjects like philosophy or mathematics but weak in subjects like faith and the Atonement. Watch your balance!    

Don’t make life’s most important and defining decisions based on what you learned studying biology or Shakespeare, and don’t make them based on a shaky fifth grade foundation of spiritual knowledge. 

 We value all truth. Truth is truth. But some truth is more important than other truth. Understanding principles of chemistry and sociology is less important than understanding principles of honesty and repentance. Furthermore, the principles taught in the science of chemistry might change with new discoveries over time. The principles of repentance will not change. If you understand the science of medicine so well that you become one of the world’s greatest physicians but do not understand the principles of honesty and charity, you will not be happy. If you understand and live the principles of honesty and charity, even if you were a run-of-the-mill doctor or teacher, you have a good chance to be supremely happy.

Have you learned that answers to prayer usually come a piece at a time, line upon line, rather than all at once? Have you learned this so you do not get discouraged when you pray earnestly and the answers don’t seem to come? Have you learned that the Lord has His own timetable for answering? God’s clock and ours are rarely synchronized. The Lord says over and over in the scriptures that He will do things in his own due time.  

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf: I was assigned to accompany then-Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf to reorganize a stake and select a new stake president in Texas. After our interviews, we both had good feelings about a certain man. He asked me if I felt this was the right man. I answered that I thought he was the right man, but that I did not feel that I had received a firm spiritual confirmation. We continued to discuss and pray and still I did not feel that I had the solid confirmation I wanted, so he simply asked me, “Well, do you have a better idea?” It was time to make the decision. We went ahead and called the man and as we went forward, it became clear that he was certainly the Lord’s choice. Brigham Young said it this way:

“If I do not know the will of my Father, and what he requires of me in a certain transaction, if I ask Him to give me wisdom concerning any requirement in life, or in regard to my own course, ...or those I preside over, and get no answer from Him, and then do the very best that judgment will teach me, He is bound to…honor that transaction, and He will do so to all intents and purposes.”⁸

If you do your homework, study it out, and earnestly plead with the Lord for an answer and do not feel you have received it––go ahead with your best judgment and the Lord will either back up your decision or He will soon warn you that you are going down the wrong path. "

 

Keeping Your Spiritual Balance

Elder Larry W. Gibbons

Second Quorum of the Seventy

The Mystery of Life

We know that this life is a test, that life did not begin with birth, nor will it end with death.

Then life begins to make sense, with meaning and purpose even in all of the chaotic mischief that mankind creates for itself.

Imagine that you are attending a football game. The teams seem evenly matched. One team has been trained to follow the rules; the other, to do just the opposite. They are committed to cheat and disobey every rule of sportsmanlike conduct.

While the game ends in a tie, it is determined that it must continue until one side wins decisively.

Soon the field is a quagmire.

Players on both sides are being ground into the mud. The cheating of the opposing team turns to brutality.

Players are carried off the field. Some have been injured critically; others, it is whispered, fatally. It ceases to be a game and becomes a battle.

You become very frustrated and upset. “Why let this go on? Neither team can win. It must be stopped.”

Imagine that you confront the sponsor of the game and demand that he stop this useless, futile battle. You say it is senseless and without purpose. Has he no regard at all for the players?

He calmly replies that he will not call the game. You are mistaken. There is a great purpose in it. You have not understood.

He tells you that this is not a spectator sport—it is for the participants. It is for their sake that he permits the game to continue. Great benefit may come to them because of the challenges they face.

He points to players sitting on the bench, suited up, eager to enter the game. “When each one of them has been in, when each has met the day for which he has prepared so long and trained so hard, then, and only then, will I call the game.”

Until then, it may not matter which team seems to be ahead. The present score is really not crucial. 

There are games within games, you know. Whatever is happening to the team, each player will have his day.

Those players on the team that keeps the rules will not be eternally disadvantaged by the appearance that their team somehow always seems to be losing.

In the field of destiny, no team or player will be eternally disadvantaged because they keep the rules. They may be cornered or misused, even defeated for a time. But individual players on that team, regardless of what appears on the scoreboard, may already be victorious.

Each player will have a test sufficient to his needs; how each responds is the test.

When the game is finally over, you and they will see purpose in it all, may even express gratitude for having been on the field during the darkest part of the contest.

I do not think the Lord is quite so hopeless about what’s going on in the world as we are. He could put a stop to all of it any moment. But He will not! Not until every player has a chance to meet the test for which we were preparing before the world was, before we came into mortality.

There is no way to make sense out of life without a knowledge of the doctrine of premortal life.

The idea that mortal birth is the beginning is preposterous. There is no way to explain life if you believe that.

The notion that life ends with mortal death is ridiculous. There is no way to face life if you believe that.

Boyd K. Packer

The Mystery of Life

Ensign, November, 1983

Faith in the Lord/Trust in the Lord

"Faith in the Lord is trust in the Lord.  We cannot have true faith in the Lord without also having complete trust in the Lord's will and in the Lord's timing.  As a result, no matter how strong our faith is, it cannot produce a result contrary to the will of Him in whom we have faith.  Remember that when your prayers do not seem to be answered in the way or at the time you desire.  The exercise of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is always subject to the order of heaven, to the goodness and will and wisdom and timing of the Lord."

Elder Dallin H. Oaks
"The Atonement and Faith"
Ensign
April, 2010