A Brigham Young University Student Journal
Many of you know the saying: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. This is true for parenting!! All work and no play makes for very boring parents. Relax a little and take the time to really have fun with your children. …
No one wants to admit being wrong, and certainly no parent wants to remember the times when his or her parenting was less than stellar. As parents we try hard to make good choices, but unfortunately, there comes a day when you get it wrong. …
Of all the things I did as a parent, teaching my children about Jesus Christ is the one area in which I wish I’d done more. Don’t get me wrong. I did many things to teach my kids about Jesus Christ and the role He plays in our lives
Ways I taught my children about Jesus Christ:
So…what more could I do? In hindsight, there is more I wish I had done.
I wish I had told them—often—how much I rely on Jesus Christ and the Atonement. I wish I had explained what the atonement was to me personally. I wish I’d borne my testimony to them, maybe not in so many words, but by sharing with them how everyday events affected my testimony or helped me rely on my Savior.
There were a few times when something major happened, where I would do this. But I can probably count on one hand the number of times I shared my heart with my kids. I regret that. How could they understand how much I trusted my Heavenly Father and needed my Savior if I didn’t share those feelings with them? How could they learn to do the same?
We have neighbors who are not LDS. The husband is, in fact, a preacher for another faith. When I talk with his wife, I am blown away by how much she talks about Jesus Christ and His role in her life. I have often thought that it would be a great idea to follow her example by putting Jesus into my everyday conversations just a little more.
A month or so ago our youngest grandchild (she was about 6 months old) had a medical emergency. She was taken to the emergency room where they ran tests and thought for a few hours that her intestines had problems. This family lives out of state, and while this was unfolding, our other children who live in Utah happened to be at our house for a family dinner. So before my children left our house, I asked if they would kneel down and pray for our granddaughter with me, which they did. It was very satisfying to openly ask for my children’s participation.
So if I had it to do over again, I would change a few things.
When the Spirit touched my heart and made me want to cry, I would not hide it or stifle it. I would tell my kids exactly how I was feeling and why, and help them to know that the Spirit can touch their heart, too.
When I felt impressed with a church message or specific doctrine, I would try to find ways to talk about it at the dinner table, or at FHE.
And more than anything else, I would talk openly and often about Jesus Christ, and how my life is better because of Him.
Written by Phyllis Rosen
Because asthma is the most common chronic illness among children it’s important to understand managing childhood asthma. Upon this discovery many parents have a limited understanding of the disease and its treatment, which is the exact information parents need to know and utilize to keep …
Teach Your Children to Work Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work we go… In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the dwarfs sing cheerfully with their shovels in hand as they march off to work in the mines. This probably is not the way your …
The Thanksgiving holiday is a time to express thanks for the many blessings we have been given. A time to pause, reflect, and notice blessings that we may not otherwise recognize. A time to express our love for our Savior and our Heavenly Father, for truly “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father” (James 1:17).
But how can we even begin to express our gratitude to them? King Benjamin puts into words the feelings we may experience as we reflect on our indebtedness to the Father and the Son:
“I say unto that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another—I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants” (Mosiah 2:20-21).
Because they bless us with so much, we love them. And as “unprofitable” as we may feel, there are still ways we can express that love and gratitude for our God-given blessings. In John 14, the Savior teaches His apostles a profound lesson about the way they, and we, can show our love to Him and the Father.
He says, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” In three words, the Savior Himself gives us the simple formula for expressing gratitude: “Keep my commandments.” It is a phrase so often repeated and even sung in the church, but do we really stop to think about the significance behind it? What does it mean to truly keep His commandments?
In the Oxford Dictionary “keep” is defined as to “have or retain possession of,” “continue doing or do repeatedly,” “retain one’s place in spite of difficulty,” “continue to follow a path or course,” and “guard, protect.” In past times, the word “keep” was used to describe “the strongest or central tower of a castle, acting as a final refuge.”
These definitions may help us understand the plea the Savior was making when he asked his apostles to keep His commandments. Not only does he want us to obey them, He wants us to stay true to them, continually keep them despite difficulty, guard them, and protect them. And as we keep them, they can become a “refuge” for us. If we continue on in the account in John, the Savior further explains how this can happen:
“And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.”
We learn another great lesson about gratitude from these words. The Savior doesn’t always promise that our burdens will be taken away, or that our prayers will be answered in the way we may hope. What He does promise is that he will send us the Comforter- He will not leave us comfortless. He will come to us. As one who sees us and our circumstances with a much greater perspective than our own, we can trust that He knows what is best.
As we celebrate this time of year, seeking to count our blessings and express our love for the Savior, let us remember that the Savior has taught us to express our love to Him in ways far more significant than just words. He asks us to keep. Keep His commandments, keep our covenants, keep the faith. And as we “keep,” he promises to bless us with the ultimate gift- the Comforter, which enables us to feel as if we are constantly in His presence.
Again in the words of King Benjamin, “he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever.” (Mosiah 2:24). Let us love Him. Let us keep His commandments.
Written by Amanda Brower
I’d personally love to tell you all about how great all my relationships have been going and what the biggest successes and positive signs are . . . and I’ll still be glad to share. However, I’m coming from a unique perspective at this time. …
As my husband and I were discussing parenting (we often do) we realized that a large part of parenting is supporting your spouse. You may wonder “what does that have to do with parenting? Turns out it plays a large role. There are many ways …
Before we were born we all lived with God. Genesis 1:27 says, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he them; male and female created he them.” Thus, men and women were created, spiritually first, as God’s own offspring—spirit sons and daughters with a divine potential. Like all loving fathers, God wanted to provide us with a way to become all that he is, a way for us to gain His inheritance; with this end in mind, he created a plan for us to learn and grow, that one day we could be perfected and able to live in His presence, with our families, for all eternity. Families are central to God’s great plan because it is in our earthly families that we can learn to adopt the attributes of Christ and feel a portion of God’s love for His children.
In order for us to progress toward exaltation (or our goal of eternal life with God), we had to do two things: the first was to gain a physical body, and the second was to prove that we were willing to keep God’s commandments, even without our memory of the premortal life. So, under the direction of our Father, Jesus Christ created the world as a place for us to live and grow as families. Adam and Eve were the first human inhabitants of the Earth, but in order for them to progress according to God’s plan (and therefore give way for us to live and progress), they had to partake of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, bringing upon mankind the first spiritual death, a separation from God and a fall to mortality. In Abraham 3:26, God says, “And they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; . . . and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever.”
All people who came to Earth to receive their bodies thereafter have kept their first estate, and those who keep God’s commandments while on the Earth will keep their second. It is important that we keep God’s commandments now so that we may be worthy to receive the ordinances that will, in part, qualify us for exaltation; these ordinances include baptism, confirmation, priesthood ordination (for men), endowment, and sealing. The sealing ordinance is where we are sealed to our families for time and all eternity. No one can inherit all the kingdoms of God without having this sealing ordinance; this reiterates to us the importance God places upon the family unit and our responsibilities to our families, to both our ancestry and our progeny.
In Helaman 10:7, we read that with the right power and authority, “whatsoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven. . . .” Because of this beautiful promise, our sealing to our family is not broken when we die. Those who have proved faithful on earth will live in spirit paradise, and have a mission to prepare those in spirit prison, people who have not accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to receive their saving ordinances by proxy on Earth.
When Christ returns at the Second Coming, all people will be resurrected. This will be a glorious day, when we are not only reunited with our physical bodies, but also reunited with the members of our families. After the millennium (a period of a thousand years without temptation), we will be judged of God by our works and the desires of our hearts. He will place us in one of three kingdoms: either the telestial, the terrestrial, or the celestial, each increasing in glory. Those who qualify to live in the celestial kingdom will live in the presence of God, having completed their second estate, and having been perfected through the power of the Atonement of Christ.
It is very important that we learn about and apply the Atonement in our lives, because without the Atonement we cannot enter into God’s presence again. 2 Nephi 25:23 says, “For we labor diligently to write [of Christ], to persuade our chidren, and our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.” And we can’t stop there; it is our responsibility to teach the doctrine of Christ to all members of our families, that we might be surrounded by our central unit of happiness with God our Father forever and ever.
Written by Cari Taylor
Parents across the country watch their child scream and cry as a nurse tries to insert a needle into the muscle on the child’s arm. The dramatic response of children to as simple of an injection as a flu shot causes parents to dread the …