Sunday School

After being released from primary I was called to teach the Sunday School, Gospel Doctrine class. I enjoy teaching and speaking and feel like this calling is a blessing directly from Heavenly Father. I have struggled this year to stay up with the Come Follow Me program, and I am so grateful for the opportunity that I've had to have the excuse of my calling to study and partake of the blessings of Sunday School. I don't feel like I am particularly eloquent, I'm awkward more often than not, but I'm trying - and I truly enjoy it. 

In October 2015, President Nelson gave a talk titled "A Plea to My Sisters" and in it he made a... well, a plea for the women of the church to rise up and speak, serve, teach, and love. 

"We, your brethren, need your strength, your conversion, your conviction, your ability to lead, your wisdom, and your voices. The kingdom of God is not and cannot be complete without women who make sacred covenants and then keep them, women who can speak with the power and authority of God! 

President Packer declared: “We need women who are organized and women who can organize. We need women with executive ability who can plan and direct and administer; women who can teach, women who can speak out. …We need women with the gift of discernment who can view the trends in the world and detect those that, however popular, are shallow or dangerous.”

Today, let me add that we need women who know how to make important things happen by their faith and who are courageous defenders of morality and families in a sin-sick world. We need women who are devoted to shepherding God’s children along the covenant path toward exaltation; women who know how to receive personal revelation, who understand the power and peace of the temple endowment; women who know how to call upon the powers of heaven to protect and strengthen children and families; women who teach fearlessly.

Attacks against the Church, its doctrine, and our way of life are going to increase. Because of this, we need women who have a bedrock understanding of the doctrine of Christ and who will use that understanding to teach and help raise a sin-resistant generation. We need women who can detect deception in all of its forms. We need women who know how to access the power that God makes available to covenant keepers and who express their beliefs with confidence and charity. We need women who have the courage and vision of our Mother Eve. 

My dear sisters, nothing is more crucial to your eternal life than your own conversion. It is converted, covenant-keeping women—women like my dear wife Wendy—whose righteous lives will increasingly stand out in a deteriorating world and who will thus be seen as different and distinct in the happiest of ways.

So today I plead with my sisters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to step forward! Take your rightful and needful place in your home, in your community, and in the kingdom of God—more than you ever have before. I plead with you to fulfill President Kimball’s prophecy. And I promise you in the name of Jesus Christ that as you do so, the Holy Ghost will magnify your influence in an unprecedented way!

I am doing my best to rise to this call. To understand and then teach fearlessly. To have a bedrock understanding of the doctrine of Christ and then speak with the power and authority of God. 

I'll be honest. I have a FAR way to go. And I've struggled with things this year that I never have before. I feel like I thought that I had built a fortress of faith and then one day Satan started attacking me from a different direction and I realized my fortress was really only a wall and I had been expecting Satan to stay on the other side, but as soon as he sidestepped it, I was right in his range. But I have held to the promise that I gave to Him: That I had given him my faith and trust and that I would rise to stand with Him with everything that I had. Over and over, faith and trust - faith and trust - faith and trust. I even started a tag in my scriptures, marking all of the places that speak of faith and trust. Little by little, I have gotten braver and stronger. I have been patient in waiting for the further light and information I was seeking and held fast to what I knew while I waited. 

 On Sunday, I taught the Sunday School lesson. It was on James, 1 Peter, and 2 Peter. There were SO many things that we could have talked about. SO many good things to discuss. But I've been trying to keep my lessons guided by student participation and the spirit and after asking the class to write small phrases that stood out to them in the reading, the rest of the lesson was spent talking about Faith - about asking in faith and trusting in the answer. About the actions that go with faith. About WHY we have faith and HOW we trust in God. One of the final comments had me in tears because her comment was exactly the answer to my personal prayers. I wrote Faith and Trust on the board and realized in that moment - that the entire lesson was a gift to me from loving Heavenly Parents. 

I love the verses in 1 Peter 5: 8-11

8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
9 Whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.
10 But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.
11 To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

I sometimes feel like the roaring lion is breathing down my back - but I add my testimony to Peter's. We CAN stand fast in our faith. We are not alone. He will use our trials and struggles to refine us.

He will strengthen me and settle me.

I will have faith and I will trust.

Today I'm just so grateful for the tender mercy that this lesson was to my heart.