Study Recap: "Remember Lot's Wife" by Jeffrey R. Holland

Title: "Remember Lot's Wife"
Author: Jeffrey R. Holland
Source: devotional address given at BYU on 13 January 2009
Link: http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=1819&tid=7
Rating: 4.5/5
Favorite Points

• Apparently what was wrong with Lot’s wife was that she wasn’t just looking back; in her heart she wanted to go back.
• As Elder Maxwell once said, such people know they should have their primary residence in Zion, but they still hope to keep a summer cottage in Babylon.
• So it isn’t just that she looked back; she looked back longingly. In short, her attachment to the past outweighed her confidence in the future.
• The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future.
• So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say that she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently she thought—fatally, as it turned out—that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind.
• I can’t tell you the number of couples I have counseled who, when they are deeply hurt or even just deeply stressed, reach farther and farther into the past to find yet a bigger brick to throw through the window “pain” of their marriage. When something is over and done with, when it has been repented of as fully as it can be repented of, when life has moved on as it should and a lot of other wonderfully good things have happened since then, it is not right to go back and open up some ancient wound that the Son of God Himself died trying to heal.

Study Recap: The Seven Deadly Heresies by Bruce R. McConkie

Title: The Seven Deadly Heresies
Author: Bruce R. McConkie
Source: fireside address given at BYU on 1 June 1980
Link: http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=658&tid=7
Rating: 4.25/5

Favorite Points

• I shall speak on some matters that some may consider to be controversial, though they ought not to be. They are things on which we ought to be united, and to the extent we are all guided and enlightened from on high we will be. If we are so united—and there will be no disagreement among those who believe and understand the revealed word...
•  Gospel doctrines belong to the Lord, not to men. They are his. He ordained them, he reveals them, and he expects us to believe them.
• Please note that knowledge is gained by obedience.
• God progresses in the sense that his kingdoms increase and his dominions multiply—not in the sense that he learns new truths and discovers new laws. God is not a student. He is not a laboratory technician. He is not postulating new theories on the basis of past experiences. He has indeed graduated to that state of exaltation that consists of knowing all things and having all power.
• May I say that all truth is in agreement, that true religion and true science bear the same witness, and that in the true and full sense, true science is part of true religion.
• We need to be less concerned about the views and opinions that others have expressed and drink directly from the fountain the Lord has given us. Then we shall come to a true understanding of the points of his doctrine.

Study Recap: An Educated Conscience by Steven R. Covey

Title: An Educated Conscience
Author: Steven R. Covey
Source: devotional address at BYU given on 27 May 1975
Link: http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=948&tid=7
Rating: 1.5/5

Favorite Parts

• I was very interested in President Lee's and President Kimball's first press conference after they were made Presidents of the Church. The basic message which they gave to the world and to the Church was to keep the commandments. Keep the commandments.
• They have a more educated conscience. They are more convicted by a feeling of guilt if they violate certain covenants of which the world is not even aware.
• I believe sometimes that as Latter-day Saints we are like fish who discover water last. We are so immersed in the element that we are unaware of its presence. We have been immersed in the revelations of the Lord in this dispensation. No dispensation can compare to this one.
• President Lee spoke to a group of missionaries in England, and in answer to the question "What is the most important of all the commandments?" said, "The most important commandment is the one you're having the greatest difficulty living."
• Look on your prayers, not as a time to counsel the Lord, but as a time to take counsel from him. I really believe too many times we go down a checklist, in a sense, telling the Lord who, how, where, and when to bless and directing him around the universe and the heavens, instead of being still, sensing a relationship, listening, and then responding to what you hear.

Study Recap: Revelation by Dallin H. Oaks

Title: Revelation
Author: Dallin H. Oaks
Source: devotional address given at BYU on 29 September 1981
Link: http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=568&tid=7
Rating: 4/5

Favorite Points

• I can identify eight different purposes served by communication from God: (1) to testify; (2) to prophesy; (3) to comfort; (4) to uplift; (5) to inform; (6) to restrain; (7) to confirm; and (8) to impel.
• Elder McConkie summarized his counsel on the balance between agency and inspiration in these sentences:
  
  We’re expected to use the gifts and talents and abilities, the sense and judgment and agency with which we are endowed [p. 108]. . . . Implicit in asking in faith is the precedent requirement that we do everything in our power to accomplish the goal that we seek [p. 110]. . . . We’re expected to do everything in our power that we can, and then to seek an answer from the Lord, a confirming seal that we’ve reached the right conclusion [p. 113].
• The eighth purpose or type of revelation consists of those instances when the Spirit impels a person to action. This is not a case where a person proposes to take a particular action and the Spirit either restrains or confirms. This is a case where revelation comes when it is not being sought and impels some action not proposed. This type of revelation is obviously less common than other types, but its rarity makes it all the more significant.
• What about those times when we seek revelation and do not receive it? We do not always receive inspiration or revelation when we request it. Sometimes we are delayed in the receipt of revelation, and sometimes we are left to our own judgment. We cannot force spiritual things. It must be so. Our life’s purpose to obtain experience and to develop faith would be frustrated if our Heavenly Father directed us in every act, even in every important act. We must make decisions and experience the consequences in order to develop self-reliance and faith.
• Even in decisions we think very important, we sometimes receive no answers to our prayers. This does not mean that our prayers have not been heard. It only means that we have prayed about a decision which, for one reason or another, we should make without guidance by revelation.
• Perhaps we have asked for guidance in choosing between alternatives that are equally acceptable or equally unacceptable. I suggest that there is not a right and wrong to every question.
• I once heard a young woman in testimony meeting praise the spirituality of her husband, indicating that he submitted every question to the Lord. She told how he accompanied her shopping and would not even choose between different brands of canned vegetables without making his selection a matter of prayer. That strikes me as improper.
•  

Study Recap: But for a Small Moment by Neal A. Maxwell

Title: But for a Small Moment
Author: Neal A. Maxwell
Source: Fireside address was given at BYU on 1 September 1974
Link: http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=1022&tid=7
Rating: 4/5

Favorite Parts

• I'm not sure we can always understand the implications of his love, because his love will call us at times to do things we may wonder about, and we may be confronted with circumstances we would rather not face
• I believe with all my heart that because God loves us there are some particularized challenges that he will deliver to each of us. He will customize the curriculum for each of us in order to teach us the things we most need to know. He will set before us in life what we need, not always what we like.
• God knows even now what the future holds for each of us. In one of his revelations these startling words appear, as with so many revelations that are too big, I suppose, for us to manage fully: “In the presence of God, . . . all things . . . are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord” (D&C 130:7).
• The future “you” is before him now. He knows what it is he wishes to bring to pass in your life. He knows the kind of remodeling in your life and in mine that he wishes to achieve.
• Christ on the cross gave out the cry “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” That cry on the cross is an indication that the very best of our Father's children found the trials so real, the tests so exquisite and so severe, that he cried out—not in doubt of his Father's reality, but wondering “why” at that moment of agony—for Jesus felt so alone. James Talmage advises us that in ways you and I cannot understand, God somehow withdrew his immediate presence from the Son so that Jesus Christ's triumph might be truly complete.
• From Gethsemane and Calvary there are many lessons we need to apply to our own lives. We, too, at times may wonder if we have been forgotten and forsaken. Hopefully, we will do as the Master did and acknowledge that God is still there and never doubt that sublime reality–even though we may wonder and might desire to avoid some of life's experiences. We may at times, if we are not careful, try to pray away pain or what seems like an impending tragedy, but which is, in reality, an opportunity. We must do as Jesus did in that respect—also preface our prayers by saying, “If it be possible,” let the trial pass from us—by saying, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt,” and bowing in a sense of serenity to our Father in heaven's wisdom, because at times God will not be able to let us pass by a trial or a challenge.
• In the eternal ecology of things we must pray, therefore, not that things be taken from us, but that God's will be accomplished through us.
• What, therefore, may seem now to be mere unconnected pieces of tile will someday, when we look back, take form and pattern, and we will realize that God was making a mosaic. For there is in each of our lives this kind of divine design, this pattern, this purpose that is in the process of becoming, which is continually before the Lord but which for us, looking forward, is sometimes perplexing.
• A second trap into which we can fall is the naïveté that grows out of our not realizing that the adversary will press particularly in the areas of our vulnerabilities. It ought not to surprise us that this will be so. The things that we would most like to avoid, therefore, will often be the things that confront us most directly and most sharply.
• I don't think God's too interested in real estate. He owns it all anyway.
• A seventh trap, brothers and sisters, is that some of us neglect to develop multiple forces of satisfaction. When one of the wells upon which we draw dries up through death, loss or status, disaffection, or physical ailment, we then find ourselves very thirsty because, instead of having multiple sources of satisfaction in our lives, we have become too dependent upon this or upon that.
• An eighth trap to be avoided, brothers and sisters, is the tendency we have—rather humanly, rather understandably—to get ourselves caught in peering through the prism of the present and then distorting our perspective about things. Time is of this world; it is not of eternity. We can, if we are not careful, feel the pressures of time and see things in a distorted way. How important it is that we see things as much as possible through the lens of the gospel with its eternal perspectives.
• I am surprised (I would be amused if the cost were not so great) that people think they can remove the foundations of our social structure—things like work, chastity, and family and then wonder why other things crumble. You can't remove the foundation of a building while standing inside and not be hit with falling plaster.

Study Recap: Our Search for Happiness by James E. Faust

Title: Our Search for Happiness
Author: James E. Faust
Source: devotional address was given at BYU on 14 September 1999
Link: http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=347&tid=7 
Rating:  3/5

Favorite Points

• The more faithfully we keep the commandments of God, the happier we will be. 
• Pleasure is often confused with happiness but is by no means synonymous with it.
• Pleasure, unlike happiness, is that which pleases us or gives us gratification. Usually it endures for only a short time. As President McKay once said, “You may get that transitory pleasure, yes, but you cannot find joy, you cannot find happiness. Happiness is found only along that well beaten track, narrow as it is, though straight, which leads to life eternal” (CR, October 1919, 180).
• The Savior of the world taught us to seek that inner peace which taps the innate happiness in our souls. He said, “My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27)
• That inner peace spoken of by the Savior seems elusive when we are preoccupied with things we have or things we wish we had. 
• I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. [Mosiah 2:41]
• Henrik Ibsen reminded us, “Money may buy the husk of many things, but not the kernel. It brings food, but not the appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not faithfulness; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.

Study Recap: You Are Free by Elder D. Todd Christofferson

Title: You Are Free
Author: Elder D. Todd Christofferson
Source: From a devotional address given at BYU on 19 October 1999
Overview: What God requires is the devotion portrayed by Jesus.
Link: https://www.lds.org/ensign/2013/03/you-are-free?lang=eng
Rating: 3.5/5

Below are the points that most stood out to me:

• But for your freedom to be complete, you must be willing to give away all your sins (see Alma 22:18), your willfulness, your cherished but unsound habits, perhaps even some good things that interfere with what God sees is essential for you.
• In the words of President Boyd K. Packer, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “We are not obedient because we are blind, we are obedient because we can see.”
• Our choice in this life is not whether we will or will not be subject to any power. Our choice is to which authority we will yield obedience: God’s or Satan’s. As Lehi stated, it is a choice between liberty and captivity (see2 Nephi 2:27). If it is not one, it is necessarily the other.
• “There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. …
  
  “Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest” (Joshua 1:5, 7).