"Put The Savior First"

This morning I was praying to know how to give more of my will to God's.  He told me to get up off my knees and He would show me. I read Abinadi's last testimony, a very black and white  clear look at what final judgment will be like as well as where our hearts need to be.

Then I went to the gym.

Now, I am really good at putting going to the gym off until "later in the day"...which usually equates to "not happening."  Well, today I realized that I could fit it in since Drew is on breakfast and it will be cooked while I am exercising.  I could do that, I thought.

Lately, being as far along as I am in my pregnancy, "exercising" means walking, which allows me to read the Ensign while I do it.  I have found such faith and inspiration and have been grateful for the answers I have received while exercising.  And today, it took on new light.

I turned to the article "Put the Savior First" from the July 2017 Ensign and was blown away by the strong answer to my prayer.  I realized that in going exercising and reading the Ensign, God was able to get my attention directed to the answers I was missing in the Ensign articles!  It wasn't just about exercising my body, but I was receiving a cleansing of the Spirit. When the Spirit nudged me to exercise, it wasn't just about the exercising.

"While I was a young business professional, I heard a voice shout inside me, “You need to leave this place and this job.” So, I walked out on Wall Street—leaving a large bonus on the table—and joined a small investment company in Boston that paid me less than half of what I was then earning.
I did not doubt that voice. It made neither logical nor financial sense. It made no sense to many of my friends, and I could not fully explain it to them.
In time, though, as I followed the voice of the Spirit to walk away, doors opened that allowed me to become an instrument in the hands of the Lord in helping lift countless people out of poverty, disease, and hopelessness. The decision to leave made sense only in hindsight, but being true to the voice changed everything.
Whether you are on the farm pitching hay and harvesting potatoes, in the home raising a family, or at the office working as a manager, you will not be whole and healed and fully empowered unless you receive the voice of the Spirit and go and do whatever it directs."

I am going to put portions of the rest of the article in here. It is just so beautiful.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. That note read in part: “What is important in the end is what we have become by our labors. … Wise are those who make this commitment: I will put the Lord first in my life, and I will keep His commandments. … This is the ultimate significance of taking upon you the name of Jesus Christ, and this is what we should ponder.”1

Yours too is a choice of how best to apply your degree and talents. You can use your training either to bring light to yourself or to bring the Savior’s light to others.

*****
Years ago my father said the following: “The real challenge today is not in outer space but in inner man. To reconcile the how of our living with the why of our existence and in the synthesis to emerge the child of God that we know we are. … May your life bear an unalterable testimony that there is knowledge—independent of reason—[a knowledge that is able to alter lives and which can only be found through obedience] to the voice of … God within us.”2The ultimate foundation of all you do in life should be to live so that the voice and integrity of the Spirit take precedence as the powerful, necessary force in determining your actions, both professionally and personally.
You live in an age that needs a profound inner spiritual rebirth. Yours is a time that calls for men and women willing to assert their birthright of choice to alter and shape lives and institutions in a way that reflects the moral and spiritual values dictated by the Spirit of God. Unless you can arrive at that point, you will idolize and surround yourself with the trivial.
Acting according to the Spirit, however, is not always easy. It often requires significant sacrifice and at times deep obedience against the purely rational mind.

I am sure each of you has given thought to your future. Most of you have probably thought, “It’s now time to become part of the real world.” Let me assure you it is not and never will be that time. Rather, this is the time to resolve forever to stand above the world—your goal must not be assimilation into the real world but to disrupt it. 

 By the voice of the Spirit, you will be asked to walk unmarked paths, many times needing to do things that make little sense. You will have to build a Kirtland Temple, like Joseph, with no money; or retrieve brass plates, like Nephi, against an army of 50 (see 1 Nephi 3:31; 4:1).

It is not the maximization of wealth or success that underpins the command to “let your light so shine before men” (Matthew 5:16); rather, it is Spirit-directed acts of sacrifice and courage that build and edify. These also are the acts that blaze new pathways that astonish this world.

The intimate and absolute test of your life will be whether you hearken with exactness to the voice of the Spirit of God within you—using all the talents and gifts and education He has given you.

For better or worse, the reality of our world is that we live in a day and hour when both good and powerful evil share the geography of our time.
You are not here by accident. You are here by choice. You wanted the opportunity to prove yourself. You are here at a time of morally twisted opposition that calls “evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). You elected to stand here to give service and to love.

Today we have great divisions before us. Within and without the Church there exist real stumbling blocks. Outside we are pressed daily by violence, invasion of individual liberty, discrimination, poverty, immorality, disease, and so much more. Inside the Church many struggle to reconcile and understand same-gender attraction, the role of women, or certain Church doctrines or historical events. Many struggle with doubt, lack of confidence or resources, zealousness, commitment, meeting schedules, leaders who offend, friends or children who stray, prayers that seem unanswered, or broken trusts through emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. 

The night of the Lord’s Atonement began with the Savior commanding the disciples to make and renew a covenant to always remember and honor His sacrifice. Then, as described in the Gospel of John, He knelt and washed the feet of those who would in a few short hours betray Him, deny Him, or fall asleep in His most needed hour. He exhorted them to be one with Him, to forgive, to wash the feet of others, and to love each other as He loved them. He asked that they raise their vision to His vision. (See John 13.)

Can you see that the great charge of the Atonement of Christ is to love as He loved? To love those who betray, who offend, who fall asleep, who deny, who doubt, who are overzealous and cut off an ear with a sword or wound a heart with a harsh word or deed? To be long-suffering with those who will not hear and who will not love back? 

I keep in a frame on a wall in my home office these words of Elbert Hubbard: “God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars.”3

This is the pattern that the Lord places before us as we work to do His work to lift others: we will be called upon to suffer innocently if we are to achieve what He needs us to achieve as His light before men.

We have around us many who are spiritually dead, and you must be willing to be laughed to scorn. Like the Savior, you must move forward against a world that does not believe, and you must not “shrink” (D&C 19:18) before the taunting of our secular world.