Spiritual Whisperings

As I posted yesterday, this past weekend was General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I want to focus my blogging today and maybe a few others on what touched me and has inspired me.

Jeffery R Holland spoke about having faith in these days. One of his statements that seemed to jump out to me was:

"It is a characteristic of our age that if people want any Gods at all, they want them to be Gods who do not demand much - Comfortable Gods and Smooth Gods who do not rock the boat - but don't even row it. Gods who pat us on the head, make us giggle, then tell us to run along and pick marigolds."


What does this really mean? What is it that I can take from it and better my life?
At first it is easy to say it is talking about everyone else in the world. I am a big believer that we can find a lesson for ourselves if we open our hearts to messages we hear.

We have been warned in the 10 Commandments not to put any other Gods before our Heavenly Father. This is not just talking about other gods like in Egyptian times. It is talking about anything that we give more time and power to - entertainment, careers, material possessions......

So back to the quote above - what in our lives are these type of gods that we have allowed to smooth us into complacency? Are we looking for easy things or easy outs so we do not have to face the harder ones? Are we filling our lives with distractions so we don't take a chance of the Lord giving us or prompting us to do harder things?

Do we feel like that everything in our lives that is not easy is a storm we must face? Or do we see most of them as growing opportunities? Do we see them as moments that God has left us alone? Or do we see it as a moment where our Heavenly Father loves us enough to allow us to  grow and become stronger and allow who we can become to be shown?

As a parent it would be very easy to protect my child from all the hard moments in life - put them in a bubble, never allowing them to fall down and get a scraped knee, fall off a bike, have a broken heart, fail at anything. What kind of adult would they become?  We know that when our own parents allowed us to experience these hard life moments, that we lived thru it and became stronger and in most cases can look back and say, "That time in my life was hard, but I would not change it for the world. I am who I am today because of it."

And so it is with our Heavenly Father. His heart aches to see us in pain and struggle, and yet He knows  and can see that on the other side of that experience we will come out stronger.

It was once said that, 'If choosing the right and following God's commandments was easy, everyone would be doing it.' We are creatures of comfort. If we allow ourselves to always be comfortable and never be stretched we will never progress in any area of our lives.

 Attitude is a huge thing that can either bless us or hurt us more. We can either laugh or cry in moments of trials....and most times it is good to do both.

But the lesson from this quote I ask myself is, "What in my life do I give more energy to than maybe I should, because it makes me comfortable, is easy and distracts me from the harder things I should be doing?" That is the question I have put in my heart this day as I try to be a little more positive, grow a little more, and face any new storms with a few new "dance moves" that my Lord has shown me to help me get thru them. Because the truth is we are not alone - we must just ask and He is always there.