This past week I have learned many lessons that have greatly benefited me. Among a few of the them was learning about God's grace and what it means to submit to his will and also about faith. I will try to explain and if it doens't make sense I am sorry.
Before I always had this mind set that when you submitted to God's will it meant that you had to be easy. You couldn't have the feelings or desires that you had anymore. So anytime I didn't want to do something that I should I would feel an overwhelming sense of guilt and feel like I was letting down my Heavenly Father and Christ. But this week I learned differently. I was asked to do something unexpectedly that I didn't necessarily want to do but knew that I should because I knew my companion was inspired and it was for our investigator. So I said I would do it but I still had almost resentful angry feelings that I didn't want to have. I went into the other room and started praying. Asking Heavenly Father to forgive me for the feelings that I had and for not being more willing and ready to do things. Then I remembered a story I read recently how that woman prayed and how she was completely honest in her prayer. How she explained that she didn't want to do what was expected of her but would because she knew the blessings that would follow. I did the same thing. I was honest and told the Father that I didn't want to necessarily do what was asked of me (even though it was a small thing) but I knew that He wanted me to and that it would help my companions and the investigator. As soon as I ended that prayer I felt so much peace and joy and that day I was able to be happy and was able to strengthen and help my companions. I felt in my heart that Heavenly Father was pleased with my willingness to do his bidding even though it was hard. I know know. We learn about this in primary but I just never truly understood it before. And so I have wasted much much time in dwelling in my guilt and emotions even when I have done His will because I have never truly understood things before. I don't know if this made sense to anyone but it was a huge help to me and is still a huge help to me.
Another one I am learning more and need to improve more is faith. Today at District Meeting I did a training from Elder Nelson's 2011 april talk that is about faith. So during personal study I was thinking a lot about it and how I can improve on it. What is faith? Faith is a power given from Heaven. When you faith you trust in God's promises and trust in the atonement. When you have faith you don't have fear. So it says in the wonderful book titled, “Preach my Gospel.” I have realized of late that I have too much fear. So by having so much fear it makes it harder for my faith to show. So now my new goal is to gain more faith and displacing all the fear that I have. I will do by always remembering that I am a child of God and am the Lord's missionary. What reason do I have to fear? I have angels round about me all day long and I have the power of the Savior's atonement at my disposal. What could go wrong?
That is what I have learned a lot about this last week and then some.
