LDS Gem Archives, June 2009
Daily Gems - 30 June 2009
Truth Gained from the Book of Mormon
"When you know that the Book of Mormon is true, you know that Joseph Smith was called by God to restore the Church of Jesus Christ to the earth. . . . You know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the only name whereby you can receive salvation."
Topics: Plan of Salvation, Book of Mormon
Family Gems - 29 June 2009
Parents and Children Are Admonished to Express Love to One Another
“To you parents, express your love to your children. Pray for them that they may be able to withstand the evils of the world. Pray that they may grow in faith and testimony. Pray that they may pursue lives of goodness and of service to others.
“Children, let your parents know you love them. Let them know how much you appreciate all they have done and continue to do for you.”
Topics: Children, Parenthood
Church History Gems - 29 June 2009
Humility
"There is a guide for receiving the Lord's power of deliverance from opposition in life. It was given to Thomas B. Marsh, then the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He was in difficult trials, and the Lord knew he would face more. Here was the counsel to him that I take for myself and offer you: 'Be thou humble; and the Lord thy God shall lead thee by the hand, and give thee answer to thy prayers' (D&C 112:10).
"The Lord always wants to lead us to deliverance through our becoming more righteous. That requires repentance. And that takes humility. So the way to deliverance always requires humility in order for the Lord to be able to lead us by the hand where He wants to take us through our troubles and on to sanctification."
Topics: Humility
Daily Gems - 29 June 2009
Spiritual Home Storage
"Brothers and sisters, we each have moments of spiritual power, moments of inspiration and revelation. We must sink them deep into the chambers of our souls. As we do, we prepare our spiritual home storage for moments of personal difficulty."
Topics: Spirituality
Church History Gems - 26 June 2009
Answering All Objections Ever Made
"We are to use the Book of Mormon in handling objections to the Church. God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ revealed themselves to Joseph Smith in a marvelous vision. After that glorious event, Joseph Smith told a minister about it. Joseph was surprised to hear the minister say that there were no such things as visions or revelations in these days, that all such things had ceased. (See JS—H 1:21.)
"This remark symbolizes practically all of the objections that have ever been made against the Church by nonmembers and dissident members alike. Namely, they do not believe that God reveals his will today to the Church through prophets of God. All objections, whether they be on abortion, plural marriage, seventh-day worship, etc., basically hinge on whether Joseph Smith and his successors were and are prophets of God receiving divine revelation. . . .
"Therefore, the only problem the objector has to resolve for himself is whether the Book of Mormon is true. For if the Book of Mormon is true, then Jesus is the Christ, Joseph Smith was His prophet, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true, and it is being led today by a prophet receiving revelation."
Topics: Book of Mormon
Young Single Adult Gems - 26 June 2009
Spiritual Consequences
“Our Heavenly Father loves all of His children, and He wants them all to have the blessings of the gospel in their lives. Spiritual light is not lost because God turns His back on His children. Rather, spiritual darkness results when His children turn their collective backs on Him. It is a natural consequence of bad choices made by individuals, communities, countries, and entire civilizations. This has been proven again and again throughout the course of time. One of the great lessons of this historical pattern is that our choices, both individually and collectively, do result in spiritual consequences for ourselves and for our posterity.”
Topics:
Daily Gems - 26 June 2009
Lifeblood of the Church
"Missionary work is the lifeblood of the Church. There is no greater work, no more important work. It blesses the lives of all those who participate in it. It will continue blessing future generations."
Topics: Plan of Salvation, Proclaim the Gospel
Family Gems - 26 June 2009
The Temple and the Home Have Equal Importance
“Temple. One other word is equal in importance to a Latter-day Saint. Home. Put the words holy temple and home together, and you have described the house of the Lord!”
Topics: Temple
Daily Gems - 25 June 2009
Taking Care of Our Mortal Bodies
"We do not want to harm our mortal bodies, for they are a gift from God, and part of our Heavenly Father’s great plan of happiness is the reuniting of our immortal bodies with our spirits."
Topics: Obedience
Young Single Adult Gems - 24 June 2009
Purification Is Possible
“I bear you my testimony that God the Father lives. He set a course for each of us that can polish and perfect us to be with Him. I testify that the Savior lives. His Atonement makes possible our being purified as we keep His commandments and our sacred covenants. And I know from my own experience that He can and will give us strength to rise through every trial.”
Topics: Adversity
Church History Gems - 24 June 2009
Until the Coming of the Son of Man
"The keys given by the Savior to Peter, James, and John, and given by them to the Prophet Joseph, have not rusted. They will open all spiritual doors of the dispensation of the fulness of times. . . .
"How long will these keys last? President Wilford Woodruff stated:
" 'When the Lord gave the keys of the kingdom of God, the keys of the Melchisedec Priesthood, of the apostleship, and sealed them upon the head of Joseph Smith, He sealed them upon his head to stay here upon the earth until the coming of the Son of Man. . . . They were with him to the day of his death. They then rested upon the head of another man. . . . He held those keys to the hour of his death. They then fell by turn, or in the providence of God, upon Wilford Woodruff.
" 'I say to the Latter-day Saints the keys of the kingdom of God are here, and they are going to stay here, too, until the coming of the Son of Man. Let all Israel understand that. They may not rest upon my head but a short time, but they will then rest on the head of another apostle, and another after him, and so continue until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in the clouds of heaven to "reward every man according to the deeds done in the body" ' (Millennial Star, 2 Sept. 1889, p. 547)."
Topics: Priesthood Keys
Daily Gems - 24 June 2009
Joy and Sadness for All
"Every life has peaks and shadows and times when it seems that the birds don't sing and bells don't ring. Yet in spite of discouragement and adversity, those who are happiest seem to have a way of learning from difficult times, becoming stronger, wiser, and happier as a result."
Topics: Opposition, Adversity
Daily Gems - 23 June 2009
Firm Hope
"Hope is not knowledge, but rather the abiding trust that the Lord will fulfill His promise to us."
Topics: Hope
Daily Gems - 22 June 2009
Hope Is a Gift
"Hope is a gift of the Spirit. It is a hope that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the power of His Resurrection, we shall be raised unto life eternal and this because of our faith in the Savior."
Topics: Hope
Family Gems - 22 June 2009
Our Homes Should Be Filled with Gospel Treasures
“We may be well-advised to consider together, in family council, standards for our homes to keep them sacred and to allow them to be a ‘house of the Lord.’ The admonition to ‘establish . . . a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God’ (D&C 88:119) provides divine insight into the type of home the Lord would have us build. Doing such begins the construction of a ‘spiritual mansion’ in which we all may reside regardless of our worldly circumstance—a home filled with treasure that ‘neither moth nor rust doth corrupt’ (see Matthew 6:19–20; 3 Nephi 13:19–20).”
Topics: Family
Church History Gems - 22 June 2009
Foundation upon Which Church Is Built
"Joseph Smith was not only a great man, but he was an inspired servant of the Lord, a prophet of God. His greatness consists in one thing—the truthfulness of his declaration that he saw the Father and the Son and that he responded to the reality of that divine revelation. . . .
"For the first time in eighteen hundred years, God had revealed himself as a personal being. Furthermore, the Father and the Son demonstrated the undeniable truth that they are separate and distinct personages. Indeed, the relationship of the Father and the Son was reaffirmed by the divine introduction to the boy prophet, 'This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him.' (JS—H 1:17.) Those who were baptized into the Church on the sixth of April, 1830, believed in the existence of a personal God; they believed that his reality and the reality of his Son, Jesus Christ, constitute the eternal foundation upon which this Church is built.
"Once we accept Christ as divine, it is easy to visualize his Father as being just as personal as he. Christ said, 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.' (John 14:9.) Faith in the existence of a divine and real and living personal God was the first element that contributed to the perpetuity of the Church of Jesus Christ in ancient times, and it is the everlasting foundation upon which The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is built today."
Topics: God the Father, First Vision, Joseph Smith
Daily Gems - 19 June 2009
Qualify for Guidance from the Spirit
"We need to qualify for the cleansing power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ . . . by keeping His commandment to come to Him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit and in that wonderful weekly meeting partake of the emblems of the sacrament and make the covenants that qualify us for the precious promise that we will always have His Spirit to be with us."
Topics: Spirituality, Sacrament
Church History Gems - 19 June 2009
Morning of the Resurrection
"I quote a letter dated January the 17th, 1889. . . . It concerns my great-grandfather, who was the first of our line in the Church, and who died a few days later, Jonathan Taylor Packer. This letter was written by a daughter-in-law to the family.
"After describing the distress and difficulty he had suffered for several weeks, she wrote:
" 'But I will do all I can for him for I consider it my duty. I will do for him as I would like someone to do for my dear mother, for I am afraid I shall never see her again in this world.'
"And then she wrote this: 'Your father says for you all to be faithful to the principles of the gospel and asks the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob upon you all, and bids you all goodbye until he meets you in the morning of the resurrection.
" 'Well, Martha, I can't hardly see the lines for tears, so I will stop writing. From your loving sister, Mary Ann Packer.'
"I know that I shall see this great-grandfather beyond the veil, and my grandfather, and my father. And I know that I shall there also meet those of my ancestors who lived when the fulness of the gospel was not upon the earth; those who lived and died without ever hearing His name, nor having the invitation to be baptized."
Topics: Family History
Young Single Adult Gems - 19 June 2009
Heavenly Father Loves Us
“My purpose today is to assure you that our Heavenly Father and the Savior live and that They love all humanity. The very opportunity for us to face adversity and affliction is part of the evidence of Their infinite love. God gave us the gift of living in mortality so that we could be prepared to receive the greatest of all the gifts of God, which is eternal life. Then our spirits will be changed. We will become able to want what God wants, to think as He thinks, and thus be prepared for the trust of an endless posterity to teach and to lead through tests to be raised up to qualify to live forever in eternal life.
Topics: Adversity
Family Gems - 19 June 2009
We Can Make Our Homes as Sacred as the Temple
“Under the definition of ‘Temple’ in the Bible Dictionary, we read the following: ‘It is the most holy of any place of worship on the earth,’ followed by this insightful statement: ‘Only the home can compare with the temple in sacredness.’ For me this suggests a sacred relationship between the temple and the home. Not only can we turn the doors of our homes to the temple, or the house of the Lord; we can make our homes a ‘house of the Lord.’ ”
Topics: Temple
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