Christlike Attributes

I am behind in my bldg once again. I apologize! Too much going on right now, so let me catch you all up to speed. A couple of weeks ago, we had a lesson on Service that you should all read if you have not. Then last week was our lesson by Debbie Adams on Teaching for our Times from the Ensign, The Three R’s of Choice, by President Monson. I was not there for that one and I have not read it either so I have nothing to report on it. However, I do encourage you to read it if you have not already done so. And now, for this week’s lesson!

This week’s lesson was given by Julie Barlow and she spoke on Christlike Attributes. This was taken from Preach My Gospel. The scriptures that we used for the lesson were Ether 12:4, D&C 59:23, Moroni 7:41 and Moroni 8:26. If you don’t have your scriptures, grab them and read along with us. In the Preach my Gospel, it talks about all of Christlike Attributes. There are 9 of them and the presidency will be teaching about them each month. Shelley spoke on Faith in January, and this week, it’s Hope. Ask yourself, what is Hope? Hope is the longing for blessings from our Heavenly Father. “We believe all things, we hope all things, and we have endure all thing” (Article of Faith, #13). Hope is the longing for the blessing from our Heavenly Father. In the Webster’s Dictionary, it define hope as “a feeling that what is wanted will happen; the thing that one has a hope for; a reason for hope; a person or thing on which one may base some hope; trust, reliance”. Hope is a firm belief of something, of trusting in something. The anchor of the Gospel is Hope. The anchor to our soul, to trust in God’s promises that what he said to us, he will deliver. Having hope in people is hard as people let us down, but our Heavenly Father, will never let us down. Our hope for him is real. It is our anchor.

Let’s look up Ether 12:4 and see what it says – “Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.” The “anchor to the soul of men”, that is hope. It’s important that we have hope in things that we want. Hope keeps the dream alive. Without it, we have nothing to look forward to.

Let look at the second scripture, D&C 59:23 and see what that says – “But learn that he who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come.” He who does the works of righteousness, shall receive his reward…peace in this world, eternal life in the world to come. Wow, that’s an amazing promise. All by having this hope, deciding to do works of righteousness to receive peace and eternal life. And we know that we can trust our Heavenly Father to keep his word, he is bound.

Now the third scriptures, Moroni 7:41, lets see what that says – “And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise.” Having hope in the resurrection is powerful. This is a promise from our Heavenly Father that we will all be resurrected.

And finally the last scripture, Moroni 8:26 – “And the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and lowliness of heart; and because of meekness and lowliness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God.” The remission of sins…meekness and lowliness of heart…come visitation of the Holy Ghost…the Comforter with the hope of perfect love…endureth by prayer…until the end…, that is powerful. We must not lose hope. We must keep our eye on the ball at all time. The adversary is very strong and he is working over time as we can see so we have to keep the faith and be strong through every thing we are going through. We need to be in tune with our body and know when we don’t have the spirit with us. In the real world, we will encounter people and places that don’t have the spirit and we will be tempted, we must know those times and be aware of them. We must know what we need to do that keep with spirit with us inside, even if the place we are in, does not always have it.

Hope is the outer circle while Faith is in the inner circle. Hope is what keeps us strong so we can endure in our trials. And some of our trials can be very hard and challenging. And sometimes we wonder if we are going to make it. Our trials can be very heavy and we feel like we are surrounded by darkness too, but through it all, it’s important that we keep our eye on the ball and don’t look sight of it. We must keep our anchor in the water holding us still through the storm. It’s important that we have that hope at all times. We are daughters of our Heavenly Father and he does love us, no matter what. He is concern about us and worries about us just like we worry about our own children. He wants to best for us which is why he offers us his promise of hope. He WILL keep his promise no matter what. If we do what we are suppose to do, and try to do his will, he has to keep his promise, and that is our hope that we must have. We must believe in that hope, to have his promise of peace and eternal life.

On that note, I’ll end. Please feel free to share your thoughts with us on this discussion. We would love to hear from you. You just might uplift someone who may need to read about your experiences. Join us next week for another amazing discussion from Beth Maranto who will be talking on “The Lord’s Law of Health”, lesson #29. Have a great week! Thanks for joining me, until next time…

Kelly