Mormon Musings

No work is more of a protection to the Church than temple work and the genealogical research which supports it.  No work is more spiritually refining.  No work we do gives us more power.  No work requires a higher standard of righteousness.  Our labors in the Temple cover us with a shield and a protection, both individually and as a people.   President Boyd K. Packer, " The Holy Temple " page 265

We may be bright and learned. We may be physically fit and fully capable. We may have all of the advantages of circumstance and environment and society, but there is a bond and a servitude and a limitation which if we're not careful may, in fact, be more apparent and evident and to which we may be more vulnerable at that point than at almost any other time. For lack of something else to call it, let me call it the world. I want to read you a few lines about this subject: For that person striving to live righteously, this mortal existence is a testing time indeed. The faithful are plagued with the temptations of a world that appears to have lost itself in a snarled maze of ambiguity, mendacity, and threatening uncertainty. The challenge to live in the world but not of the world is a monumental one, indeed. Our second estate is indeed a probationary state. The choices we are called upon to make every day of our lives call forth the exercise of our agency. That we fail so freque...

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A [mathematical] sum [incorrectly worked] can be put right; but only by going back till you find the error and then working it fresh from that point. [It will] never [be corrected] by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot "develop" into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound.  C. S. Lewis,  The Great Divorce  (New York: Macmillan Co., 1973), p. 6

Impressions of the Spirit can come in response to urgent prayer or unsolicited when needed. Sometimes the Lord reveals truth to you when you are not actively seeking it, such as when you are in danger and do not know it. However, the Lord will not force you to learn. You must exercise your agency to authorize the Spirit to teach you. As you make this a practice in your life, you will be more perceptive to the feelings that come with spiritual guidance. Then, when that guidance comes, sometimes when you least expect it, you will recognize it more easily. Richard G. Scott ,  "To Acquire Spiritual Guidance," Ensign, Nov. 2009, 8