We've got 3 weeks before our next Sunday school lesson, but I want you to check this out. Here's the purpose for our next lesson:

Purpose

To help class members humble themselves, forgive others, and show charity for one another.

What have I been talking about lately? Charity! Particularly noticing if we lack charity for ourselves and seeking help from God to correct that. {see excerpt from the Gospel Principles lesson on Charity or click this link for full lesson}. So I invite you over the next couple of weeks as we listen to the Prophets, Apostles, General Authorities, and Stake Leaders, to ask God if there areas of your life that need the pure love of Christ.

Do you need to forgive yourself or others? Can you be more kind in the things that you say to yourself? Do you fully believe that you are a beloved child of God deserving of love no matter what you do? Or do you chastise yourself unkindly for mistakes you make and dredge up memories of why you are unlovable, unforgivable, a hopeless case, not smart enough, not talented enough.....etc. etc. Listen to your self talk. Listen to what you say to yourself when you make a mistake or what you say about others when they do something out of line. Do you ever call yourself stupid? Would you ever say that to a friend?

You know how to be charitable. You practice all the time on your neighbors. I know. Because you are wonderful people and you make great sacrifices to help and serve others. So if you need to exercise a little more charity towards You, no sweat! You know how to do it. Just start loving yourself as you love others.

Self-love and self-acceptance aren't an event anymore than any other important relationship in your life. Charity for yourself can be nurtured overtime with loving kindness. When you hear yourself saying mean things to yourself, step in and intervene, just like you would if you heard someone being mean to someone else. Ask God to help you replace the unkind words with the truth about who you are. You are God's child. He loves you eternally and completely, no matter what you do. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. Rejoice in that truth!

Know who you are. Recognize all the good things you do. Forgive yourself for making mistakes and rejoice that the atonement can rectify anything! Be kind to yourself. Be grateful for the good choices you have made in your life. You are worth it!

Be a good neighbor to yourself.

God bless you in your journey!

Developing the Virtue of Charity

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How can we become more charitable?

One way we can become charitable is by studying the life of Jesus Christ and keeping His commandments. We can study what He did in certain situations and do the same things when we are in the same kinds of situations.

Second, when we have uncharitable feelings, we can pray to have greater charity. Mormon urges us, “Pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love [charity], which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ” (Moroni 7:48).

Third, we can learn to love ourselves, which means that we understand our true worth as children of our Heavenly Father. The Savior taught that we must love others as we love ourselves (see Matthew 22:39). To love ourselves, we must respect and trust ourselves. This means that we must be obedient to the principles of the gospel. We must repent of any wrongdoings. We must forgive ourselves when we have repented. We will come to love ourselves better when we can feel the deep, comforting assurance that the Savior truly loves us.

Fourth, we can avoid thinking we are better than other people. We can have patience with their faults. Joseph Smith said, “The nearer we get to our heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls; we feel that we want to take them upon our shoulders, and cast their sins behind our backs” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith [2007], 428–29).

"Lesson 14: “Who Is My Neighbour?”," New Testament Class Member Study Guide, (1997)

Matthew 18; Luke 10

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What is Jesus’ counsel to those who desire to achieve true greatness in his kingdom? (See Matthew 18:2–4; Mark 9:35.) How can we become more childlike and more submissive to the will of our Father in Heaven?
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In teaching the parable of the unmerciful servant, Jesus emphasized the importance of forgiving others (Matthew 18:23–35). How are we like the king’s servant in our debt to the Lord? What can you learn from the king’s example in forgiving others? What are some of the dangers of not forgiving others? (See Matthew 18:34–35.)
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What can you learn from the parable of the good Samaritan? (See Luke 10:25–37.) How have you been blessed by “good Samaritans”? How can you be a “good Samaritan”? (See Mosiah 4:26.)

Suggestion for Family Discussion

Read the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). Give particular attention to the Savior’s invitation to “go, and do thou likewise” (Luke 10:37). Then make a list of your friends, relatives, and other acquaintances, asking each family member to contribute at least one name to the list. Make plans to serve one or two of the people on the list in the coming week.

As part of this family discussion, you may want to sing together “Have I Done Any Good?” (Hymns, no. 223).

Scripture Chain: “Love Thy Neighbour”

What do you see when you look at yourself in the mirror? Does your self-talk reflect a deep understanding of and consistency with your divine nature and infinite worth?

This poster from the May 2010 Friend Magazine says : When you show respect for your body, you show respect for Heavenly Father.

I just happened upon this article by Jeffrey R. Holland from the November 2005 Ensign. The message has been coming to me lately that we need to be watchful of the way we talk to ourselves. We need to show charity to ourselves and say kind things to ourselves. It's not okay to call ourselves fat or ugly or un-smart (or harsher versions of these labels).

I've noticed that while everyone agrees that it is important to be kind to others, many people say very mean things about themselves. I ask you, whose voice is that? I don't know who you are listening to but I know that it is NOT the voice of the Spirit. I see this pattern continuing on through generations and when I read Elder Holland's words, I realized it wasn't just me noticing it.

So I invite you to start to listen to what you are saying to yourself. Take notes for a couple days. Write down your self-talk. If there is anything that you think or say about yourself that is out of step with the love of God or if you have judgments you hold of others, take note of these. (When you find yourself being judgmental of others it is usually just a reflection of how you feel towards yourself so use that as a mirror to look inside and see if there is something you can ask God to help you with. Rom2:1)

If you find problems and issues, don't use this as fuel for beating yourself up with. Notice it, and turn it over to the Lord. So often I find that we "should" ourselves. We find something we are doing wrong and we beat ourselves up with it over and over. Stop. When does that ever work? Just ask for forgiveness. "I'm sorry, Lord, for being unkind to myself. Please forgive me and teach me a better way. I love you! Thank you for loving me. I want to be open to the possibility that I can learn to love myself the way you love me."

No where in the formula for peace, love, and joy of gospel living does it say beat yourself up for not being perfect. Rather, Paul says he glories in his weaknesses, for in them God's strength is manifest. Don't be afraid to ask for God's help - even in exercising charity towards yourself.

This is foundational! From the time babies are born we tell them they are beloved spirit children of God. They learn to sing, "I am a child of God" from an early age. In Young Women's "We are daughters of our Heavenly Father who loves us and we love him..." In Relief Society: "We are beloved spirit daughters of God,

and our lives have meaning, purpose, and direction.
As a worldwide sisterhood, we are united in our devotion
to Jesus Christ, our Savior and Exemplar.
We are women of faith, virtue, vision, and charity."...

{see full text}

We are outstanding women!! If this is who we are, why are we wasting our time and our lives and our precious energy comparing ourselves to others and thinking we need to be something or someone or some size other that who we are? Whose image are we trying to conform ourselves to? If it's not the image of God, don't waste yourself on it. You are too precious for such mundane pursuits.

At the Young Women broadcast on Saturday, March 26, 2011, President Eyring opened his talk by saying, "You have been told more than once tonight how you are the bright hope for the future of this church. My job is to help you believe that is so..." {watch video}

I'm not making this stuff up about the importance of loving ourselves. But I see the need for us to believe these truths right here, right within my heart, my family, and this branch of the Lord's kingdom.

I asked my 4 year old this week if she loves herself. Her honest answer was "No". I can see how easily that belief can develop every time we chastise her for something trivial. And how quickly it can change through the atonement of Christ. We talked about it, and within a few minutes she could feel through the influence of the Holy Ghost an increase in love towards herself. Wow! Things can change fast when you are 4! She can continue her life with a firm foundation of knowing that she is loved and lovable just because that's who she is, not because of what she does or doesn't do. No matter how many times in her life people get upset with her or she gets in trouble or whatever, she can know that God who knows her better, loves her unconditionally. I pray that I can make my actions towards her consistent with who she is.

Please open your heart to charity for yourself, to believing the truth about yourself. For without charity ye have nothing.

God bless you.

From Elder Holland:

"...may I address an even more sensitive subject. I plead with you young women to please be more accepting of yourselves, including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look like someone else. We are all different. Some are tall, and some are short. Some are round, and some are thin. And almost everyone at some time or other wants to be something they are not! But as one adviser to teenage girls said: “You can’t live your life worrying that the world is staring at you. When you let people’s opinions make you self-conscious you give away your power. … The key to feeling [confident] is to always listen to your inner self—[the real you.]”⁸And in the kingdom of God, the real you is “more precious than rubies.”⁹Every young woman is a child of destiny and every adult woman a powerful force for good. I mention adult women because, sisters, you are our greatest examples and resource for these young women. And if you are obsessing over being a size 2, you won’t be very surprised when your daughter or the Mia Maid in your class does the same and makes herself physically ill trying to accomplish it. We should all be as fit as we can be—that’s good Word of Wisdom doctrine. That means eating right and exercising and helping our bodies function at their optimum strength. We could probably all do better in that regard. But I speak here of optimum health; there is no universal optimum size.

Frankly, the world has been brutal with you in this regard. You are bombarded in movies, television, fashion magazines, and advertisements with the message that looks are everything! The pitch is, “If your looks are good enough, your life will be glamorous and you will be happy and popular.” That kind of pressure is immense in the teenage years, to say nothing of later womanhood. In too many cases too much is being done to the human body to meet just such a fictional (to say nothing of superficial) standard. As one Hollywood actress is reported to have said recently: “We’ve become obsessed with beauty and the fountain of youth. … I’m really saddened by the way women mutilate [themselves] in search of that. I see women [including young women] … pulling this up and tucking that back. It’s like a slippery slope. [You can’t get off of it.] … It’s really insane … what society is doing to women.”¹⁰

In terms of preoccupation with self and a fixation on the physical, this is more than social insanity; it is spiritually destructive, and it accounts for much of the unhappiness women, including young women, face in the modern world. And if adults are preoccupied with appearance—tucking and nipping and implanting and remodeling everything that can be remodeled—those pressures and anxieties will certainly seep through to children. At some point the problem becomes what the Book of Mormon called “vain imaginations.”¹¹And in secular society both vanity and imagination run wild. One would truly need a great and spacious makeup kit to compete with beauty as portrayed in media all around us. Yet at the end of the day there would still be those “in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers” as Lehi saw,¹²because however much one tries in the world of glamour and fashion, it will never be glamorous enough.

A woman not of our faith once wrote something to the effect that in her years of working with beautiful women she had seen several things they all had in common, and not one of them had anything to do with sizes and shapes. She said the loveliest women she had known had a glow of health, a warm personality, a love of learning, stability of character, and integrity. If we may add the sweet and gentle Spirit of the Lord carried by such a woman, then this describes the loveliness of women in any age or time, every element of which is emphasized in and attainable through the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ

...

First of all, I want you to be proud you are a woman. I want you to feel the reality of what that means, to know who you truly are. You are literally a spirit daughter of heavenly parents with a divine nature and an eternal destiny.¹That surpassing truth should be fixed deep in your soul and be fundamental to every decision you make as you grow into mature womanhood. There could never be a greater authentication of your dignity, your worth, your privileges, and your promise. Your Father in Heaven knows your name and knows your circumstance. He hears your prayers. He knows your hopes and dreams, including your fears and frustrations. And He knows what you can become through faith in Him. Because of this divine heritage you, along with all of your spiritual sisters and brothers, have full equality in His sight and are empowered through obedience to become a rightful heir in His eternal kingdom, an “[heir] of God, and joint-[heir] with Christ.”²Seek to comprehend the significance of these doctrines. Everything Christ taught He taught to women as well as men. Indeed, in the restored light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, a woman, including a young woman, occupies a majesty all her own in the divine design of the Creator. You are, as Elder James E. Talmage once phrased it, “a sanctified investiture which none shall dare profane.”³

Be a woman of Christ. Cherish your esteemed place in the sight of God. He needs you. This Church needs you. The world needs you. A woman’s abiding trust in God and unfailing devotion to things of the Spirit have always been an anchor when the wind and the waves of life were fiercest.⁴I say to you what the Prophet Joseph said more than 150 years ago: “If you live up to your privileges, the angels cannot be restrained from being your associates.”⁵

All of this is to try to tell you how your Father in Heaven feels about you and what He has designed for you to become. And if for a time any of you are less visionary than this or seem bent on living beneath your privilege, then we express even greater love for you and plead with you to make your teenage years a triumph, not a tragedy.

From Susan W. Tanner:

The Sanctity of the Body

The Lord wants us to be made over—but in His image, not in the image of the world, by receiving His image in our countenances.

Satan learned these same eternal truths about the body, and yet his punishment is that he does not have one. Therefore he tries to do everything he can to get us to abuse or misuse this precious gift. He has filled the world with lies and deceptions about the body. He tempts many to defile this great gift of the body through unchastity, immodesty, self-indulgence, and addictions. He seduces some to despise their bodies; others he tempts to worship their bodies. In either case, he entices the world to regard the body merely as an object. In the face of so many satanic falsehoods about the body, I want to raise my voice today in support of the sanctity of the body. I testify that the body is a gift to be treated with gratitude and respect.

...

I am troubled by the practice of extreme makeovers. Happiness comes from accepting the bodies we have been given as divine gifts and enhancing our natural attributes, not from remaking our bodies after the image of the world. The Lord wants us to be made over—but in His image, not in the image of the world, by receiving His image in our countenances (see Alma 5:14, 19).

I remember well the insecurities I felt as a teenager with a bad case of acne. I tried to care for my skin properly. My parents helped me get medical attention. For years I even went without eating chocolate and all the greasy fast foods around which teens often socialize, but with no obvious healing consequences. It was difficult for me at that time to fully appreciate this body which was giving me so much grief. But my good mother taught me a higher law. Over and over she said to me, “You must do everything you can to make your appearance pleasing, but the minute you walk out the door, forget yourself and start concentrating on others.”

There it was. She was teaching me the Christlike principle of selflessness. Charity, or the pure love of Christ, “envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own” (Moro. 7:45). When we become other-oriented, or selfless, we develop an inner beauty of spirit that glows in our outward appearance. This is how we make ourselves in the Lord’s image rather than the world’s and receive His image in our countenances. President Hinckley spoke of this very kind of beauty that comes as we learn to respect body, mind, and spirit. He said:

“Of all the creations of the Almighty, there is none more beautiful, none more inspiring than a lovely daughter of God who walks in virtue with an understanding of why she should do so, who honors and respects her body as a thing sacred and divine, who cultivates her mind and constantly enlarges the horizon of her understanding, who nurtures her spirit with everlasting truth” (“Understanding Our Divine Nature,” Liahona, Feb. 2002, 24; “Our Responsibility to Our Young Women,” Ensign, Sept. 1988, 11).

Oh, how I pray that all men and women will seek the beauty praised by the prophet—beauty of body, mind, and spirit!

Learn Miracles from the Master

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Lesson 14: “Who Is My Neighbour?”