Talk part 5 - Strength

This will be a little more random and wrapping up, but these are things that I pretty much know that I said in the talk.

In conjunction with not needing to be afraid of being afraid of the world, I focused on some of the tool that we do have.

I found it a little surprising to be talking about modern revelation, because I had just spend so much time on the four Gospels, followed by a lot of time on Matthew 25. That is true, but also my study now involves conference talks and church magazines. When I am studying the magazines in Italian, I can easily look up the English versions online. We have scriptures online, and on our phones, and with topical guides and indexes.

I started my study of the mortal ministry of Jesus with his visit to the Americas, which happened just after his mortal ministry. I studied in conjunction with the Harmony of the Gospels - that is a study aid that the church has put in the scriptures. I studied in conjunction with Jesus the Christ, written by a latter-day apostle. I have gotten my guidance on what to study at any given time, and I can get that because of the Holy Ghost, which I received through the laying on of hands because we have the priesthood. And if my study gets a little more specific now, it has been built on a foundation of many years of reading the scriptures, yes (which started with hearing someone in a church talk say that we should), but also I had seminary and institute classes and many years of Sunday school, sometimes as the student but sometimes as the teacher.

There are a lot of tools out there to help us learn and understand and apply the scriptures to us. Take that farther out, and look at the light of Christ and missionary work and the Holy Ghost in general, even without laying on of hands. Think of temples, and learning in the spirit world, and a Millennium to make sure that everyone gets every possible chance -- there are many things out there to bring us all back to our Heavenly Father, and that should be no surprise to any of us knowing that He gave His Son. We can be awed and grateful and happy -- those are all reasonable reactions -- but there is nothing in what we know that should make it surprising that God values every person, and that we should too. We know enough to know that.

I am grateful for the scriptures and temple and prayer. There are things we have gone through over the past couple of years that I would not have been able to make it through without being able to not only pray for help but also being able to receive guidance and reassurance.

It is all out there for us if we will partake.

And that's really the end of the talk, pretty much, but there has also been a realization recently, after I gave the talk, and that is something that may speak to many members. That is what I will write about next time.

I think.