Sunday April 22, 2007

Sacrament Meeting
One of the speakers quoted from the hymn Praise to the Man, "Sacrafice brings forth the blessings of heaven." He then quoted from the prophet Joseph Smith "...a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation;"

Another brother spoke on the service that his wife and he gave in the bishop's
storehouse the last two years. He also spoke about fast offerings. He
talked about that we have been told to give the cost of two meals to the
poor. He said that is the minimum and we should give ten times that much
when we are able.

Sunday School
People were saying that Jesus was a good man, but he deceived the people. (John 7:12) I
have heard people comment the same thing about the Church. They say it teaches good principles and the people of the church are generally good people, but the Church deceives people.

"If any man will do his will he will know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself." (John 7:17) - If we want to know if something is true then live it and find out. If we want to know if God will keep his promise to poor out blessing when we pay tithing then we should do the test that Malachi gave us about trying it and see if the Lord will not do it. The same is true for any principle of the gospel.

Because he did not grow up in Bethlehem some of the people were saying that because he grew up in Galalee that he came out of Galalee and not Bethlahem, thus they thought he couldn't be a fulfillment of the prophecy.

Priesthood
Hand out from bishop and his two counselors, which reiterated his challenge for us all to pray morning and night. The letter quoted 2 Nephi 32:8-9. They testified that Heavenly Father does answer prayers. They then said, "Many blessings are withheld from us only because we do not ask Heavenly Father for them. May we always have the spirit of prayer foremost in our
thoughts."

We then went into the lesson. The instructor used as the basis for his lesson the talk from President Monson from the priesthood session of the last General Conference. 6.7 billion people in the world. Contrasting this with the number of Priesthood holders is very, very small. We have a lot of work to do.

What state of spirit are we in when we are called upon to use our priesthood? Are we arguing with our wife? Are we watching something we should not? We should prepared to serve at all times. Do we ask ourselves before we do or say something, "I am carrying the
priesthood of God with me, should I do this?"