Week 48 is scheduled for study Nov. 25-Dec. 1, 2024. Life is all about our willingness to believe then live according to those beliefs. That practice determines the outcome for everything.
Day 1
Ether 12 – Faith in Jesus Christ can lead to miracles.
Ether 12:6 is a definition of faith, but just as importantly it introduces the teaching that God doesn’t do things for His children until they deliberately choose Him.
… I would show unto the world that is things which are for and seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no until after the of your faith.
As I have mentioned many times before, belief is a choice we each make. It cannot be forced upon us, nor denied us. We and we alone are responsible for the things we choose to believe in this life. Belief requires no proof, only willingness to accept. This is why we sometimes believe in lies, and sometimes deny truth. Knowing this God has promised to give us proof of the validity of our belief after we have chosen to accept His word and then lived by it for a time. The living by what we have chosen to believe is what faith is. God has promised us that as we live according to His teachings proofs of their truth will be made known to us.
This proof of God’s word is what happens when we for example, choose to believe in God and accept that prayer is a way to talk to Him. When we pray with real intent to communicate to God He makes Himself known to us through the Holy Spirit. We might have a spiritual manifestation, or a physical event, or even have a change of mind about something that convinces us further that what we chose to believe is right and useful to us. But none of these things happen until we have shown God that we have chosen Him and demonstrated to Him our intent to live by His teachings, even though we don’t yet have proof of their validity. Then and only then do we have the personal inner witness given to us that we have chosen rightly.
Belief comes in many shades. Some of us have the ability to believe very quickly and absolutely. Others of us struggle to make the choice to believe, and even then we are easily swayed to believe something else instead. Then others of us have no trouble believing, but we have more difficulty living by what we have chosen to believe. Belief is not the same from person to person. I think this is why some people have a gift in that they are able to quickly believe and it is easier for them to live by that belief, despite what life throws at them to the contrary. The brother of Jared falls into this category. He knew less about the true nature of God than we do, yet he was able to commit his life to his belief so thoroughly that God could not keep him without (outside of) the veil, and he was shown all things. What made the difference was his level of commitment to what he believed in.
To people of the world, belief in and commitment to the teachings of Christ and God is like asking them to believe in fairies. They have chosen to believe in only those things for which there is physical proof. Anything that smacks of “fantasy” is outside anything they are willing to believe. The intellectual mind just won’t permit belief in things that are not concrete in nature, even with evidence. This is especially true when those teachings tell them that the desires of the flesh are often wrong and damaging to the soul. They believe in that which is physical only, so telling them that lust in any form is forbidden by a being they cannot see or experience for themself is intellectually insulting to them.
When God becomes real enough to us that we are willing to do whatever we can to please Him, He is able to do for us what we cannot physically explain. We call these things miracles. They are all based on actual laws, but He uses laws we don’t understand or even know about. This allows God to do things for us that we could not possibly do for ourselves. This is why faith must be exhibited before miracles happen. God never forces Himself upon us. We must seek Him and invite His participation in our life. He is all too willing to do so, as He loves us more than we can express. The number of miracles that occur in our life is based on how willingly we choose to believe God and live by His commandments. Our choice.
Day 2
Ether 12:1-9, 28, 32 – Jesus Christ gives us “a more excellent hope.”
It is important to understand what our “more excellent hope” is. The world has no hope of anything beyond the veil of death. As far as they are concerned life ends at death, so death is feared above all things. It is the great unknown. To those who choose to believe in Christ, he offers hope of life, and that eternally. And not only does he offer us a hope in eternal life, but a life with our loved ones, in the presence of the very creators of the universe. This eternal life he promises us is a life without the earthly sorrows and suffering that come with our time in mortality. We are promised that to those who keep God’s commandments during our life here on earth God will grant an exaltation to the status of godhood. We can literally become like Him. Is not this “a more excellent hope” than anything anyone else can offer us? Why wouldn’t we be willing to accept such an offer?
This last question is an important one, for if there is nothing better anyone can offer us beyond the grave then why wouldn’t we all flock to such a belief. It doesn’t detract from our earthly experience or harm us in any way. Such a promise should bring us all peace and joy to have something so wonderful to look forward to. But then we must be willing to accept that such a promise that can’t be seen or proven by earthly standards in this life is not only possible, but probable.
We can, in fact, receive proofs of what God promises us, but we must first accept that He is and that He loves us and is willing to prove Himself to us. We are in control of that proof, for it comes only as we choose to obey His commandments and seek answers to life’s questions at His hands. The key here is to recognize and choose to appreciate the answers and proofs when they come. God gives us little evidences of His love and mercy all the time, but if we call them coincidences or accidents of nature then we weaken our own ability for Him to prove Himself to us without coming out and punishing us in miraculous ways.
God’s judgment of us in the end is based on our choices to believe or not to believe, to receive or not to receive His mercies and kindnesses. We choose how much we believe and how much He can participate in our own life through our daily choices. We look at the prophets and suffer some spiritual envy at their experiences, but they have chosen to believe and act on those beliefs where we are still waffling about trying to decide if we really want to commit ourselves to what God has taught us.
Day 3
Ether 12:23-29 – Jesus Christ can turn my weakness into strength.
Yes, we are all weak. All of us are burdened in life with our inability to do something or many things. But sometimes what is weakness to us is an opportunity for God to prove Himself to us. We try to fulfill His will imperfectly, yet He is so powerful, so mighty, so perfectly magnificent that He is able to take our weak offering and still bend it to fulfill His own will for our salvation. He doesn’t seem to be concerned that we are not yet perfect. That is our department. He is more concerned that we be willing to try to do His will, for He knows that when we make the effort to obey He can change us and make us mightier than we were before we started.
God is able to change us. How much He can do only He comprehends. We do not understand even the smallest part of His ability to make us into something we currently are not. With proper effort on our part He can change our dispositions, our inclinations, our desires, our weaknesses, and our current inabilities into powerful attributes we can only hope for now. All the holy people who ever lived were not always holy (meaning very righteous). They all had weaknesses and flaws in their characters, which they had to work to overcome. They did so by taking their weaknesses to God and asking for help in overcoming them, which He helped them do. This didn’t make any of them perfect, but it did make them more capable and able to do good and experience more powerful joy in this life.
This life isn’t about what we do from day to day (i.e. it’s not a checklist). It is about what we become from day to day. Mortality is our proving ground to demonstrate and learn from our experiences that we want to become like God, our Father. To do that He has commanded us to follow the example of His Son, Jesus Christ. Christ shows us the way to become like himself, who is like God. This is the whole point of his atoning sacrifice. He paid for our sins to satisfy the demands of our Father in Heaven. We couldn’t satisfy the demands of God for our sins. Only Christ could do that. But we can satisfy the demands and requirements of Christ through obedience to his commandments. Now it is our opportunity to put our faith and trust in Christ to help us change and become like him so we can be forgiven of our weaknesses and transgressions and he can change us into people that are acceptable to God.
Day 4
Ether 13;13-22; 14-15 – Rejecting the Lord’s prophets puts me in spiritual danger.
I would like to expand the scope of this lesson. When God calls a prophet He has designated that man to be His mouthpiece to all the earth. That is a very high calling indeed. But the prophet also calls people to preside over us and be responsible for our spiritual welfare. They do not have the same calling as the prophet, but they are “the prophet” in the sphere in which they have been placed. The Stake President is the Lord’s mouthpiece for that Stake, the Bishop is the Lord’s mouthpiece for his ward. God has made it very clear in the scriptures that when we reject any of His servants it is the same as rejecting Him.
Sometimes we want to ignore the counsel of our local leader in favor of the counsel of a higher leader . We start to pick and choose what we will obey and what we will ignore. This is no different than those who choose to follow the teachings of a long dead prophet over the current teachings of the living prophet. We put ourselves in danger when we decide when we will be obedient and when we will follow our own will.
For many this can be a difficult lesson. We know our current local leaders. We know their strengths and their weaknesses. It can be difficult to allow them to hold the same sway in our life as that of the prophet, even though it was those called by the prophet who put him in charge of our care. Refer back to yesterday’s lesson. Just as we are weak and God turns our weaknesses into strengths, so too does He take the mistakes or weaknesses of our local leaders and bless our lives as being righteous when we follow their counsel.
Some will argue that they are more intelligent or savvy than their Bishop or Stake President. That may or may not be true in actuality. The important thing here is that we need to make sure we are on the side of God if we ever defy our Bishop or Stake President, for they are God’s representatives. It is dangerous to assume we know more than God’s representative, even the “lowly” ones.
Personal Study
Let others share, and sometimes teach.
It is more often the case than not that we desire more participation and buy-in from our students we teach. It is just so much easier to teach a class when they are all willing to cooperate with you and not try to derail your lesson or ignore what you are trying to teach them. One way to do this is to help them learn to teach themselves through participation.
When you give an assignment for a class member to teach a five minute segment of the lesson you are inviting that buy-in from that class member. You also open yourself to their personal understanding of the gospel on that subject, which may or not be correct. So this creates opportunities for you to become a better teacher by learning to help your class members learn the principle of the gospel more thoroughly.
If you don’t necessarily want someone else teaching parts of your lessons consider asking people ahead of time to consider a principle or think of a story about something you want to cover in the lesson then call on them to share what they were asked to present. A word of warning here – be very clear about how long they are allotted to give their presentation or answer. Be sure to ask them to keep their time within the limits you assign. This means you will have to time them during the lesson and notify them when they only have a minute or two left to share. If you don’t you run the risk of having someone run away with your lesson time.
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