Fast and Testimony Meeting

Today is Fast Sunday which means it was one of my favorite meetings... Fast and Testimony Meeting. For those of you not LDS, this is a day when latter-day saints stand up in front of the entire congregation and declare what they know to be true about the gospel. Most of the time there are incredible things said and the spirit is amazingly strong. Sometimes someone will get up and the spirit is gone and it is just awkward but those moments of spiritual highs are completely worth it. The thing is, today, I wanted to get up so badly but getting up in front of all those people absolutely terrifies me. I decided to just blog about what I was going to say.

Let me just start off by saying that I am so behind on journal-ling so there hasn't been much posted here. I am sorry. I am working on catching up. That is why I was reviewing Judges 6. This is the chapter where we are first introduced to Gideon, one of the judges of Israel. I'll talk more about him later but the Israelites were captives again. This time is was by the Midianites. The Israelites were help captive by them for seven years. Finally, when everything else had failed they prayed to the Lord. I wonder what would have happened if they had turned to the Lord first. My immediate thought was, "Duh!" But, then I started thinking about my life. When I'm driving around lost and I cannot figure out where someplace is... I just keep driving thinking, "Oh, it'll be at the next place." Or, if I've lost my keys I just keep searching, sure that I will be able to find them on my own. Or, with parenting. So many times I think, "I can handle this temper tantrum. It is my job. I am the mom." But, then I was thinking about how much easier my life would be if I would just immediately turn to the Lord in prayer. How much better would my parenting be if I turned to the Lord before I had a heart to heart with my child about a choice he or she made? How much easier would everything be if we all just turned to the Lord first and let him help to guide our lives.

I am so grateful for the scriptures and all the things that I learn from them daily. I am also thankful for the power of prayer so that I have the ability to ask my Heavenly Father for help. All I have to do is humble myself enough to remember that I cannot do this on my own and we were given prayer to communicate with our Father in Heaven. What a wonderful blessing. The scriptures are true and the power of prayer is real!