Steadfast & Immovable

Sister Beck is coming on Saturday to speak to our stake at the BYU-I center, so I thought I would start getting ready by reading some of the most recent Relief Society messages. I read a talk by Sister Silvia H. Allred called Steadfast & Immovable.

I particularly appreciated these two quotes:

"I know that each of us has a vital and essential role as a daughter of God. He has bestowed upon His daughters divine attributes for the purpose of forwarding His work. God has entrusted women with the sacred work of bearing and rearing children. No other work is more important. It is a holy calling. The noblest office for a woman is the sacred work of building eternal families, ideally in partnership with her husband."

"We demonstrate our acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Savior when we place our faith in Him, repent of our sins, and receive the saving ordinances required to enter God’s presence. These saving ordinances are symbols of the covenants we make. The covenants of obedience to His laws and commandments bind us to God and strengthen our faith. Our faith and steadfastness in Christ will give us the courage and confidence we need to face life’s challenges, which are part of our mortal experience."

I went to the gym tonight and met with a personal trainer. It was hard. He taught me some cool workouts and helped me with some new things that I had never done before (bench-press kills!), but what I got most out of it was his insight into the atonement from a physical perspective. He shared some thoughts about how this life is centered on our ability to come to earth, gain a body, and perfect ourselves. He talked about how we would never cheat ourselves spiritually and feel good about it. We are fairly aware of where we need to improve and how to do it (whether we act upon that or not). But when it comes to our physical bodies, we cheat ourselves all the time and don't think twice. He talked about how Christ saves us from our sins, but we still have to do everything we possibly can to present ourselves clean and perfect before Him. From a physical perspective, we have less information possibly, but just as much clarity that our bodies are directly linked to our eternal happiness and progression and that their becoming perfect is essential. When we are resurrected, just as our spirits will not change from corruption to incorruption or from wickedness to righteousness, we are not going to magically transform from a donut-eating slob to a super skinny hottie. We still have to give the Lord something to work with. Our physical development and progression/health is just as important as our spiritual because they are directly related. We cannot progress without both and we cannot reach our full spiritual potential without taking care of our physical bodies.

I am going to be steadfast and immovable in these new goals and I am going to try to seek the enabling power of the atonement to accomplish what I have set out to do. I believe that my family, especially my future family, will be blessed because of it...I will be able to have the spirit more in my life, and I will find the capacity to do things which I never dreamed I could do on my own.