Paisley: Kyrin, Hey everybody, welcome back. Today, we're going
to be talking about humility. Please remember that I am trying
to learn, and I'm hoping that we can go along and learn together.
So I am not coming at you as an expert in humility. I don't know
that there is such a thing. I have not mastered it. I have
long, long ways to go, and today I'm actually coming at this from
the opposite perspective. I had a recent experience that I'm not
quite ready to share. That was kind of a warning sign for me.
Have you ever had those little warning signs, little warning
experiences, if you will, that kind of tell you that you need
to make a change. So my last episode was about repentance,
and as I was studying for that episode, I started to see some
little things that I could improve upon some seemingly
small things, some course corrections that I can make. And
when I started thinking about all of those little things, this
scripture popped into my head, or rather sort of a scripture
story you may remember in the Book of Mormon, Alma, chapter 32
it's most famous for its explanation of faith and its
comparison of faith to a seed, but this actually is before
that. So Alma and Amulek have teamed up, and they are
preaching throughout the land and in Alma 32 Alma is actually
talking to a very, a very poor class of people. They weren't
allowed in the synagogues because they didn't have clothes
nice enough for them to go into the synagogue. And Alma was
talking to them. And he says in verse 13, he says, And now,
because ye are compelled to be humble, Blessed are ye? For a
man, sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble, seeketh
repentance. And then verse 14, and now, as I said unto you,
That because ye were compelled to be humble, ye were blessed.
Do you not suppose that they are more blessed who truly humble
themselves because of the word and then verse 15 yea, he that
truly humbleth himself and repenteth of his sins and
endureth to the end, the same shall be blessed. Yea, much more
blessed than they who are compelled to be humble because
of their exceeding poverty. And then lastly, in verse 16,
therefore Blessed are they who humble themselves without being
compelled to be humble? So in these verses, specifically in
verse 15, Alma is talking more specifically about being
compelled to be humble through poverty, but he's talking about
that because those were the specific circumstances to those
people. But didn't we just last week or the week before, talk
about the pride cycle? Pretty sure that was our Sunday school
lesson two weeks ago, talked about the pride cycle as part of
our Come follow me studies, and when you put the concept of the
pride cycle in the context of these verses, do you want to be
compelled to be humble? It's usually pretty significant. Our
examples in the book in the Book of Mormon, are pretty
significant for when the people need to be humbled so for
myself, I remember these verses sticking out to me once a really
long time ago, I was maybe a teenager, maybe early 20s, and I
remember thinking and pleading that I would be able to
recognize when I needed to humble myself so that I didn't
have to be compelled to be humble, because it kind of
frightens me a little bit to be compelled to be humble. So
heavenly Father will send me these little warning experiences
to help me realize that I need to humble myself before I have
to be compelled. And this time, the warning signs came in a few
different ways. So first, it was kind of that brain explosion
that I had with my last episode. The last episode we talked about
repentance, and the fact that daily repentance is really just
trying to be a little bit better each day. And then a friend said
something to me the other day that made me stop for us for a
second and question my motives on something that I was trying
to accomplish, and this thing that I'm trying to accomplish,
it's great. And the. Tensions are good, but my motives needed
to be refocused. I needed to refocus my motives so that I
could plan this thing for the right reasons. And then
yesterday, I was talking to this lady at church. I don't talk to
her very often. We both have twins. Hers are hers are
probably close to my age, and mine are five, but every once in
a while, she'll see my twins do something, and she'll kind of
chuckle, and we'll talk for a little bit, and that's what
started the conversation at church yesterday. And then she
said something that was really far off topic and kind of
random, and she even followed it up with something like, I'm not
even sure why I just told you that just follow the spirit. And
then she just kind of laughed and walked away. And she might
not know. She may not have known why she said that to me, but I
knew, and I knew that my Heavenly Father was sending me a
message. So those are three warning signs, and they were all
pointed at three different things that are all happening in
my life at the same time. And they all could have very easily
have been missed, but they were all, this is the way that the
Spirit speaks to me, and this is the way that my Heavenly Father
sends me messages. And so I did not miss them. I picked up on
them, and knew that my Heavenly Father was mourning me, that I
was getting a little too full of myself, and it was time to
recenter and adjust. So now I'm going to share with you what I
found when I started looking for ways to not ways, when I started
looking for things to focus on, things to think about, things to
do, to try and humble myself. And elder Redland Dale G Renlund
gave a talk in october 2020, called do justly love mercy and
walk humbly with God. So let's take those three things, one at
a time. Do justly love mercy, walk humbly with God. The first
one do justly, he said, a just person turns away from sin and
toward God, makes covenants with him and keeps those covenants. A
just person chooses to obey the commandments of God, repents
when falling short, and keeps on trying. Those all describe
somebody who is humble, somebody with humility. Later, he says to
be Christ, like a person does justly, behaving honorably with
both God and other people, a just person is civil in words
and action and recognizes that differences in Outlook or belief
do not preclude genuine kindness and friendship. Individuals who
do justly will not have a mind to injure on another, but to
live peaceably, one with another. So in short, to do
justly is to show kindness and civility toward others, to be a
peacemaker. Next was love mercy. So to me, that seemed pretty
self explanatory, but I read it anyway, and here's what he said,
to be Christ, like a person loves mercy, people who love
mercy are not judgmental. They manifest compassion for others,
especially for those who are less fortunate. They are
gracious, kind and honorable. These individuals treat everyone
with love and understanding, regardless of characteristics
such as race, gender, religious affiliation, sexual orientation,
socioeconomic status and tribal clan or national differences,
these are superseded by Christ like love. Christ like love
supersedes everything to someone who loves mercy. So to me, a
person who loves mercy is compassionate and loving. They
try to be quick to forgive and not judge others when it's not
their place to do so. Okay, lastly, the third thing, walk
humbly with God, he said. And I don't know about you, but walk
humbly with God. Made me think of the footprints poem and the
picture that always comes with it, and like the two sets of
footprints on the beach, and then all of a sudden, just one
step, one set of footsteps on the beach, to walk humbly with
God. Anyway, just a funny little thing in my brain. Back to
Renlund, he said, to be Christ, like a person, chooses God,
walks humbly with him, seeks to please Him, and keeps covenants
with him. Individuals who walk humbly with God Remember what
Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have done for them. Okay, so
please note that he says, walks humbly with God, not humbly
follows him.
And I think that that's significant. Think about the
difference someone who follows isn't necessarily having a
conversation, but someone who walks with their there. There's
usually some sort of conversation happening. There's
learning or teaching or sharing. There's usually something going
on when you are walking with someone versus following behind
them. All of this another tall order, right? We just keep
adding to this never ending list of things that we need to work
on, the kinds of people that we need to be. But elder Renlund
said this too. He said at the same time, our Heavenly Father
and Jesus Christ do not want us to be paralyzed by continual
uncertainty during our mortal journey, wondering whether we
have done enough to be saved and exalted. They surely do not want
us to be tormented by mistakes from which we have repented,
thinking of them as wounds that never heal, or to be excessively
apprehensive that we might stumble again. That defeats the
purpose. Those are the things that Satan wants us to think and
that's where daily repentance comes into play. So Renly even
told us how that we how we can assess our own progress. We can
know that the course of life that we are pursuing and
according is according to God's will. When we do justly love
mercy and walk humbly with our God, we assimilate the
attributes of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ into our
character, and we love one another when we do these things,
you will follow the covenant path and qualify to dwell with
God in a state of never ending happiness. Your souls will be
infused with the glory of God and with the light of
everlasting life. You will be filled with incomprehensible
joy. Now, if you want a more in depth, personal interview, go
check out the questions in Alma chapter five. These are the
questions that he poses to another group of people who were
not doing great things. I'll be sure to link to that in the
description. He starts asking questions in verse six, but he
really gets going in verse 14. I've used this chapter many
times to do some of my own personal self reflection. Some
of the questions are really rough to get through. Some of
them are more difficult than others, but it's worth it.
Please remember that there is always hope. When you go through
chapter five and you're like, oh my gosh, these are tough.
There's always hope, because there is always repentance,
there's always just a little bit more tomorrow and a little bit
more the next day. And sometimes we're gonna have to start over.
We're gonna stumble and fall and we're gonna have to start over
again, and that's okay. We we just have to do our best. And
think about that quote from elder Renlund just a second ago.
Our souls will be infused with the glory of God and with the
light of everlasting life. We will be filled with
incomprehensible joy, really rough, incomprehensible joy. Is
one worth the other? To you, I like to think it is. To me,
repentance is not always easy. Humbling ourselves is not always
easy. It requires us to take a step back and admit that we were
wrong, not that far from repentance, right? But it's
okay. There's hope. There's time our Father in Heaven knows the
intents of our hearts. He knows what we're trying to do and what
we're trying to accomplish. And the Lord loves effort. Remember
that quote, The Lord loves effort. Okay, thank you
everybody for being here again. I appreciate your time. Keep
learning, keep growing, keep going and be of good cheer until
next time you.