The Hallmark of Christian Discipleship

On Sunday, I was asked to give a talk in church (in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, members of the congregation take turns giving sermons instead of a clergy member) and decided to post it here for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

One reason why I think our prophet President Nelson has insisted that we use the full name of our church — the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — instead of the nickname "Mormon" is that he wants us to be perfectly clear about our primary identity: first and foremost, we are disciples of Jesus Christ.

The Cost of Discipleship

The word 'disciple' comes from the same Latin root as the word 'discipline.' Think of a discipline as a subject area you might study in school, like psychology or engineering. 

In order to be a successful student of one of these disciplines, you know that there are certain formulas, concepts, and ways of thinking you're going to have to work hard to master.

Likewise, the word 'disciple' suggests practice, learning, self-control, and working toward a high and specific standard. The kind of discipleship we're called to is more than just belief, acceptance, or agreement. It's actively following Jesus Christ.

The Hallmark of a Disciple

I've taken college courses described as "rigorous," but no discipline I've ever studied is as exacting of the discipline of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The scriptures tell us we need to serve God "with all our heart, might, mind, and strength" (Doctrine and Covenants 4: 2, see also Luke 10: 27 and Deuteronomy 6:5.)

You can't get more rigorous than that.

Because discipleship is meant to fully encompass us, it can sometimes feel overwhelming. We want to follow the Savior's example, but that's a tall order for someone as imperfect as me (and I imagine, as imperfect as you, too.)

That's where the Holy Spirit comes in. It's how God helps each of us know what to do, at what time, and in what order so that we can become our best selves, one day at a time. 

Being able to recognize and act on those promptings is the hallmark of a disciple of Jesus Christ.

One Step Forward with Faith

Between the cold weather and COVID, this has felt like a never-ending winter. And maybe like some of you, I've struggled with feeling like a poorly-cast Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

The idea of shaking off this funk was so overwhelming that one day I just leveled with God in prayer: I needed Him to tell the one single thing I should do next, because I couldn't handle anything more complicated than that.

I finished my prayer and didn't feel anything in particular, so I thought about standing in front of God and visualizing what he'd say in response.

"Pray," came a thought into my mind. 

Still unsure whether that was an inspired answer or just the first church word my brain supplied, I knelt down to pray again. And as soon as my knees hit the floor, the lyrics of a Primary song teaching kids to pray popped into my head: "I begin by saying 'Dear Heavenly Father,' / I thank him for blessings He sends."

The answer to my prayer seemed so simple and yet so profound: I needed to focus on gratitude.

I can't guarantee that the answer to your Lockdown Blahs will be the same as mine, but I do know if I hadn't followed the first direction to pray then I wouldn't have received the second one. 

And some of the time (if not most of the time) that's what disciples need to do: take the next step in faith without knowing the whole way.

Using the Atonement of Jesus Christ

When I think about discipleship, I think about the New Testament account of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.

At a basic level, this was a fantastic object lesson about the importance of serving others. In John 13: 15 Jesus teaches, "For I have given unto you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you."

But there's also a deeper meaning, one Christ said the twelve disciples wouldn't understand until later on (John 13: 7.) He hadn't suffered for our sins in Gethsemane yet nor had He been crucified and resurrected, but this foot-washing was foreshadowing those very events.

Peter initially refused to let the Savior wash his feet, quite naturally horrified it wasn't happening the other way around. But when Jesus said to him, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me," Peter responded, "Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and my head." (John 13: 8-9.)

Unless we accept Christ's atoning sacrifice into our lives to cleanse us, we simply cannot be His disciples. There is no other way. 

Peter may not have understood everything that was going on, but he knew enough to accept what Christ was offering with his whole might, mind, and strength. Because that's what a disciple is: someone who trusts God and makes full use of the Atonement to repent, partner with the Savior, and become better every day. 

Where Do You Think You Fall?

At the last General Conference, President Nelson gave a talk called "Let God Prevail." In it, he asked some questions that can help us gauge our current commitment to discipleship:

• Are you willing to let God prevail in your life?
• Are you willing to let God be the most important influence in your life?
• Will you allow His words, His commandments, and His covenants to influence what you do each day?
• Will you allow His voice to take priority over any other?
• Are you willing to let whatever He needs you to do take precedence over every other ambition?
• Are you willing to have your will swallowed up in His?

Being a disciple of Christ, as you can see from that list of questions, is a pretty rigorous discipline. It isn't easy and there's no shortcut or substitute for small and simple repeated acts of faith. 

But as President Nelson promises, "when [our] greatest desire is to let God prevail... so many decisions become easier. So many issues become non-issues." And the blessings of discipleship — namely, peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come — are well worth it.

If you liked this post, find "Topics You'll Find Here" (in the sidebar on computers and at the bottom of screen for mobile devices) and click on "latter day saint" to read more!

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The Problem with Avocados (A Spiritual Lesson in Patience)

I have a love-hate relationship with avocados.

On the one hand, there's nothing tastier than an avocado in a salad, or a burrito, or an omelet... I've never met an avocado recipe I didn't like.

The problem is that avocados take their sweet time to ripen, and it's usually not in time for the meal I planned to use them in. And patience is not my strong suit.

Our world has become so instant that I start to get the shakes if the ad before my YouTube video goes on for more than 8 seconds. Email is too slow so we text each other. I recently read that Millennials aren't even eating cereal because it takes too long.

I guess I'm not the only one with a patience deficit.

Maybe that's why a particular talk in the last General Conference called "Fourth Floor, Last Door" stuck out to me so much.

In this talk, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf tells the story of two missionaries who felt a spiritual prompting to go knock on doors in a certain four-story apartment building in Germany, looking for someone to share their message with.

When everybody on the first floor told them they weren't interested, they could have turned around and said "Well, we tried."

But they went on to the second floor and then the third... where they were rejected as soundly as they were on the first.

In fact, nobody was willing to listen to them until they reached the very last door on the fourth floor, where there lived a mom and her little girl.

That was the story of President Uchtdorf's wife's introduction to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but it has special application to all of us. He reminds us all that:

“In our search for enduring faith, in our quest to connect with God and His purposes, let us remember the Lord's promise: 'Knock, and it shall be opened unto you' (Matthew 7: 7.)

Will we give up after knocking on a door or two? A floor or two?

Or will we keep seeking until we have reached the fourth floor, last door?”

Prayer, at its simplest, is a way of knocking at God's door. Sometimes His response might be instantaneous and unmistakable, but more often (at least for me,) it's a gradual process.

If I keep praying and don't give up, over the coming weeks and months and sometimes years I'll feel Him answering me, bit by bit and piece by piece.

Even though it can be frustrating, I think that works better for me than getting it all at once, lightning bolt-style. The things I value most are the things I have to work for. Or, as Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own put it, "the 'hard' is what makes it great." (Love that movie.)

Developing true faith requires patience and diligence. Sometimes we may have to knock for a while before receiving an answer to a heartfelt prayer. Until we get that answer, we have to go on the faith we've got already, and try not to get discouraged or give up.

That's easy to say, not so easy to do.

It's easy to get frustrated with ourselves or even with God when we don't feel we're experiencing Him as closely as we'd like to. But I think that on the whole, we can be too hard on ourselves.

It's okay to have questions, to struggle with doubts, or to feel that our faith has room for improvement.

If we had all the answers then what would we do with the rest of our lives, anyway? God sent us here to learn to have faith in Him, and I think He knew we wouldn't become perfect at it overnight.

Having patience with ourselves and the Lord's timing isn't easy. But I like to think of myself (and all of us, really) as unripe avocados.

If you Google it, there are dozens of so-called methods to get an avocado to ripen faster, and they're all lies. (I know, I've tried them.) The only thing that works is setting them out on your kitchen counter and letting the natural process take its course.

It takes time to get answers to prayers and to build a testimony (that's what Latter-day Saints call a spiritual witness from the Holy Spirit.) So let's be patient with ourselves and let the Lord do His thing to help us ripen.

President Uchtdorf says: "God 'rewards those who earnestly seek him' (Hebrews 11: 6,) but that reward is not usually behind the first door. So we need to keep knocking."

Simply put, God's not done with us yet, so let's not give up on Him!

A version of this post was first given as a Sunday lesson at my church this past weekend. To find out why I was teaching anything to a room full of women who are probably smarter than me, see this article.

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How Not to Have a Successful Spiritual Pilgrimage with Kids in 10 Simple Steps

Earlier this week, our family took the opportunity to tour the Hartford, Connecticut temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

For us, the temple is an extremely special part of our theology. Usually only certain adults can go inside temples, but when a new one is built there's initially a 3-4 week open house where anyone can come in and take a tour.

Here's what we learned about how NOT to take a successful spiritual pilgrimage with your children, in 10 simple steps.

Step #1: Wake Them Up Super-Early

We decided to go on Wednesday, when the kids had a day off school for Yom Kippur. Of course, we waited to reserve a tour time until the only tours left were, as my 12-year-old self would've said, "at the buttcrack of dawn." This should have been a sign to us to abort the whole plan and turn back. It wasn't.

Step #2: Change Plans at the Last Minute

A friend who was going with us got sick in the night and cancelled, and then Phillip found out about something happening at work that he really should be there for, and since he was no longer needed as an extra driver we decided he'd go into work while I took the 6 kids to the open house. By myself.

Step #3: Be Extremely Overconfident

When Phillip expressed his concern about me doing all the driving and kid-wrangling alone, I waved him away with an arrogant, "Please. I do this all the time. It'll be fine." Thus setting the stage for the perfect storm.

Step #4: Don't Bring Enough for Them to Do in the Car

We were on the road by 7:01 AM. I was going to take a picture of the clock but I didn't want to set a bad example for my tween who I've told never ever EVER to use your phone while you're driving. But apparently I didn't do everything right, because I heard "I'm bored" a bazillion times, except from the child who amused herself by quietly drawing all over the car speakers with a dry erase marker.

Step #5: Make an Unscheduled Pit Stop

One child claimed she was about to sustain serious kidney damage if we didn't pull over right that second, so we stopped at a rest stop with the world's grossest port-a-potties. I mean, all port-a-potties are the world's grossest, but these were even grosser. They were full practically up to the top, and you know how when one kid goes to the bathroom the rest suddenly realize they have to go, too?

Step #6: Count on Your Toddler Not to Freak Out about Something Ridiculous

We finally arrived and joined our tour group, but the fun was just beginning. Before going in to the temple, the open house people ask everyone to help protect the carpets inside by putting these little shower cap-looking things over their shoes. If this doesn't sound like the rough equivalent of Chinese water torture to you, you're obviously not my 2-year-old.

Step #7: Wait Until the Last Moment to Check the Baby's Diaper

Once we had our shoe booties on and were literally walking into the temple with our tour group, I picked the baby up out of the stroller to carry him inside — and Houston, we had a problem. He hadn't pooped for a few days, and had chosen this as a great time and place to let it all out. Note to self: babies just love a good explosive diaper blowout at the holiest edifice on earth.

Step #8: Get Poop on Everything

We were already a public spectacle, with so many kids crowded around and the toddler alternately whining and raging about his shoe covers. Now we were also blocking traffic with a poopy baby. We high-tailed it over to the side to change his diaper in the stroller, which was neither easy nor neat. A sweet volunteer came over to dispose of the soiled diaper which was covered with poop both inside and out. I repeat: this nice man was touching poop that wasn't even his own kid's, and everyone knows that's the grossest kind of poop.

Step #9: Miss Your Tour

Our group went on without us, not wanting to stick around to see or smell the rest of the show, and who could blame them? But the open house chairman took pity on us and offered, in his own words, "to give your sweet family a private tour." He snuck us in between two tours so we could still see everything (but first we all had to get new shoe booties; I'll let you just imagine how that went over with the toddler.)

Step #10: Attempt to Juggle Two Crying Children

At this point, a smarter woman may have just retreated to the car and driven home never to leave the house again, but we soldiered on. Throughout the temple tour the baby was fussy and required a whole lot of bouncing and shushing, which would've been fine if the 2-year-old wasn't growling and refusing to walk. In the end, the tour guide ended up carrying the baby while I carried the toddler, calmly showing us the rooms, asking my older kids questions, and never once letting on that we were just one bearded lady short of a circus side show.

Before we left home so very early that morning, we'd all said a prayer that visiting the inside of the temple that is so sacred to us would be a spiritual experience.

By "spiritual experience," I had NOT meant rushing through the temple squeezed between scheduled tours, feeling self-conscious and anxious about how much inconvenience we were causing everyone.

But surprisingly, I did have a spiritual experience that day after all. The reactions of everyone around me was a sweet reminder that God loves families.

No one made me feel like a spectacle or a bother (even though we were totally both,) not even the poop-touching volunteer. The open house chairman who offered us a special tour kept calling us a "sweet family," even as my toddler was giving him the stink-eye the entire time.

It meant a lot to me to see Christ-loving people embrace not just the abstract idea of "the family," but my  family and all the mess, noise, and chaos that goes along with it.

I guess to paraphrase a verse from Galatians, sometimes the fruit of the spirit is love, gentleness, meekness, goodness, and acting like it's totally no big deal to handle someone else's kid's poop.

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Being (or Not Being) Comforted By God When Everything Is Terrible

By most people's standards, I haven't had a very hard life. I'd probably agree with them. But even so, I've been in the middle of some situations where I had no peace of mind and definitely needed some comfort.

Two years ago, I sat at the little round table in my super deluxe postpartum recovery suite (kidding about the super deluxe part) feeling particularly hopeless. My body was recovering from an emergency C-section, and my baby was in an isolette in the NICU 40 minutes away.

We knew it was only a question of when — not if — he could come out. We knew that eventually he'd be fine. I'd be fine. But for now, I was a wreck. The 20 miles between us might as well have been a few continents and an ocean, because I was in no condition to go anywhere.

I remember leaning my elbows on the table and praying for some comfort. And feeling... nothing.

At the time I was so frustrated. I've always believed that God wants to comfort us in our times of greatest need. All throughout the scriptures and in the lives of people I know (who definitely aren't liars!) I've seen it happen.

So why wasn't it happening to me?

That experience was years ago, but I found myself lying awake thinking about it the other night. If God loves us, why was His comfort so elusive to me?

I thought about every example I could think of in the scriptures when someone has been comforted by God, and pretty soon I got to thinking about Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and suffering for all our sins. That was the worst one. Literally no one can even understand what agony that was.

As the Savior prayed, Luke says that "an angel [came] from heaven, strengthening him."

I was pondering on this when a very strong thought occurred to me: Look up what Jesus said right before that.

I got out of bed, pulled up the scriptures on lds.org, and read. Before the angel appeared, Jesus asked "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me, nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done" (Luke 22:43.)

Being willing to give up control — or at least, the illusion that we're in control — is an absolute prerequisite for the Lord to do pretty much anything with us. Including, I think, comforting us.

Now, I will never experience what Jesus experienced in the garden. But I'm sure there will be many scenarios in my life that I'm sure are driving me beyond my limits.

At those times, it helps to remember that God is standing at the door, ready and waiting to carry us through the hardest trials of our lives. We just need to let Him in.

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The Unexpected Benefit of Helping

I've been thinking about service lately. Call it charity, reaching out, or helping others, but serving people has been on my mind.

Years ago, an older man at my church addressed our congregation about service and his sister Joy, and his talk comes to mind whenever I think about the topic.

Joy was born when he was 4 years old and at first, everything was uneventful. It wasn't until Joy was two that his parents realized something was wrong.

Through a series of doctors appointments and medical procedures, they learned that Joy was never going to develop normally.

Eventually she learned to get around from place to place on her own, but she was never able to talk and it wasn't clear how much she understood. For her whole life, she would be spoon-fed every meal and have every one of her diapers changed by her mother.

Joy lived to be 34.

To put that in perspective, her brother (the guy giving the talk in church that day) grew up, had children of his own, toilet-trained them and sent them off to elementary school — all while his mother continued changing Joy's diapers, day in and day out.

People would sometimes watch his mother feeding and changing her adult daughter and say, "You don't have to do this, you know. You could turn Joy over to the state. She doesn't even know you're doing it."

His mother would respond the same way every time: "But I  do."

The funny thing about helping others is that even if it doesn't change their lives, it usually changes ours.

Sometimes, the things we do to help others may not seem to make much of a difference, and that's hard.

We lend a hand to a struggling friend but it doesn't take away her problems. We volunteer at a soup kitchen but we know there'll be more hungry people the very next night.

I don't know about you, but when I put my effort into something I want it to make a difference. It stinks to spend a day sweating over cleaning the house only to wake up the next day to see it's even dirtier and messier than before.

But often, it's not about the net effect of our service.

It's kind of weird, but we really do come to love those we help. And when we love others, we begin to see them as God sees them. We get out of our own heads, stop worrying about ourselves, and become more compassionate.

My oldest daughter gave her first talk in church on Sunday, on this same topic of kindness. She quoted the president of our church, Thomas S. Monson, who said:

Unless we lose ourselves in service to others, there is little purpose to our own lives. Those who live only for themselves eventually shrivel up and figuratively lose their lives, while those who lose themselves in service to others grow and flourish — and in effect save their lives.

If God wanted to send angels to help people in response to their every prayer He could, but I think He usually leaves it to us because helping other people gives us the opportunity to become a little better ourselves.

Just something to think about as you go about your day.

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How to Get Specific Answers to Your Prayers (Or, Why Praying for a Gray Cat Isn't Necessarily a Dumb Idea)

I've been thinking about how some people pray for such specific things and receive that very thing in answer. How does that work, exactly?

Are these people fundamentally different than me? Are they just God's favorites, or what?

For example, I've always felt slightly unsettled about the story of Abraham's servant who was supposed to go find a wife for Abraham's son Isaac (Genesis 24.)

He went to the well at a place called Nahor and decided that the first lady who he asked for water, who also offered to water his camels, was The One. And it all worked out, miraculously, that that very thing happened.

Something I've always wondered is: what if the servant had decided on some other equally random method of choosing a wife for Isaac? Would God have honored that plan, too?

It just seemed so odd, to give such very specific terms and conditions to God, and not only have full confidence that your plan is going to work but also to see it actually go through!

Could I do that? Can I just pick any old random thing, and then if I have enough faith God would make it work for me? It makes God sound like a wish-granting genie there to grant your request no matter how far-fetched or arbitrary it is.

I just didn't get it.

Another time, I was in church listening to a returned missionary give a talk. She told some stories from her mission, including a time when she and her partner missionary weren't having much success in finding people who were interested in the gospel message.

So they decided to ask God for more help in finding someone. They decided that the next time they saw a house with a gray cat in the yard, they would go up and knock on the door.

You heard me. A gray cat.

To me, that sounds even more ridiculous than going to the well and seeing who gives water to your camels, but that's what they did.

A few weeks went by, and one day they did see a yard with a gray cat sitting out front. So they went and knocked on the door, prepared to share their message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

The people who lived in that house were a large family who had been praying and hoping for God's direction in their lives, and anxiously awaiting an answer.

Not only that, but they owned seven gray cats.

To be honest, my first response to hearing that story was to be totally incredulous. How could that possibly work?

Was she really suggesting that I could pray for an arbitrary sign like a cat of a certain color, pose it to God, and He'll comply by providing me with that exact random thing?

What she didn't say, though, is how she and her missionary companion arrived at the conclusion to look for a gray cat in the first place.

I'd been assuming that they'd just pulled that idea out of thin air, but upon thinking about it, it's much more likely to me that they'd been inspired to pray for that very thing.

Wouldn't it make sense that God heard the prayers of that family, and knowing that one of their cats would likely be roaming the yard at the exact moment the missionaries passed, gave them the impulse to start looking for it?

Receiving specific answers to prayers, then, is more than a matter of deciding what I want and posting my order to God.

It all boils down to praying for His will and not my own in the first place.

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When a Control Freak Prays

My name is Jenny, and I'm a control freak.

Of course, I'm not really in control of much in a house full of 6 kids running amok day and night, but I at least like to maintain the illusion of control, and here's how I do it.

If you've read this blog for more than 30 seconds you know that I often miss deadlines, space on appointments, deal with unexpected disasters, or show up late — sometimes all in the same day —  but when I do, I re-calibrate and go on as best I can. I  chart my course, dang it!

But what if I consciously decided ahead of time that it's okay to totally drop the ball if God wants something more important to happen instead?

That's actually a terrifying prospect for a control freak: letting something important go undone, not because it was simply unavoidable, but because you chose to let it go undone.

Therein lies the dilemma when a control freak prays.

Lately I've felt a sense of overwhelming busyness that drives basically everything I do: I have to plan this, I have to organize that, I have to sign the kids up for those and do these billion things for my blog — all of which take much more time than I actually have at my disposal.

At the same time I've had a nagging feeling that I'm sort of wandering, that for all of my busyness I'm still not where I want to be.

Where do I want to be? And more importantly, who do I want to be?

In all sincerity, I want to be the person God intends me to be.

But that requires me to relinquish some of my control and let Him do the molding and shaping instead.

It makes no sense to ask God to show me what He needs me to do today if I've already overscheduled every moment with full insistence that all the things must be done no matter what.

Placing myself in God's hands and going wherever He wants me to go and doing whatever He wants me to do is scary because while I'm doing that, all the other stuff might not end up getting done.

However, the outcome will be better. God will make a lot more out of my life than I can, even with all my careful curation.

So what I'm asking in prayer now has shifted a little. I'm asking for help to overcome my fear of losing control, and replace it with faith that God is in control.

After all, if I really do want Him to direct my path, I need to be willing to give Him room to do it.

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