Wednesday, August 20, 2014

The Power of an Environment


The power of an environment is huge.  A seed contains so much potential but that great potential remains trapped inside until it is put in the right environment to grow (please read Matthew 13 - the Parable of the Sower, it is very much worth pondering).

Each of us are composed of a physical body and a spiritual body.  Our father and mother are the parents of our physical body while our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother are the parents of our spiritual body.  Because we (and our children as well) are the offspring of Deity we contain an amazing amount of potential.  We do not have to slave over our children to have them bring forth talents and spiritual gifts, that is already programmed into them.  The main job we have as parents is to create the environment and teach them to recognize and follow their conscience.  Once they understand how God communicates with them they will be able to follow His voice in becoming exactly who God intended for them to become - the same is true for ourselves.  It is never too late to start heeding our conscience and creating an environment where we can develop our spiritual gifts and talents.

First we eliminated all the influence of Satan that we could pinpoint in our home, then we made sure it was an environment that would foster the real spiritual growth that we wanted for ourselves and our children.  Beautiful music, artwork, books that contained true stories of faith and courage, furnishings made of the natural elements.  The truth was that we had many of these things in our home already, it was mostly a matter of eliminating the other stuff that cluttered out the best things that were already there.

Consider the missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  They dedicate 1 1/2 - 2 years of their lives in an environment free of many of these worldly influences and thus experience spiritual growth like never before.  Then many of them return from their proselyting only to transplant themselves into the same poor soil they had been in before their mission.


We have all the control over what is in our environment.  No reason to invite Satan in and make him comfortable - and who would ever ask him to babysit?  I cannot imagine anyone would, yet we allow his influence to entertain our children through so many different avenues.  Be very aware of what you allow in your environment, if your conscience is the least bit wary of it then throw it out.

Also, ponder on what the environment would be like in Heaven - would we even be comfortable there?  I love this talk (click here) but when I first read it back in 2009 I was quite offended by it because it was nothing like the environment that I had set up in my own home at that time.  Over the years I have repented and realized that God is unchanging and if we want all the privileges and blessings of being in His presence again and learning how to become as He is then we have to be the ones willing to change.  God is so patient with us and willingly providing the atonement specifically so we can change.

  



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