Today in my Gospel Doctrine Class we had a great discussion. And as we were talking about Lehi and his family leaving Jerusalem, being in the Wilderness, going back for the brass plates and then going back for Ishmael and his daughters, a story which can almost be quoted by heart word for word by most members of the church we have studied it so many times and started reading the BOM so many times, that I wondered if there were new insights left to discuss. Now I live in an excellent Ward and even if we would have just discussed the stories exactly as we always have, there would have been great participation and new insights. But as the teacher I do feel some responsibility to find some on my own. I always pray to Heavenly Father, that I will be lead by the spirit when studying the lesson and studying the scriptures for the lesson, and that my class will have their love of the Savior and their testimonies strengthened by the lessons each week. And I did feel that I had some thoughtful points that maybe would be new insights.
Another part of this story is that Our Bishop bore his testimony today about how wonderful the new Ensign for January is and encouraged us to read some of the articles in it. At this point I had not taken the plastic sealed covering off of the Ensign until I came home from church tonight, I'm a little embarrassed to tell you. But it is true.
In wanting to leave on a spiritual note at the end of my lesson, I felt inspired to read 1 Nephi 7:17-19 which talks about Nephi being bound with bands by his brothers and that he prays that the Lord will "...give me strength to burst these bands with which I am bound... and it came to pass that....the bands were loosed" and it goes on to say that a daughter of Ishmael and Ishmael's wife and one of his sons pleaded his case. As I was standing there the spirit told me that I should share that this is a type of simile/metaphor of the atonement. That with whatever sin, addiction, or struggle we may have that has bound us, that if we pray we can have these bands loosened. And that we do have the Savior who does and will plead our case with The Father, and I bore testimony of this.
Well, when I got home, I took off the plastic cover over our Ensign and started reading the articles when lo and behold on page 47 in the article entitled "Finding Answers in the Book of Mormon" Susan Lunt of Utah, USA tells how she turned to the Book of Mormon to help her with her addiction to food. And quoted this very block of scriptures and how she felt something shift inside her when she read those verses.
Even though at first I thought, Oh, my gosh, everyone is going to think I read this and then took credit for it.....I then realized what an amazing experience to have a prompting from the spirit and what an answer to my prayer it really was that What I felt when reading those verses out loud to the class was indeed a real insight a real prompting from the Holy Ghost and was indeed a very spiritual way to end my lesson.
We our Children of a loving Heavenly Father and he does answer our prayers and helps us magnify our callings so that we can bring the Holy Ghost and the spirit of our Heavenly Father and Savior in the classroom with us. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
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