The Prize Without the Family

Day 4. Once you get the prize of the world without the family

Father in Heaven, what a delight to be alive in Christ these Latter-days. I am thrilled, and I rejoice to be back in the creative space. It brings me joy and turns my heart to Thee. It is a profound privilege and honor to seek Thee and Thy ways.

He that abases himself shall be exalted.¹ Yet the world teaches us to exalt ourselves for finite things, even for the purpose of doing good, including philanthropic works. I spent thirty years trying to make my mark, so that once I had a million dollars, as the Barenaked Ladies would sing, people would listen to me. But I was wrong.

A close friend, thriving in the business world, said that once you get the prize of the world without the family, you recognize the cost and value of family. This hit home as I move from a vacillating heart toward a firm mind in every form and power of godliness.² Taking on the yoke of Christ requires me to leave double-mindedness.³ It is converting the natural man, the carnal enemy, into a partaker of the divine nature.⁴ Not by despising the body. By training it, as an athlete is trained, the body ridden and not allowed to ride, until it yields.⁵

I thank thee for this amazing insight about beliefs. David Bayer, in A Changed Mind, defines belief as a decision. Moving from unholy to good, and not only to better or best but to holy, is based upon righteous decisions, which are beliefs.

I praise Thee for getting the most correct book on earth into my hands, even the Book of Mormon, that I may draw near unto Thee, learning it by study and by faith.⁶ Yet I marvel at what Thou taught me just before I turned nineteen. By revelation and vision, Thou taught me who Thou art by teaching me who I am in relation to Thee. And not only that. Thou taught me that as I am an offspring of Thee, so likewise are my brothers and sisters. I am not an only child. In the body of Christ we are one family. After more than thirty years as a disciple of Christ, I am returning to what Thou bestowed upon me at eighteen.

My son, you have finally chosen to abase thyself, including accepting a new job, and the floodgates can open.⁷ Thank you for submitting to my invite to write the things of your heart and mind. Publishing daily is opening your soul to receive more again, and welcoming celestial habits back into your life. Bravo. I see your mind working more clearly, and you are spreading joy and light to those within your circle of influence.

Thank you for embracing your children's lives, and for commencing to be part of them, including in homeschooling. You are starting to understand joy in your posterity as you connect the dots your wise wife taught you: observe your children connecting the dots you helped them learn. These are lessons the world says to abdicate because you do not have a teaching certificate. Yet a father of someone you dated, from your bachelor years, was a man who built his own house and was not a contractor, taught you otherwise. He said, “It is as natural for a man to build his own house as for a bird to build a nest.”

Likewise, it is as natural for a man to make himself a god as it is to choose the daily nudges to do good, grace to grace, from a small capacity toward a great one.⁸ In the first volume of Leadership, Sterling W. Sill wrote that the world would change in thirty days if everyone simply lived the law of the boomerang, the golden rule.⁹

The key to happiness and power is to choose to live what you know, or what you are nudged to do, say, and be: good, even holy. The path is brought to pass one step at a time. Continue, therefore, to seek, find, receive, and give more good, even righteousness in Christ. Let's dance!

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

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¹ Luke 14:11. “For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Matthew 23:12. “And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.” ↩

² Moroni 7:30. “showing themselves unto them of strong faith and a firm mind in every form of godliness.” Joseph Smith—History 1:19. “having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” ↩

³ Matthew 11:29–30. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” James 1:8. “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” ↩

⁴ Mosiah 3:19. “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord.” 2 Peter 1:4. “that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature.” ↩

⁵ Eknath Easwaran, Seeing with the Eyes of Love: On the Imitation of Christ, page 16. “Here Saint Francis himself comes to my rescue when he addresses the body as ‘Brother Donkey.’ He says, in effect, ‘I feed him and take care of him, but I ride on him; I don’t let him ride on me!’ Today, instead of talking about mortifying the body and senses to bring them under control, I always speak of training them — bringing body and senses to their optimum condition, like an athlete in training.” ↩

⁶ Introduction to the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith: “the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.” Doctrine and Covenants 88:118. “seek learning, even by study and also by faith.” ↩

⁷ Doctrine and Covenants 121:33. “How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.” ↩

⁸ King Follett discourse. Joseph Smith: “you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation.” Moses 1:39. “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” ↩

⁹ Sterling W. Sill, Leadership (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft), page 15. “Some have called it the Golden Rule; others have called it the Law of the Boomerang; others have called it the Law of Retaliation. This law says, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’ If we could only learn to put this one law into effect, it would transform our lives and the world in thirty days.” ↩