Sharing

One of the young adult members talked during the meetings today about sharing the Gospel in a way that has me examining myself. 

It's harder to share the things you believe in if you don't want the person you're sharing them with to find greater happiness in what you share.

Unpacking that a bit: 

To have the love of Christ in you is to want other people to be happy. 

To feel the love of Christ towards you is to believe you can and should be happy, and to want that happiness yourself.

If what you believe it isn't making you happy, why should you want to share it?

Or, rather, if you aren't sharing it with them out of the love of Christ in you for them -- out of the desire for them to find greater happiness in what you share -- it's going to be that much harder to share.

This may have something to do with why people seem to be a little stand-offish when I tell them about what I know is true. I really need to think about my attitude towards life, God, and other people.

Drinking Upstream from the Cows, Not Downstream

J. Richard Clarke, at the time, 2nd counselor in the Presiding Bishopric of the Church, gave a talk on the scriptures in the October session of conference in which, among many useful things, he mentioned a bit of colorful advice that Elder Marion J. Romney apparently gave on several different occasions in public and in private. It was advice that resonated with me, and still resonates with me (and many others):

I don’t know much about the gospel other than what I’ve learned from the standard works. When I drink from a spring I like to get the water where it comes out of the ground, not down the stream after the cattle have waded in it. … I appreciate other people’s interpretation, but when it comes to the gospel we ought to be acquainted with what the Lord says.

He quotes a bit more from counsel given to seminary and institute coordinators in 1973. I've linked it up there, go read it.

Elder F. Burton Howard was another who quoted Elder Romney on this, in an article in the New Era from 1985, although his version was from private conversation. (Good article on giving and getting, although some may think the language dated.)

Think about this:

Get the water where it comes out of the ground, not downstream where the cows have been wading in it.

And I'm tempted to wax eloquent (or not) about this, but, to make the point more clear, I'll stop here.