Live right now

Notes from BYU devotional: Brother Gong march 20, 2007:
Live right now. has dual meaning.
Live--right now.
Live right--now.

Supernal blessings of choice--Moral agency. While we learn from the past and plan for the future we make decisions in the present.

Also key to joy in both time and eternity.

faith, repentance, covenants and receptiveness to the Holy Ghost are all and always will be tied to our living righteously. Todays choices shape tomorrows decisions. choice is as eternal as we are. faith, marriage, career--choices made before we are old enough to run for congress: 25.

we may put them off, but we can't escape them. Choices reveal define and refine us.
we have the give of the Holy Ghost. When we make mistakes there is always a way back, and the way back is always the way forward. The Saviors atonement helps us see the Lord's promises fulfilled in our lives right now.

1. Choices:
quinticential:
exesstential:
dilemas:
QED:

seek to live right in the right now.
Act for ourselves. Adam fell that men might be and men are that they might have joy.

A. be anxiously engaged in a good cause D&C 58:27
B. Not run faster than we have strength Mosiah 4:27
so often everythign happens at once. How do we dilligently do all things in wisdom and in order.

A. We know we need to pray
B. but we may not know what to pray for.
left on our own there is none that doeth good. pray in all things. Neither being told in all things-->paralysis. "be careful what you ask for"

Choosing to trust in God takes faith. The best guide of all: the whisperings of the Holy Spirit.
Boyd K. Packer: Once you really determine to follow that guide, your testimony will grow and you will find provisions set out along the way, in unexpected places, as evidence that someone knew you would be traveling that way (Ensign May 1976).

On occasion in unexpected places--I have been grateful to find such provisions.

A. How do we say 'Thy will be done" and
B. Truly mean I want what He wants

Example: Abraham
Elder Madsen asked Hugh B. Brown (nearly 90) why Abraham needed to go to Mt. Mariah and offer up his only son to God? It was obvious President Brown had pondered and prayed and wept over that question many times before, he answered: "Abraham needed to learn something about Abraham."

Happily most choices in life are not Abrahamic tests, mortal choices do let us learn about ourselves. Ultimate Choose your own adventure. Hel. Chapter 10.

Meeting with happily engaged couples.
happy couples CTR the DTR. let the spiritual guide the physical. set distinct appropriate bounds. Living right now makes possible living happily in the future. Asking recommend questions is not to keep you from blessings. The Lord wants us to qualify for all the blessings. there is a law....obedience

Never underestimate seemingly small decisions. This includes how we choose to dress, speak or otherwise present ourselves. Do you protect your spiritual identity? Would you feel comfortable sharing "your profile" my space, facebook etc. Many employers review profile.

Life doesn't stop while we wait for answers.
The pioneers received inspiration while the wagon wheels turned.
The Lord has asked us to cheerfully do all that lies in our power, and then we may stand still... for His arm to be revealed.

Get on your knees and ask for help and then get up and go to work and you'll be able to find your way through almost any situation.--president Gordon B. Hinckley Go forward with faith Biography.

If you go to bed at 10 and get up by 6 am, things will work out for you.
he and his wife courted from across 2 hemispheres. He was at Oxford, she was teaching in Provo. They knew what they wanted but also sought the Lord's confirming guidance. not should I marry Susan--that is do all the work for me, but to say "I want to ask Susan to marry me, please confirm this decision which I have made with all of my heart." they waited and listened with faith. Answers come according to the varying situation. the right way to ask the right question for me.

A new picture of meekness: being at full gallop, but with velvet ears, Elder Maxwell's last BYU devotional address.

A. How do I distinguish between promptings of the Spirit and
B. My own personal feelings?
March Ensign: humility, and obedience precede inspiration. if we are living humbly and obediently we can know if we are being led by the spirit to get to know that attractive young man, or if it is our response to a Madison Ave. aftershave.

real choices: between good and good. happily we are not alone as we seek to live right now. Heavenly Father respects perfectly our agency and yet at times he Knows best also prompts and guides us.

His personal experience:
1. Promptings sometimes open unanticipated opportunities to help others
(using a specific door, allow us to help others)
2. sometimes come when our hearts go out to someone else.
(Nathan, Maria, Christi, Lindsey, Stephanie, mom, Brad, Scott, Dad etc.)
3. Promptings sometimes comfort or prepare us for things Heavenly Father knows are coming
(SMC) Quiet prompting that his father would not come to visit again. He upgraded his father's plane ticket, and allowed him to run errands with him. How grateful to God that He knows. The prompting to "come home." I don't ever want to do anything contrary to the mind and will of God.
4. Sometimes come at the very instant we need them to address the questions important to someone else.

Do you drink the lime juice the humble family offered him? I would thank the family profusely, I'd drink part then, thank them for their incredible hospitality, overcome with gratitude.

sometimes it is in the right now, in the instant that we learn things that are important to someone else. in each of our lives are experiences that Heavenly knows us. we can gallop with velvet ears. His promptings will bless us by opening choices we would not have otherwise known.

Make our best consistent choices. His Son will be our Savior and redeemer. Human choices require atonement. We've all had experiences we tried to be helpful and weren't. Inadvertently hurts anothers feeling, friend who dies, a suicide-- these bring us to seek "atonement"
thank you, i love you, please forgive me, I forgive you--they take on such greater meaning they become the 4 most important statements. The Savior's atonement can infuse these into our relationships right now. He knows, he can heal us. as we remember him, we can have his spirit to be with us.

Les Miserables--to love another person is to see the face of God. face matters. we face the facts. face 635 references to face 22 references to face to face, where great prophets saw and spoke with God face to face. The scriptures are a living reservoir. Take Elder Bednar's challenge--study patterns, connections. God has a face. Come to know his face. Approach Him in prayer through Jesus Christ. Do not think He is distant, do not be overly familiar or disrespectful.

Live right now:
1: ponder your patriarchal blessing
notice where Heavenly Father gives specific.general guidance
2: things I need to start, stop or continue doing
3: study life of prophets: Abraham
4:study times I've received guidance, how the Lord has spoken to me, archive them
5: count your many blessings: add I love you, thank you, I'm sorry, please forgive me, I forgive you to your vocabulary

we will no longer see through a glass darkly but will come to see God face to face.