Paisley: Hi everybody, it's me again, as Paisley imperfect, and
I'm here with another little bit about being still or finding
stillness. Today, we're going to focus on a article from the
February 2023 Liahona. Magazine. It's titled Peace be still
calming our storms. And it's actually written by Stephen, I'm
probably gonna butcher this name too. Steven Turcotte.
Turcot T E.
And he was at the time, to be completely honest, I did not go
look him up and see if he still is. But he was on the physics
faculty at BYU Idaho.
You have probably already seen this article, but I had not I
missed it. And I love it. And it's perfect for what we're
talking about right now. So one of the things that I really like
about it is that as a physicist, he takes the opportunity to
explain sort of how, how Jesus performed a couple of miracles.
We're gonna dive in some more of that here in just a minute. But
first, I wanted to just read that part at the top, you know,
they always have the title. And then there's just a little blurb
underneath to kind of give it like a one sentence description
of what the article is about. And this one said, The Lord's
miracles showed that sometimes he calms the storm. And
sometimes he calms the sailor.
And that actually hit me really hard, especially after what we
talked about earlier this week, it made me wonder, Is God
calming the storm around me? Or is he called me me?
And I think for me, at least, I think this week, it was a little
bit of both. But
let's take a look at the miracles that he that he brings
up in this article about whether God is calling us as the sailor
or whether he's calling the storm around us. Let's look at
those miracles. There's one for each scenario. So the first one
is when Jesus and his apostles were on a boat. They were headed
across the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was sleeping, but the apostles
were awake, and they were in the middle of this great big storm,
right? They were awake, they were afraid and they were sure
they were going to die. They waited until they couldn't take
it anymore. And then they woke Jesus up, as Brother Tercotte
says, In desperation with their anguish words, Master carest,
though not that we perish. And so what did Jesus do? He got up,
he rebuked the wind, quote, he rebuked the wind and said unto
the sea, Peace be still everything calmed down. And then
after everything calmed down, he looked at his apostles, and he
said unto them, Why are you so sick? Why are ye so fearful? How
is it that you have no faith?
You can find all of that in Mark chapter four, by the way.
So the sea is in turmoil, Jesus is sleeping.
And the apostles are afraid for their lives. They wake him up,
likely just completely baffled as to how he could possibly
sleep through something like that. And he calms the storm
around them.
Brothers Tercotte explains how the weather works in that area,
which I'm not particularly qualified to get into. In short,
the Sea of Galilee is comparatively shallow, and is
surrounded by hills, some of them are really high, he
mentioned that one of them is about 2000 feet high. Is that a
hill or a mountain? See, I'm not qualified necessarily to talk
about how the weather works. But because of how shallow the sea
is, the air on the surface gets warm during the day. And then
that warm air in the evening that warm air starts to rise and
go up those hills. But at the top of the hills is the cold
air. And when warm air and cold air interact
things get a little crazy, right.
And in that area, in particular, it causes high winds, which on a
shallow sea, cause causes large waves. So you get warm air, cold
air, high winds and giant waves. And Jesus gets up and you just
calms it right down. And brother Turcotte kind of goes into how
right now, as humans, we have not figured out how to control
the weather. There has been some cloud seeding that's helped
change things. And he talks a little bit about that you should
go read it. It's very interesting.
But as humans, we are not capable of changing the weather
or controlling the weather. It shows Jesus's true understanding
of the elements and how to control the elements. But how
does that apply to us mice?
dorm this last in May, my storm was not honestly. In fact, I get
seasick standing on a pier. So you're not going to find me on a
boat in the middle of any sea anywhere?
Asleep for sure.
And so how does it apply to me? How does Jesus getting up and
calming the storm apply to me. And brother Turcotte points out
that quote, the Savior was teaching about the saving and
protecting power he has. The winds of evil can cause all
sorts of tumultuous waves in our lives. As we look to the Savior,
we can be protected from evil and its effects, we can be saved
from spiritual destruction and quote, so he uses that miracle
as an example, to show us that
it's Jesus has the power, to calm and to protect, to save,
calm, protect us, us, excuse me, he can command the elements, and
he can help calm our spiritual seas. So now, as He also points
out, sometimes these storms will be calmed right away. Other
times, we're gonna have to wait and we're gonna have to endure
them for a bit. But here's the kicker, quote, he says, Remember
that similar winds can cause greater waves on shallow water
compared with deep water. As we deepen our faith in the Savior,
we will find that we are less affected by spiritual winds and
waves than would have once threatened to overwhelm us.
So as our faith becomes deeper, as our sea of faith becomes
deeper,
which just brought into my mind how Jesus says that He is living
water, right. So as our faith in the Savior deepens, the
spiritual winds, this hot and cold air, that combined together
will have less of an effect on our surface, and we will be able
to be still and calm, which is going to be a great sense of
segue into other Bednarz talk. I know I keep teasing that one a
little bit, but it's coming.
Okay, so we talked about how Jesus got up, and you call him
the storm. And how he can do that for us, he can call our
spiritual storm.
The second miracle also happens on the water. Again, you
wouldn't find me out there. But after spending a day preaching
and feeding the people, Jesus sends His disciples away on the
boat, go ahead of me, I'll catch up with you. And he takes a bit
of time to himself to pray. He goes up the hill and prays, he
sends the multitude away, he sends the disciples away. And he
just goes to take a few minutes to himself and pray to his
father. So here we are at night again, on the water, and he
needs to catch up. So he starts walking. He's Jesus, he starts
walking, and he's walking on the water out to the boat. Peter
sees him and he wants to go to meet it meet him. And so he
gives it a try. He steps off the boat and he starts walking
towards Jesus.
So think about yourself, before your trial starts,
you see the end result and you start walking towards that end
result, right? We want to be like our savior, we want to walk
to him, we want to go to him, we see the end result and we start
walking.
And then
what happens to Peter
he gives it a try, but at some point, his fear outweighs his
faith and he starts to sink and the Savior reaches out and saves
him I've seen lots of different artwork of the Savior reaching
out and grabbing hold of, of Peters arm and pulling him up.
I've seen it depicted lots of different ways.
And they all
I'm not an artist, so I'm sure that other people probably have
their favorites. But to me, they all make me feel the same that
the Savior is reaching down, reaching out reaching over he's
reaching for me in my turbulent seas and he wants to help me he
wants to pull me up.
And so brothers are caught goes into the physics of this right
and I'm not going to get into that one. You can go read those
few paragraphs on your own if you want to. I do love this part
though. He says quote, the miracle of the Savior walking on
the sea of Galilee, shows that we still have much to learn
about gravity and other physical laws. But I kind of chuckled
when I read that it was like yeah, okay. There are a lot of
things that we still don't know about a lot of things. But
here's what I want to focus on. He says, quote, we all face the
wind and waves of challenges in this life. As with Peter so it
is with us. Sometimes the storms are not abated, and the only way
through them and onto our eternal destiny is to step out
into the storm with a determined foe
guess on the Savior. We have to have faith in the Savior's
enabling power to help us overcome our own fears and
limitations. So again, think of Peter, we're on the Sea of
Galilee. Again, it's evening slash nighttime, we've got the
warm air and the cold air, we've got the big waves and the strong
winds. And Peter sees the Savior and he just wants to go. And so
he does, he takes that first step. And I'm not a script
Torian maybe it says in one of the Gospels, how many steps he
actually took, I don't think so.
But he steps out onto the water and he starts moving. And things
get things get a little dicey, and he starts to get scared. And
when he starts to get scared, that's when he starts to seek.
And that's when the Savior reaches, reaches out and saves
them. The Savior wouldn't have had the opportunity to reach out
and save him if he hadn't started walking. So how many
times do we see the storm? And we just say, Yeah, I'm not, I'm
not going to? That's too much for me. And how many times do we
see the storm and say, okay, but the Savior is there waiting for
me. And I know I can do this with his help. One of the things
that he said, I want to repeat really quick, where did it go?
The only way through them and onto our eternal destiny is to
step out into the storm with a determined focus on the Savior.
So if you picture yourself, just looking at the Savior, just
looking at the end goal, and kind of everything that's in
everything that's in the wings, everything that's on the edges.
Just gets kind of pushed to the side ignored. You put your
blinders on, and you focus on the Savior, and you just take
one step after another. My daughter's love Frozen. And so
it's just it's the next right thing, right, you're just going
to take the next right step, you're going to do the next
right thing. So remember how I said that may was horrible, was
like the worst? Well, towards the end of the month before,
before I read this talk, actually, I decided that instead
of letting that gossip fester inside of me and bring more
people in, I was going to meet it. And I did. I asked to meet
with people I that I had heard or saying some hurtful things. I
was sick to my stomach about it. confrontation is not my comfort
zone. I actually know very few people who are comfortable,
uncomfortable confrontation. But I really needed to get rid of
that icky feeling. It was starting to make me feel like I
was thinking. And so I met it. And it turns out, as, as is
often the case, that it was a misunderstanding stemming from
miscommunication, usually is the gossip wasn't actually gossip.
It was concerned friends, trying to protect their people, and
trying to do what was best for their people in a painful
situation. The conversation was not fun. It was not fun. But it
was constructive and it was positive. And now everyone
involved can move on confident that the right thing is being
done for the right reasons. The Lord did not calm the storm
around me when I was sinking, because I let my fear overwhelm
my faith. He sent me help to pull me back up. That help came
in the form of a few friends. They these friends know me and
they know how important it is to me that I am continuously trying
to improve. And they told me what I had done wrong. That is
the mark of a true friend. By the way. We'll get into that
another time, I'm sure. But my favorite people are the ones
that I already know that they love me and when they come to me
and say hey, you kind of screwed up there or you hurt my feelings
when you said this. Or maybe you should try to soften your
approach next time. Those are the friendships that I truly
value because it's hard to have those conversations. Anyway, I'm
getting off on a tangent about friends we'll come back to that
another time. The point is the storm didn't calm instead
actually one of those friends found herself right there in the
waves with me. She was refusing to let me give in because she
knew that that the whole story was out there and it was out
there somewhere. We just needed to go get it and she encouraged
me to go get it. So between her and my bees still sticky note
that I mentioned in the last episode, I was able to gather
enough courage to find the stillness, clearing the air with
the people involved helped me find the stillness. And you know
heavenly father works in the most fascinating ways. So I know
that I said I wasn't going to focus on Come follow me and I am
not. But I do. I do want to point out something that
happened as I was getting ready as I was researching stuff for
being still. I was I had done my research, I set up some amount
of time, whatever. And I had finished my time and now it was
time to do come follow me before I went to bed. And so I was
listening to somebody read to me from the Come follow me manual,
just that blurb. And as I was listening to it, I heard this it
says, quote, sometimes we might think that a church leader like
Alma always knows exactly what to do. In Mosiah 26, we read
have a problem in the church that Alma had never dealt with.
What did Alma do in this situation? What does Elmas
experience suggest about how you might approach difficult
problems in your family, or your church service? And as I heard
that, I was like, Okay, I'm listening. And then it says,
what did the Lord teach Elma in Mosiah? 26? Verses 15 through
32. Sorry. Notice that some of the Lord's answers were not in
direct response to Elmas question. What does this suggest
about prayer and receiving personal revelation? So a couple
of things about that. Number one, remember who Elmo was? Alma
was originally one of the wicked priests of quinoa. Wait, am I
talking about the right, Elma? Yes, I am talking. So this is
Alma, the elder, and he was one of the original wicked priests
of quinoa. Now he's the leader of the church. Right. And he, he
faces this problem. And maybe it's just because I've been
doing so much research, and about what it means to be still.
But those two paragraphs, were sending up so many green flags
in my brain, that I stopped the recording to go and look into
it. So the problem that Alan was facing was basically that some
people were saying untrue things they call, they say the
Scripture says, deceiving many with their flattering words. And
it was causing some of the people of the church to make bad
choices. The people who were saying these things weren't
taking any responsibility. They were just like, well, we're just
saying the truth, right? These people are making their own
choices, which is true. But Alma was like, but you have to stop
saying those things. Because these people are great people
and you're causing them to be, you're causing them to question
and so he's like, What do I do with this? And so he took it to
his friends. He went, he took it to his friend Mozilla. And
Mozilla was like, they're not doing anything illegal. So was
the king, and there's really anything I could do about it.
And he gives them back to Alma. And he's like, this is kind of
on you, dude. So Alma, and I don't mean to be a little this
sorry, this is just that's how I talk. And so Alma takes, it
takes it, and he's like, I, I don't know what to do about
this. And so what is Alma do? He prays? And the Lord gives him a
beautiful answer. Most of it is just encouraging Alma and
telling Alma that he's doing okay. But here's the thing. My
answer wasn't in LM was answer. My, my answer was in those two
paragraphs in the book. So the first thing that I noticed is
that it said that Elmas heart was troubled. My heart was also
troubled. It says that Alma went to a friend first he went to
King Messiah, maybe I should talk to a friend. So I did. And
Elmas friend listened, just like my friend listened. But Mosiah
Elmas friend couldn't solve the problem for him. And my friend
couldn't solve the problem for me either. She defended me and
she tried to solve the problem for me, but it wasn't her
problem to solve, right. I had, I had to do it. And then Alma
went and asked God what to do.
Maybe I should, maybe it's time for me to humble myself and ask
my heavenly father what to do. And I think I knew what I needed
to do. I just really didn't want to do it. Because those
conversations are never fun. confrontation is horrible.
Nobody ever wants. Nobody wants to do that. Right? I didn't want
to do that. But check this out. This part is what really hit me.
Where he said, notice that some of the Lord's answers were not
in direct response to Elmas question. What does that suggest
about prayer and receiving personal revelation? So think
about a time when you have prayed about one thing but
received revelation for something else. Has that ever
happened? In this case? I prayed for something. And I kind of got
two different answers. errs. Sorry. They were not conflicting
answers, I got answers for two different things. So like Alma,
I needed to find my stillness. And by asking my Heavenly
Father, I got the answer. I got the answer that I needed, which
was not the answer that I wanted, which is probably why it
took me so long to ask him the question in the first place. But
by asking, I got the revelation for what I needed to do. And by
doing and following up with that personal revelation, following
through, I was able to find the stillness that I need. And I'm,
I don't want to speak for other people. But I'm pretty sure when
I left there, it felt like we were all pretty still from a
really rocky situation that could have turned out so much
worse. I am grateful for the opportunity that I have to share
these types of things with you my experiences, the efforts, the
insights that I've been getting from these, these talks and
articles. I'm so excited to continue this journey with you
and I hope that you are finding stillness this month to thank
you for being here. Thank you for listening, and until next
time,