Paisley: Hey everybody, hello again. Before I get started, I
need to correct something from last week's video about Alma. So
you probably remember I was questioning whether I was
getting the right Alma, Alma the elder, or Alma the Younger. I
got the wrong one. Alma the elder was not the first chief
judge. Alma the Younger was and if I had slowed down for a
second and thought about it, the reason that Alma the Younger
became the chief judge was because the four sons of Mosiah,
all of the sons of Mosiah, refused to become king, instead
opting to go on missions to the Lamanites. So Alma the Younger
was then voted in as their Chief Judge, not Alma the elder, it
was Alma the Younger, my bad.
Okay, so talking about being still, I don't know about you,
but I think I'm ready finally to dive into elder bednars talk. We
might actually end up doing two episodes on elder Bednar s talk.
It's from the most recent General Conference, and it's
titled, Be still and know that I am God. Up to this point in our
month, we've been talking about finding stillness and about what
stillness feels like. We've been talking about how to recognize
it, how you feel on the inside. The thing that struck me the
most about elder Bednar talk is that he's talking about how to
build stillness or create it. He says, quote, I believe the
Lord's admonition to be still entails much more than simply
not talking or not moving. Perhaps his intent is for us to
remember and rely upon him and his power at all times and in
all things and in all places that we may be in. Thus be still
may be a way of reminding us to focus upon the Savior
unfailingly as the ultimate source of the spiritual
stillness of the soul that strengthens us to do and
overcome hard things. He said that right before this big
header. So if you go, if you go to the talk and you look at it,
he says all of that right before this big header. And then the
big header says, build upon the rock. And the word rock is
capitalized, which, if upon was also capitalized, it would just
be title case, but it's not suggesting that build upon the
rock, rock being another name for the Savior. So, and this is
where we get into building or creating our own stillness. So
first, let me ask a question, and afterwards, I'll pause for a
couple of seconds to let you ponder.
So elder Bednar says that the Lord's intent is for us to
remember and rely upon him and his power. Where does that
begin? Where do us remembering and relying upon him and his
power? Where does that begin? Honestly, I don't remember the
exact moment, or if there even has been one exact moment. It
feels more like a combination of moments, or like I have to make
the decision every time. But I don't know that there was ever
one moment where I decided to rely upon and remember my
Savior. I have some spotty memories from my childhood, and
some from when I was in young women's teenager where I can say
that I was relying on him, but again, I don't have that one
moment. I can remember the moment when I knew that the
church was the right place for me. I remember that moment. I
can remember the first time I felt the Holy Ghost. I remember
that moment, but I don't remember conscientiously making
a choice to rely on my savior in all things for my whole life.
Like I said, it feels like I have to continually make that choice.
So I asked the question again, more for myself, I guess. Where
does that begin? Where did it start? Elder Bednar suggests
that it begins as we build our spiritual foundation. He quotes
Helaman 512 and if you're kind of old like me, you'll remember
Helaman 512 was a scripture mastery verse back in the day
when we had to memorize all those verses. He says, Remember,
remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is
Christ, the Son of God, that you must build your foundation. That
when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his
shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty
storms shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to
drag you down to the Gulf of misery and endless woe because
of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure
foundation, a foundation whereon, if men build, they
cannot fall.
So he goes on to explain further about how foundations for
buildings are constructed, and talks about inkers. Getting them
down into the rock. But first he points out something critical.
He says, Please note in that verse so that one that we just
read from Helaman that the Savior is not the foundation.
Rather, we are admonished to build our own personal,
spiritual foundation upon him. So our foundation is not the
savior. Our foundation is built upon the Savior. What we know
about him, what we know of him, what we know about what he has
done for us. Then he talks about how the foundation of a
building, what connects it securely to the ground. He uses
pictures throughout the portion of this talk. And if you want to
jump in a little bit deeper, you can go over there and check it
out. I'll make sure that the link is in the video
description, but that's not what I want to focus on here.
I have another question, one that I don't think we've defined
yet. What is stillness? We've been talking about finding it,
we've been talking about feeling it. Now we're talking about
building it or creating it. But have we really even defined it
yet? As I thought about that in preparation for this, actually,
I realized I can't define stillness for you. I can't tell
you what is going to help you find your stillness, or what
helps you to feel still inside. I can tell you what it means to
me. And so again, in the process of putting all this together, I
took a second and I finished, I did one of those complete the
sentence things right. I feel still, which, by the way, try
and say that 10 times fast and see if you don't start tripping
over that, but I feel still when complete the sentence, finish
the statement. So I came up with five things. There were a lot
more things, but each one of those things I could bucket into
one of these five things. So number one, I feel still when I
know I've done my best. When I know I've done everything that I
can do, I can start to feel still inside. I feel still when
I believe I'm doing right by others. Others' opinions of me
don't necessarily matter to me, but the way that I make them
feel does. The way that I make them feel affects their opinion
of me. But if I've apologized for things I've done wrong, then
I still feel like I've done my best and I've done right by
others. So number one, I know I feel still when I know I've done
my best. Number two, when I believe I'm doing right by
others. Number three, when I feel heard or seen that can go
along with being validated, I feel still when I feel
validated, I feel still when I've done something to help
someone else, and I didn't complain about it like I
actually did something nice for somebody because I wanted to do
something nice for somebody, not because I felt like I was being
guilted into it, or just because I didn't want to make anybody
mad. But when I actually do something nice for somebody,
just out of the goodness of my heart, I feel still. And I feel
still when I do the right thing. Sometimes that takes a little
bit of extra time, because doing the right thing sometimes is
hard, and it can affect the way that other people feel. So
sometimes when I do the right thing, even if it's not the easy
thing, I still, I will feel still inside, but it might take
a little bit extra time. Okay, so those were the five things
that I came up with for me to help those are the things that
mean something to me, that helped me feel still inside.
Your five things, or three things or 10 things might be
different, and that's totally fine. Elder Bednar, oh, before
that, though I when I was looking at those five things, I
was wondering like, Okay, what do these five things have to do
with my foundation? Do they suggest that I've built my
foundation upon my savior? Do they suggest that I am more
concerned about what people think about me than what he
thinks about me? Do I need to make some adjustments? So then
it went and I made myself stop in elder Bednarz talk now I
looked at it a few times before, like this wasn't the first time
through. I looked at it a few times before, but I mean, if
you're anything like me, I can read it like 40 times and still
find something different in it every time. So I made myself
stop at a point in his talk to figure out, Okay, what does
stillness. Mean for me, and then he defines it.
He says, so here's what elder Bednar suggests, stillness is,
he says, quote incrementally and increasingly in process of time,
virtue garnishes our thoughts unceasingly. Our confidence wax
stronger and stronger in the presence of God and the Holy
Ghost is our constant companion. We've become more grounded,
rooted, established and settled. And that's the magic word for
me, settled, grounded, rooted, established, settled. That
sounds more like it sounds more it sounds like more than
stillness. It sounds like a very strong, like, I don't have a
word for it yet, but it sounds like a strong, anchored
stillness that is steadfast and immovable. It's like a rock,
right? Like, that's what it means to build our foundation
upon our Savior, to be rooted and established in our in the
things that we believe and the people that we are becoming or
trying to become, that helps us to feel still or to have an
inner stillness that we can go back to and rely upon later. Let
me finish that quote. So he says, as the foundation of our
lives is built upon the Savior, we are blessed to be still, to
have a spiritual assurance that God is our Heavenly Father, we
are His children, and Jesus, Christ is our Savior.
So again, I looked at elder Bednar, definition of stillness,
and I looked at mine, and I can see that he is defining it on a
much more eternal scale. He has more of an eternal perspective.
So he says, garnish sorry. He says, virtue garnishes our
thoughts unceasingly. Mine was I've done my best and I'm doing
right by others. Virtue garnishing my thoughts, doing
what I believe to be the right thing to do, doing my best, my
honest best, not excusing myself, just saying, Well, I did
my best, but legitimately evaluating my my progress and my
performance, and can really say that I did my very best and I'm
doing right by others. He says, Our confidence wax is stronger
and stronger in the presence of God. Mine was I've done
something to help somebody else without complaining about it,
and I've done the right thing. He says that the Holy Ghost is
our constant companion. Mine says, when I've done the right
thing, or I'm doing right by others, I like to think that
when I've done the right thing, it's because I because I have
the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. Constant
companionship of the Holy Ghost, and that what I do right by
others. It's because I take a second to take my own spiritual
inventory make sure that I am listening to the Holy Ghost and
say the things that the Holy Ghost would be telling me to
say, rather than the things that I just want to say or the things
that I think somebody needs to heard. To hear it's not about
me, it's about them. It's about what they need. And how can I,
how can I help them get what they need? Notice that being
seen or heard wasn't in there? So I started thinking about
that, and feeling, actually a little self conscious about
that, like, should I? Should I share that? Is that more of like
a like a worldly problem? But then I read that again, and I
was like, Can I find it in there? And I don't want to
stretch it, but I did something. Did come to me as I was looking
at it again. He said that we can have a spiritual assurance that
heavenly Father, that God is our Heavenly Father. We are His
children, and Jesus, Christ is our Savior. And if you believe
in prayer, then logically, if God is our Father, Jesus Christ
is our Savior, and prayer actually works like when you
speak to God, he hears you. Then I am heard and I am seen, maybe
not so much, by the people around me. I still have to tell
my kids 50,000 times put their shoes on before just leaving the
house without them, which I've never done, they always come
running with their shoes in their hands.
But it also suggests to me that I need to take a step back and
evaluate those interactions. I need to decide which ones have
more eternal significance, and those are the conversations.
Those are the times when being seen or heard is important. But
it might not be me that it needs to be important to am I helping
others to feel seen and heard and know that Heavenly Father
loves them being heard or seen in situations that lack lasting
importance. I need to learn how to let those ones go, and maybe
instead of me being seen or heard, I need to help someone
else be seen or heard. Okay, I think we're going to come back
to this talk again, because, you know, last week we were talking
about finding and feeling stillness. Today, we're talking
about building it or creating it. And his talk goes on to tell
us how to keep it. What are some things that we can do to keep it
once we have found it or built it? There is one other thing in
there, though, that I want to share today. It's the promise at
the end, and I love it when apostles or prophets give
promises at the end, he says, I promise that as we build the
foundation of our lives on the rock of Jesus Christ, we can be
blessed by the Holy Ghost to receive an individual and
spiritual stillness of the soul that enables us to know and
remember that God is our Heavenly Father. We are His
children. Jesus, Christ is our Savior, and we can be blessed to
do and overcome hard things. That's the that's the real
stillness, being able to be spiritually still enough in our
soul to know that we are children of God, and we are not
just a children of a hateful or vengeful God. We are children of
a God who is full of love, so much love that he sent our
Savior to save us.
We could go on a lot longer, on more ways to build our
foundation. I could talk forever about the proof of God's love,
but I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and end it here. Maybe
we'll talk about those little bits and pieces of a foundation
another day. It's actually kind of a good idea, but today I just
want to say thank you for listening. I hope that you're
finding stillness, and let's take a minute and look at our
foundation and look at what that stillness means to us, and see
if there's something else that we need to do, something that we
may be missing just a little bit of in building our foundation
and helping us become steadfast and immovable and confident?
Could we be confident in the presence of God today if that
were an option anyway? Thank you for being here with me again
today. Enjoy your week.