Scripture Challenge - Week 1

When we got together for our brief MFME (Mothers and Future Mothers of Eyrealm) meeting at Bear Lake this year, one of our main topics of discussion was how we can all be more motivated about our scripture reading. It was great to hear each other's ideas about how to breathe new life into our scripture reading and learn to really "feast" from the scriptures daily.

I came away determined to not only read every single day, but make my reading much more meaningful. And since we're more motivated when we know we have to report to someone else, we all committed to read every day, in our own way, and check up on each other, occasionally sharing what we've learned. We'll all report back about our most meaningful experiences and practices with scripture reading when we go on a big MFME get-away this coming February.

My plan (which I'm still working on doing as consistently as I'd like) is to do this every night:

1. Say a quick prayer asking the Lord to tell me whatever He'd like to tell me through the scriptures that night.
2. Read with intent - look for what the Lord wants to tell me.
3. Write down the messages and questions I receive in a special book I keep by my scriptures - just a few lines along with the scripture reference that prompted the thoughts or actions or questions that came to mind. Often I write down a specific action I should do. Often it's just a reminder of something I should work on. Sometimes it's a question I'll research further in my scripture reading.

So the past couple of weeks, I've seen a real change in my life as I've earnestly sought God's will in my daily life through reaching deeper in my prayers and my scripture study and recording what I learn.

And to help hold myself accountable, I'm committing to share one little experience or lesson prompted by my scripture reading on this blog each Sunday.

Here's a little example of something prompted by scripture study this past week:
When reading Jarom, Omni and Words of Mormon and the beginning of Mosiah in the Book of Mormon, there's a lot of stuff about the importance of keeping records and the importance of thinking about what we should write about and what we shouldn't write about because it's been done before or because it's best left to someone else.

This prompted me to re-examine what I feel is most important to record on this blog and in my personal journal and what I should really encourage my kids to write about in their journals.

It also got me thinking about how I need to use the records I've kept to enrich my kids' lives. So I pulled out one of my old journals from 5th through 7th grade to read with Isaac and Ashton on Sunday and it was such a great experience for me - plus it seemed like they were pretty into it (11 and 12 year old boys don't seem to be particularly demonstrative with their enthusiasm...). One story I'd totally forgotten about was then when I was driving across the country with dad to get a car back to utah from virginia after we'd been living there, we stopped at an antique shop and I fell in love with a doll there but it cost $27 and I only had $12. Dad saw me looking at it and asked why I didn't buy it if I liked it so much. I said I didn't have enough money. He asked whether I was sure about how much money I had and I checked again and found that an extra $20 bill was in there so I had $32 and could buy the doll. I was SO excited. I still have that doll.

Anyway, the really good part of the story was that yesterday we helped our neighbors with a yard sale and the twins had enough money to buy a couple little things they were excited about but then they found a couple stuffed penguins they desperately wanted but they were out of money. Ashton came home from playing his guitar at the Farmer's Market down the road with a huge smile on his face and over $20 that he'd earned in tips (bless those kind people's hearts!). He saw the twins' plight in wanting those penguins, asked them how much money they needed, heard about how they were out of money, then slyly threw the dollar they each needed at their feet and told them to check around to see if they could find the money to buy the penguins. Sure enough - they found the dollar they needed right on the floor and were SO excited!

I guess Ashton got at least a little something out of our journal-reading session last Sunday.