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I wanna touch on several themes. One being the pros and cons of we'll say feminine nagging. It's not something I have to apologize. I'm a little congested. Um It's not something that is always from a woman, but it is a predominantly feminine trait. Um And I want to highlight how the beneficial aspect of this, which is not just a benefit that's limited to women, but it's available for all people. And then I want to use this to dovetail into a theme that I know as or I refer to in my codex as a thing must be what it is. It's really hard to enumerate the benefits of the things we're gonna talk about today. They're, they're far ranging. So for example, gonna share with you some ideas that have helped me find great peace amidst otherwise troubling situations, so of loss of apparent loss and uh give you one key of why uh one key as to how some apparent loss is actually not loss at all. So hopefully , that's not super cryptic. Um We, I want to start in Luke 18 and we're going to read verses one through eight. And again, I apologize. My, my health situation is not ideal today for doing this, but we're gonna do it anyway. Um Just because there's no time to come back to it. It's, it's now or never . OK. Luke 18. And he spake comparable unto them to this end that men ought always to pray and not to faint. I'm sorry, the spirit is stopping me in this and telling me to tell you, um as far as, you know, some people would otherwise complain about a person that doesn't even have an ideal voice in the first place. Um But who is congested or has a sore throat? Um And it's interesting because so often we judge the validity or usefulness or goodness or something in terms of its closeness or distance from the ideal where the ideal is really just what we'd imagine it to be. There are so many constraints on reality that we don't get and, and we'll actually come back to this when we start talking about Leigh and Soraya, we don't get how there are so many couplings between things in life that can't be broken. At least in mortality, there are certain couplings that can't be broken here. And um when Jesus was on the cross, you know, obviously he was bleeding all over the place, just covered in blood, he was absolutely dipped in blood and that was very necessary for what he was doing. And if you looked at that, they complained about the blood because in your, in your mapping of value in your sentiments that is regarded as a negative thing you would miss. Not just the good that was the dominating part of all of that, but the extra good that you could only understand if you connected the two. Does that make sense? So a lot of people if if Jesus were hanging on a cross for them in their living room, their immediate reaction would be to get angry because blood is dripping on their carpet. And I've seen this so many times in so many ways. And hopefully, we can come back to this when, when we get to Lehigh and Soraya, hopefully that's the way this goes because there are very important implications for our human relationships. We we it's easier to see, it's easier to see the clouds on the top of Sinai than it is to see the glory that they shield you from. Maybe that's the best way to say it so often. What we see is the negatives are absolutely part of the positives. The fact that I'm making a grainy video in my basement at 211 in the morning. Um You might see is less than advantageous, you might say, well, I wish this were done in a studio. I think I did figure out the sound problem. This video will be a good test but almost all my videos that I've made so far, they're super quiet and the, the efforts I've made to try to make all of this easier to fit into the narrow window of what the world expects have failed. In spite of my efforts, this room actually was supposed to be a studio. I I went through a lot of effort to prep it that way and uh the Lord had other plans and so you could see this as negatives , but actually, it's all part of the cost of what, what in this case, what I have to pay to bring these things. And um in most cases, it will be regarded as a negative when in fact, it is a strong positive. And so that's very interesting to note, it's, it's all topsy turvy from what we expect as we're standing in the world. It's pretty crazy. So, um anyway, I, I hope that makes sense. I could dwell on it some more, but maybe that's enough. It will be enough for some of you. So again, please excuse me for clearing my throat or snorting or whatever I need to do. I don't even have any tissues ready. So I might have to get up and grab some. All right, Luke 18 and he spake a parable unto them to this end that men ought always to pray and not to faint saying there was in a city a judge which feare not God feared not. God, neither regarded man. Sorry, I'm getting pinged again. Let let me restart this and he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint. So that's the objective up front in the military. We call this the bottom line up front. Um We're, we're being told what this is all about. A lot of times in these stories, you have to, you have to link it to other uh other chunks of scripture or other ideas from scripture that aren't necessarily right there in the text with it right alongside it. And then other times you can get a lot out of the parable by looking at what's right beside it because it turns out that that most often they're grouped and there's a similar thread and each of these parables are actually arguments getting to a central point. We're supporting a central point or illustrating one. And so here, we're told that the point of all of this, it says to this end that men ought always to pray and not to faint. No. If you just read that and stop there, it'd be reasonable to assume that what that means is we should pray all the time and not stop. That's really great advice. If you do that, if you follow that, which I challenge you to, if you don't already do it, begin to have some people call it an inner monologue. That's sort of the professional uh description. And, and I've read studies that indicate something like 50% of people don't have an inner monologue, which is crazy because those of us who do, there's always a voice in our head 100% of the time we're thinking about things and the information volume of that, it's like it varies, of course , but it could be a million times what's around you. Which is crazy. So, um, the, well, it's beneficial to process that much information. You get much more out of it than, than otherwise If you imagine having, having a VR headset on, if you've, I think most people have probably looked through one of those by now. And imagine if um you intentionally blurred the lenses as, as bad as it could go as blurry as it could be and imagine what you would get out of that information, which is much reduced. That's what blurring is. You're taking the pixels and, and mixing them together and averaging them uh compared to a sharp picture and that's what it's like to process all this information in addition to what you see and those are interactive, but let's not get too deep into it. Um So, but you could call it an inner monologue, but it's also just talking with God because the spirit works in and through your understanding, which is gonna be a mystery to some. But that's how it is. If, if you know, let those who have ears hear it, you can go study this out and be early to the party. It's always nice to be early to the party. If your objective is to get to know the, the host, because once other people arrive, you don't have much access to the host. And there's a lot more formality. There's a much tighter structure of how people can interact in that situation. It's gonna be quick conversations that are pretty superficial and it's loud and there's lots of competition and the snacks. But when you get there early, there's none of that. And it's interesting. If you want to get to a party early, you'd only do that. If your objective had nothing to do with the party, you want to get there to get to know the host, spend time with the host and hopefully to help the host get ready for the party. Isn't that an interesting little parable in and of itself or allegory? Um It's worth thinking about anyway. So you could read this and say that what it's about is praying always. Well, that's a great takeaway. And the interesting thing about that is if you do that for long enough, what you'll find is that what you regard as prayer will merge into something that is truly constant that it's almost like you couldn't stop it if you tried because it becomes so ingrained in who you are. You lean so heavily on that channel and that uh experience. So, um but what this parable is actually about is that's, that's not quite it. It's actually about although like I said, if you take it that way, great, you're gonna get wonderful outcomes out of that. What it's actually about said more clearly, it would be something like he spake a parable unto them to this end that men ought to not give up in what they're asking. And of course, when the scriptures say men, it could mean men, it could mean humans. This is a human one and to tell the story, actually, the Lord uses a woman. So let's read the story verse two saying there was in a city, a judge which feared not God, neither regarded man. So what's the character of this judge? They're not righteous, which means they're not fair. The only definition of fair is what God would do. That's also the the definition of righteousness. There are many, many scriptures that talk about the qualifications for judges in God's eyes. And the main one is to do what God would do in your place. So being a judge is not just some arbitrary. Um it doesn't just consist of some arbitrary understanding of uh I don't want to say right and wrong. Although far too many people believe morality is anything but what God says it is, it's not arbitrary, but it's based on things that are so often beyond the understanding of an individual. But you can only be a good judge in as much as you know, God as you know how He is and why He is that way as you share his knowledge and his character. And there are many, many scriptures about that. This judge is not like that. So he's not a good judge and not only does he not fear God, which means to attempt includes to attempt to do as he would do in your place. Um And I say attempt because you have to recognize that how you sincerely see God is still not how he actually is. You're working towards that. But you absolutely reconcile with how you believe Him to be in all sincerity. So this guy is not like that. He doesn't fear God, but he also doesn't regard man, meaning he's got no empathy whatsoever. So it's interesting here that empathy and righteousness are not the same empathy can be a vice if it's taken too far because if it's taken too far, it ceases to be empathy and it becomes selfish, what I would call selfish, love something you do under the pretense of helping someone else. But it's actually about how you feel. What's a great example of this. Um My wife, she still struggles with when someone is injured. Uh a person, an animal doesn't matter . She struggles to do what needs to be done to help that individual. And so it's like the sight of blood and she loses her mind and she gets very frantic and she knows this, we've talked about it. I'm not calling her out here. She's working on it. But, you know, we gotta be real, we're real people. And so we got to be real and she's working on that and we've talked about it. We've had some funny stories that we've laughed about other, you know, after the fact where not, not to dive into super serious things. So I'm just gonna say this as superficially as I can. So it doesn't hit me. Um, so forgive me for hitting the pause on the sincerity button, but I swim in constant awareness of very horrific things. So, um I always try to be prepared to um, well, I try to have everything loaded up all the time to contend with the worst of things because of my knowledge of them. And um I was in the front yard working one time and I hear this blood curdling scream from the backyard from my wife. I know she's out there with the kids and I'm thinking all right, worst case scenario, one of my kids just got mauled by a grizzly bear or you know, that's because clearly someone's dead or will be very soon and I'm walking back there. Uh And you say, why are you walking? It was so intense of a screen that I had already moved past the thought that I could do any good except be a rock. So I was prepping myself to be a channel of God's security in that time. And I walked back there and essentially someone had a little cut. So one of the kids had a little cut essentially and that anyway, um so we've talked about this and she tried to, to pull this story that again, we've talked about so many times. This isn't like some open wound for her or anything. So not doing any damage by sharing this, but the, the benefit outweighs the cost. But she um talked about this and she tried to pull the story like, oh, it's because I care about people so much. And I was like, no, if you cared about the person, you would set aside your visceral reaction in preference for what you rationally recognize is more important for their benefit . And people don't understand this when we see someone who is, who seems stoic about a situation. The natural assumption is, well, of course, they're just a cold logical person. This is the same thing when you see a rich person, you're like, well, they just got lucky. That's human nature. And sometimes it's true. There are people, their sociopaths who do not have any empathy. There are also people who have even more empathy than you do who just happen to care about the person so much that they can use that only as far as it's useful to actually help someone. And it's not that they don't feel all the feelings, they probably feel them more than you if this is true, but they, they eat that cost the fire burns them inside. They don't let it go out because they want to help people more than that. The best example of this is God. That's the easy solution to everything. He's the best example of any good thing. But don't, don't you think that Jesus feels worse about bad things than you do? Of course he does. But you don't see him losing it and making everything worse. You know what the worst thing you could do to a dying child is, it's to lose it. It's to deprive them of having uh someone there who says it's all right. That's the best thing you can do to someone who's terminal is to show them to give them reason to believe that it's ok. You know, and who better to do that than someone who cares the most right? The parent. And I hate to tell you this, but it's true. Many of you are going to be in this situation. You're gonna watch a child die. So this is very important to prepare yourself because this is a tremendous blessing that you can give to that child to be strong for them in God, to show them through your reaction in the moment. Just how much you trust him and that can, that can give them peace when there's nothing else that can be done. So this judge was not like that. He did not regard man. And there was a widow in that city and she came unto him saying revenge me of mine adversary. So she was saying I have a case, I've been wronged. And this is an interesting difference in judges then versus now, the objective of a judge in the past was not to say you're guilty or not guilty of a crime. It was much more than that, it was to render the situation such that God's justice was in play. Now, how interesting is that, that in God's system, the way justice is done? So when Jesus prayed, he said, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, the judge is the one who makes it. So, isn't that interesting that that duty is given to, to men as sort of first line of defense? And if that's working, all right, it doesn't have to go any further than that. Like you remember, in the camp of Israel, there were 70 elders and they were the first line of the issues of the people. And this, this is what people brought to the judges, um, cases where a person felt like what was happening wasn't fair and the judge would make it right. And then if the, the elder couldn't handle it, they bump it up to the next level and it would get to Moses eventually. And um he decided the cases that others could not decide. But again, it wasn't about guilty or not guilty, it was about making things right. So in the United states. When there's a dispute between the states, it becomes a federal matter. But if it's inside of the state, ideally, it's settled at lower levels. And this is going to be a very important theme in times to shortly come because, uh, too often we pray for God to do what we ought to be doing for ourselves. That's well known. But we also often pray for God to settle situations that we don't think are our duty. And yet they are an example of this is once I was in South Africa attending an L DS church there. This was some time ago, but we were in a meeting with just the men. And right before this meeting started, I was having a conversation with a gentleman sitting next to me or close to me and um, he was a black man and probably still is um, sorry, it's a little humor. Uh, so this, this man is black and he was a taxi driver and just nonchalantly in the conversation, we were talking, he wasn't complaining at all. It was as if he was saying like, yeah, it rained pretty bad last night, didn't it? And what he actually said was, yeah, my taxi was stolen this week and that's my source of income. And I said, oh, well, that really stinks. I mean, that's pretty inconvenient. How long till you, the insurance pays you out? He says I didn't have insurance on that car and knowing a bit about how things work over there. I realized that this man's entire life savings was in this car and that he had a really good job, all things considered and now he was destitute and starting from scratch and he didn't complain at all. It was just uh things happen, you know, whereas anyone I know that would have been , they would have gotten job tattooed across their back and just made a big production out of it and understandably couldn't, couldn't fault them for that. So um the meeting or the class started and I don't remember what we were talking about, but it, it had to have done, had something to do with consecration and Zion and charity and all these wonderful things that we talk about. But then when it's time to pony up, everybody's got something better to do. It's like when the Lord talks about getting called to the supper and everyone's got something better to do. Oh, and they're valid things to do. They're not uh they're not, they're valuable things to do. They're not without value. One man. I don't remember the details. One person just got married, he's got to take care of that. One person just bought some land and legally they have to walk the distance of it to claim it as part of the sale um and so on and so forth. And the message is very clear for all of these people. Something is more important. Than coming to the, the supper called by the king. Now, the funny thing about living in a kingdom is whatever independence you think you might have everything good that you have comes through the king, everything . And so that's why everything in the kingdom is the king's right to take at will. And it's just because it's his to take. And hopefully, like we just read or spoke about these, this, these ancient judges, hopefully he realizes that his job is to do what the Lord would do in his place. And that's what he's doing because he's a Godly king. But nevertheless, that's, that's how being a king works. And um, so whatever independence we think we have, it's actually just basically delegated authority from the king. It's a, it's a stewardship and he can call for it at any time. And we have so many rich parables in the New Testament about these themes. So many. But one scripture I like, uh I actually shared with one of my sons yesterday. He's supposed to be getting up with two of my other kids at a certain time to lift weights in the morning. And I happened to inspect this situation yesterday and he wasn't up lifting weights. I said, where's your brother? To one of the brothers? And he said to me, I don't know, he said he was going to set his alarm, but apparently he didn't. And I said, huh? So I walked up and I said, get up. Why aren't you lifting weights? He said, because I'm sleeping. I was like, that is true. Yes, this is true. And I, I figured I'd leave him alone for a minute and come back later in the day and talk about this. And I did and I shared with him the scripture when the Lord says, watch, watch and pray always because you don't know the hour when your master comes. and if he catches you doing his will, he'll entrust you with even more. And if he catches you not doing his will, Jesus said he'll cut you to pieces, which is crazy. It's not just oh he'll punish you now. It says you'll be beaten and cut to pieces, I believe. So it's a pretty intense punishment, whatever the description is off the top of my head. And we don't realize what that looks like when he comes calling. What is that? And people say that's talking about his second coming folks, I invite you to pick one so often. We straddle things that are mutually exclusive. The same people that go on and on and on and on about how they're going to go directly to God are also living their lives in a way where they think the first time that they're going to have interaction with God, is it the second coming interaction with God is when someone crosses your path with a need that you have the power to alleviate the first time you're gonna interact with God is when you're in a room or something in that room isn't the best way you could make it subject to all the other good things you might do, which might be a higher priority. The next time you interact with God, it might be when someone's really mad at you for no good reason and you get to decide how to react to that and on and on and on. You are getting pinged every single day, many times a day. If you don't even notice it, we could take that to the extreme and say it's in every moment and that's true. But I don't want to overwhelm you. He comes in a moment. You don't expect your interactions with God are not limited to when you're seeking them or expecting them or recognizing them. And you need to open your eyes to that because every one of those interactions is a ladder rung to climb higher to him. If you react in the right way and you're pouring those things out into the gutter instead of making use of them, you're treading upon them like they're a thing of not to use scriptural language. Ok. Anyway, let's get back to this. So this widow comes to the judge and says something's not quite right and the judge's job and all of our job if we want to be judges is to make it right. That's our duty. And when we pray Lord on earth as it is in heaven. He says, ok, you first, you first. And so when you, when you see somebody, he's been defrauded, he's been robbed of what they deserve or even not robbed. That happens, right? But if you see somebody and it will happen a lot more frequently by the way. But if you see somebody even in a situation that differs from what they deserve and they deserve something better than what they have. You need to get out your Venn diagram and say of everything that God has blessed me with, what do I have that can move that person closer to receiving what they deserve, the good that they deserve. Now, when it comes to the bad, that's not our job in this case that that one isn't a general responsibility, but when it comes to the good, it's our job. So if you're an employer and you know, someone who's lost their job, but it's not their fault and you have the ability to give them a job and they're able to do the job that you have the ability to give them. It's your job to give him a job and you say, but I had nothing to do with it. My friend do unto others as you would have God do to you. If you want God to be there for you, when others wrong, you be there for others. When others wrong them, this seems like a high calling. Oh, a ridiculous demand. But I'm telling you the lowest realms of the Kingdom of God, this law is ubiquitous. Even in the lowest realms of the Kingdom of God, it's justice. And if all you ever do is pray for God to render justice in a good way to recompense the righteous who have been defrauded. And you won't do anything towards that yourself. You have lost claim on the stewardship that God has blessed you with. You've thrown it away and when he comes and sets up his kingdom, you will not have a place there. The higher law is not just giving people the good that they deserve. Even if you don't feel like you're connected to that situation, the higher law is to bless people beyond what they deserve. Even though you're not connected to that situation. That's what love is while we were yet sinners, he loved us first . That's charity. This is just justice. And if you want justice from God in righting the wrongs done to you, you must do what you can to right the wrongs of others. Even if you don't have the means to make things right. You should pray with all of your heart, you should desire with all of your heart that you could. And if you could, you would, this is the law of God. This is the blessing that He gives us. And you say, well, that doesn't sound like much of a blessing to me. It just sounds like I'm gonna be out a lot of convenience, money, comfort, et cetera. True. But what do you get in return for that? Not that you should do this for what you get out of it. But, and I would go as far as to say you won't do this for what you get out of it. But I guess you could prove me wrong. I challenge you to do that, but I could be proven wrong in this. I'm saying, I, I'm sure that there will be people who do this for what they get out of it, but it's just not something I would do. Uh What do you gain through that? What we say we seek is to be a son or daughter of God, an agent of the Lord Almighty. That's not something you get to pick and choose. Servants are not part time volunteers. Have you ever been in a volunteer situation? Like maybe habitat for humanity or whatever where you can come and go as you please. And everybody's all excited to do the things they're excited to do. But no one wants to clean the toilets. When you're a servant, you learn your master's will. I should say a good servant, you learn your master's will, what their purpose is. And then you do the best you can to scan the environment. Look ahead, use all your wisdom to accomplish that purpose to the best of your ability and no one needs to chase you. No one needs to tell you do this or that. If they do that's, you know, you'll add that to the, to the list or stop what you're doing. And, but in the absence of explicit orders, you're going to go find the best thing you can do that accomplishes your master's purpose. If you know that God is just, doesn't that mean that you need to go find ways to bring his justice to pass. And he said, don't in the negative sense, leave it to me says judgment is mine and I will repay vengeance is mine. Yeah, sorry, we're not talking about vengeance. He's not calling you to go be batman. Ok? He's calling you to go restore to the righteous what they deserve and do not have. And in doing that , you lay claim on the same from Him. That is the terrestrial kingdom. That is the law of the terrestrial kingdom. It is due unto others as you would have them do to you. It is as Paul says in Hebrews, something like consider them as bonds them in bonds, as being in bonds with them. When you see someone , he's got it rough. You say, is there anything I can do to help that person be in a situation closer to what they merit and you put it in the priority queue, you might be in the middle of something that's more important, but it's always on and you're always scanning for that and just to, to further underscore how this is gospel 10 one's not advanced topics when you are baptized, you promise God that part of your demonstration of Him at all times, in all places, part of your doing. What he would do in your place is to lighten the burdens of those who are afflicted to the extent that he gives you the resources to do so. So I invite you to think about that in the future from now on, reclaim those blessings that are on the table for you. So this woman comes to the judge saying, uh they did me dirty and in verse four, and he would not for a while. Uh that is avenge her of her adversary. He would not for a while. But afterward, he said within himself though I fear not God nor regard man yet because this widow troubles me. I will avenge her lest by her continual coming. She weary me. And the Lord said, hear what the unjust judge saith. In other words, this judge says, uh I don't care about this woman. I don't care about God, but my goodness, this lady is not going to leave me alone until I do something about it. In other words, she nagged him until he listened in verse six. It says, and the Lord said, hear what the unjust judge saith and seven and shall not God avenge his own elect which cry day and night unto him though, he bear long with them. I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the son of man cometh, shall he find faith on earth? And we're going to delve into that before we get back to the main line of what we're doing in this video to illustrate. Although I'm giving you massive treasures along the way already, there are many people who are crying out in their hearts, whether they believe in God or not is less important because their situation is so unfair. And some people, their, their idea of fairness is really far from the truth. But some of these people are sincere and they have a basis for their claim and God hears all of them and he has a purpose in the way he's doing things and there will come a time when justice is rendered to all and it's not at the second coming. That's the catch all. But for many, many, many people and this is going to take place in geographical and individual ways. Judgment will be rendered before then in some cases, hopefully many it will be rendered through the means. I already talked about of individuals seeing injustice and saying I'm going to fix this because I can. The king has appointed me as his steward had given me his resources to fix this problem to the extent that I can. And I'm going to be a true and faithful servant and not just do it but be very happy that I can. And to that servant when he comes, he will say well done, my good and faithful servant. You've been faithful in a little. And now I point you over much but many of those people, the same people who cry for justice for themselves are unjust with others. You know that bit where he says, if you forgive those, that trespass against you, you will be forgiven. And if you do not forgive others, you will not be forgiven. You know that part, it's kind of overlooked in the scriptures, but it's a very true principle. You can't escape it. Likewise, you could frame up this principle. You could say those who here are the cries of others for injustice will have their cries heard for injustice. But there's an even more important part to this. Uh I'm being told job would be a good story to reread on that account. Job was always doing this. He was a wealthy man. You don't have to be wealthy, to want to do this and you don't have to be wealthy to have opportunities to do it either. But job happened to be a very wealthy man and he spent an immense amount of time and money helping other people. And when we think of this, of helping other people, we constrain our thoughts to alleviating suffering. That's not the most important thing, rendering positive justice to people is even more important than that in the, in the hierarchy of things. It's a job. He helped people by sharing his wisdom. He helped people by providing opportunities for them to. Uh if you think about, I don't want to make this too complicated but occupational frameworks for their righteousness to be rendered a blessing to them. So someone that would do really well if they only had a, a sheep to milk, but they don't have a sheep to milk, he'd make a way for them to have a sheep to milk. And that doesn't mean that he was just giving it away. He could have set up a mechanism where that person became kind of a sharecropper and it was a win, win. That's, that's fully inside the, the realm of righteous possibilities depending on the circumstances. But if job had found a man or woman who had lost a bunch of things, whose circumstances have been suddenly degraded, put it lightly uh in any form like his head when he was wealthy, if he would have seen that, he would have fixed it. And he says , so when, when he's crying to the Lord and this is my point, bring it up. She um he says, um I've always helped everyone my whole life and he uses this as a token with the Lord to argue for his own restoration. So if you want more chips on the table, it's in your hands. And I have a duty to tell you , uh, not only are you going to have times in your life, if you're alive today, you're gonna have times in your life where you need those chips. But also there will be a time if you live long enough when the table gets flipped and then you'll really need treasures in heaven because those are the only ones that are going to last that will endure what is coming. So that's a true principle. And what, what he, what he's saying here when he says nevertheless, when the son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? What he's saying is in spite of how many people do and will cry for justice for themselves when that justice comes in a global fashion, how many of the people who cry for it will be benefited by it? That's what he's saying here. So don't just ask the Lord for what you lack, make sure you're asking him for what you also deserve. And that's something that most people don't think about as you make a plan for your life and you break it down to a daily. What are you going to do about it? List? Make sure that what you construct, makes a lock tight argument that you deserve what you're asking for amongst the many, many promises that places where God promises to give us what we ask him for and what we desire. You'll find that one of the conditions is that it is expedient and write, expedient means it would be helpful for us. It would be for our good to have it. And right means just that you deserve what you're asking for. Don't ask God for something you don't deserve. And if you do, don't be surprised when you don't get it. There are ways to massage that rule, but that's advanced. Those are advanced topics. So, so this woman nagged this judge in the story and the judge listened to her for no other reason than to get her to shut up. And the Lord says, hear what the unjust judge saith. In other words, uh if he wanted to elaborate, he could have said, if an unjust judge will listen to a nagging woman, how much more will I listen to you with? Since I have a fullness of love, if you continuously ask me for what you really want. That's right. That's according to my will. And those are each separate increases to the likelihood that you're going to get what you're asking for so that we should all nag the Lord and women have an advantage at this by nature that it's easier for them to do, but we should all do it because the Lord says this is a valid way to bring his power into your life is to nag him, to nag him about it. And I have shared at least one story which maybe I'll briefly recount here about this. So you don't have to go find it amongst hundreds of videos uh very early on in my, I don't know how to say this. I could say walk with God. That sounds extremely pretentious. Although it's true. Um very early on in my relationship with God, my conscientious relationship with him. I prayed, he told me by the spirit that my brother was going to die. He was deployed to the Middle East and I didn't like the sound of that. So, uh I prayed every night deep into the night and at the time , that wasn't the sort of thing that I did. I think today that would be a, a less strange thing for me to do. But this was a big leap of faith for me at the time. But I had a consuming fire inside of me that I believed without a doubt that if I did not do that, he was going to die. And if I did do that , I had a feeling, a very strong um belief, not just a feeling, but that, that was something I could do that might make a difference. And that might sound kind of weak, but it was all I knew to do. And I knew that I believed in a God who looked at the two mites that a widow threw into the treasury and said that counts for more than that pointing to much larger sums that wealthy people were donating. And he said, because it's everything that she has. So I said, well, I've got sleep that I could sacrifice. And I've got prayer that doesn't cost me any money to give. And that's just about all I have right now. And so I used it and after about 30 days of doing this every single night and just bearing the cost of it during the day because it's not easy to operate without sleep makes everything harder. The Lord's voice came to me and basically said enough already, which sounds dismissive. But to me, it was the sweetest thing in the world because I felt complete peace. It's a weird thing to pray for something with all your heart for 30 days. And then, um it's the only thing you can think about because I felt like the sword over his head was in my hands. And oddly there that there was something I could do about it. And if I didn't do it, he was gonna die and uh to go from that to complete peace in place of all that worry was really something complete where you to complete peace at the limits of what I could experience at the time. The emotional capacity I had it was maxed out anyway. Uh and then come to find out sometime later, which is the next time I could talk to him that sure enough, he was in a huge firefight, tons of people in his platoon were killed. Um and he was actually, they were coming out of the building. He was the first one out. And, um, as he came out, they didn't, they weren't under fire. They were, it's just a routine building clearing and they came out and they had been ambushed and it has the fire. The, the rifles started firing at him in that second before he could even react. He felt, um, a, a shove to, to state it lightly but it was so powerful. It actually broke its foot . He, he uh he broke his foot because he shoved down to the ground so hard and he looked behind him and there wasn't anyone but there are bullets, bullet holes in the concrete where he was standing and then they had a firefight for a few hours and a bunch of people died, but she didn't. So there are tools to bring to pass on earth, what God's will is in heaven. And uh I will go into detail about what those tools are. However, this is one that you can start working today. It's the easiest one in the book and that is to nag God to nag him. Now, I want to talk about the not so glamorous side of nagging and I want to give you some tools for dealing with people who do that to you. Yeah, we'll use for our chat about this, the text of first E 55. But I will liberally diverge from this because I have more things to, to share with you than just that more, more tools to give you. Yeah. So in this story, in this part of the book of Mormon Leigh and his wife Soraya had journeyed into the wilderness under the command of God to flee Jerusalem, which was going to be destroyed because of its wickedness. And it was historically. And um as is always the case, God has a stage wise process to get us from point A to point B. And so everything that looks like from A to B actually has a bunch of steps in between. We don't always notice those, but we do always go through them. You can segment reality into as small of chunks as you would like. Um any number can be infinitely divided. So just adding decimal places forever. Anyway, that's a deep property of truth itself. So uh part of the, the steps along the way was for Lehi and Soria's sons to go back to Jerusalem in order to pick up some things and they were commanded to do that. And so they had left and we'll pick up the story there, verse one. And it came to pass that after we had come down into the wilderness unto our father behold, he was filled with joy. And also my mother, Soraya was exceedingly glad uh for she had truly mourned because of us for she had supposed that we had perished in the wilderness and also she had complained against my father telling him that he was a visionary man saying, behold, Dallas led us forth from the land of our inheritance and my sons are no more and we perish in the wilderness. And after this manner of language, had my mother complained against my father. So she was nagging him and she was nagging him because the sons had been gone for a while. And although she was ok with leaving behind all their wealth to go live in the woods effectively, they weren't woods. It was a desert. So maybe that's even worse. But in the wilderness, she was ok with that, but she was not ok with potentially losing her sons and that sent her over the edge and caused her to be not ok with a whole lot of other things that she was previously ok with. And if you're a guy and you're married, uh, this might all sound kind of familiar hypothetically speaking, but we can all preserve our uh, oh gosh, what's the phrase? Plausible deniability here? You can imagine what this might be like for some unfortunate guy that happens to be married to a lady like this. And you know, we can joke about this, but we should be more honest about it and more, um, we should be more ready to talk about it in public, not to drag our wives through the mud, but to avoid enabling women to maintain the worst parts of their nature and to more effectively warn young men against what would otherwise be unfairly screened from their perception. And they need to know that that shiny lady who they go on a first date with has just as much female nature as any other woman , just like every man has male nature. And as we read in Mosiah 319, those natural tendencies need to be expunged from each individual and it can only happen through us yielding to the Holy Spirit, giving up everything that we come with by nature in preference for what comes down from heaven, from Him and what is like Him, we become like him by yielding to what is from Him. So when we hide the fact that all humans have human nature, and sometimes there are specific things to certain genders, uh you know, society is fine to talk about that when it comes to men, but you never hear it about women. And that does a great disservice to all people. The most tragically, it does a disservice to wives who ought to be receiving the greatest benefit as far as their character development from their husbands who are the only people who actually see them as they are without the mask. And that's the way God designed it is that women are capable of hiding who they are from everybody in their lives except their husbands. There's a reason for that and you should think about that. It's probably the first time you've ever thought about it or heard it and you might be tempted to screech in denial, but you should think about it because it's true and it's very evidently true. So, even your, you know, if you're a lady, your parents don't know who you are. Not really. Your siblings don't know who you are, your friends. Definitely don't know who you are. Your husband does, husband does, you can maintain, maintain some semblance of a mask with anyone else in your life, including your kids. Your husband is the only one who's gonna see you, how you are, how you know you are because you can't keep up a mask with him. It's not possible. So what a blessing, right. So I'm personally impressed by the fact that Soraya was willing to let go of her riches and her secure situation in Jerusalem. Her husband had this awesome job where he happened. Apparently he was some kind of traveling merchant maybe. Uh I'm not sure just how much evidence there is about that, but let's just go with that. Whether it's true or not, it would just uh slightly change the perspective but not too much. So let's suppose he was a traveling merchant. We know that they were wealthy and uh we're told that they had gold and silver and valuable things. His um their kids were very comfortable as we learned later from Lehman and Lemuel's complaints about everything they lost to come on this journey in their eyes, what they lost, uh turns out they wouldn't have had it anyway because Jerusalem was destroyed. And that's something that we should all learn from. You can't lose what you don't really have. And having something short term is not the same as having it forever. So when you balance things in the scales, you have to take the long term view and see the choice as it really is. In this case, have riches for a little while longer and be destroyed or actually have even greater riches even in the same terms, long term. Because when you have this massive abundant land in the new world, that's worth a lot more than some dusty outcrop with a little bit of gold and silver in Israel. So um but but having much greater riches than that because it's better to have a relationship with God in any circumstance than it is to have any circumstance without a relationship with God. There, there are proverbs that talk about this, but in different words, I'd rather be a doorman in the house of the Lord than uh I think it's a king in the tents of the world or something like that. So um there's that, so she had willingly let all that go, which already that says and tails above most women, most women worship the God of security, carnal security, which ironically, churches have got, got a corner on the modern churches promise cardinal security to women. They say uh if you subscribe to our church then and check these, these, this small list of boxes, we will give you everything you'd ever want. We will promise you that you're going to heaven. Uh oftentimes with your whole family, no matter how much of a numb skull your kid is or your husband is and uh no matter what happens, you can do no wrong, you will never be held accountable for anything. And this is what they say to the ladies. And if your husband leaves you in whatever, there's this pool of men who we will guilt into marrying you again and they'll take care of you. But even if none of that works out, the church will take care of you. And so they're basically promised an eternal welfare scheme that they don't have to pay for. And it's no wonder that there are more women than men in modern Christian churches, but that's what they sell. So most men go into that and it doesn't take them too long to realize that they're going to have some serious problems with these folks telling the ladies they can do no wrong all the time. And by the way, that eternal welfare scheme, they're the ones that get the bill. So that's not very fun or fair or real or true or good. But Soria's heads and tails above this because she actually walks away from all of that. And we don't have an account of how much she had to be cajoled to do that. Maybe she went along willingly and she was happy about it. And that happens where a lot of times a wife will be happy to walk a few steps in a good direction. And then all of a sudden one thing crosses the threshold of now, I, I feel like I've lost my security and everything else gets flipped back around everything she was ok with until now also becomes part of the problem and that's what we see here. So part of her complaint. So we're given what triggered it. And then also the things that she was ok with that she's not ok with anymore. She had supposed that we had perished in the wilderness. There's your trigger. She thought my sons are dead. So she complained against my father telling him that he was a visionary man saying, behold, thou hast led us forth from the land of our inheritance and my sons are no more and we perish in the wilderness. She was ok with going away from her lands of inheritance when she believed she was gonna get something better. But now that the sons are dead allegedly, that's what she believes, how could it be better. And so it reveals what her motives were in the beginning. And for all of us, that's one thing that trials do. They reveal to us what our true motives are because we're in denial about it before then you're gonna see some things in the end times I could point to people and say, you see that person there, that person is going to eat their child. That person will be willing to kill their neighbor for their next meal. That person will turn people, they know to be good people over on false charges. They'll bear false witness just to avoid being taken by a mob. And you'd look at these people and you'd say no, that can't be true. Or maybe you're one of them and say I'd never do that. Well, just wait, you'll see exceptional circumstances have a way of pointing out exceptional people and it works in both directions. I could also point to people and say, you see that person right there. He'll be first in line to give his life to save someone. He doesn't even know you say that person. Yes, that person, you see that person there, that person has limitless courage, that person, right? There is very special to God, whatever it might be and to them. If you say it to them, you're a very special person to God. Here's why they look at you and say no, I'm no, I'm nobody special. You know, I'm just, I'm just a mom. All I do is XYZ. I'm just a normal mom. No, not in God's eye. You're not, I'm a nobody man. I'm a nobody man. I just go to work and do my thing. And what's the big deal? Not in God's eyes or not. And he will show you because he's going to put you in exceptional circumstances and you'll see who you really are. And for a whole lot of people that's going to be seeing ways that they need to improve, to put it lightly. And for some people, he will exalt the abased and he's gonna show you how much you're worth to him. He says in the day I come and make my jewels, you'll see. It's in Malachi. So now all of a sudden she switches from, oh, I'm gonna get something better out of this to my goodness. What have we sacrificed? And not just that she's also lost all hope that they're ever going to get to the promised land. She says we perish in the wilderness. That's quite the transformation. But again, if you are married, um this is not something that's hard to believe, right? Because of all your married friends, of course, not, not your situation. Um So after this manner of language and my mother complained against my father. Now wives, there are wives who do complain against their husbands and sometimes those wives have done good things in their lives. She was willing to go with her crazy husband that had this crazy dream. I mean, what woman do? You know who would say we've got a really nice house and you've got a really nice job and you make more money than most people and everything's good here, we've got a nice place. Everything's comfortable . I don't have to work. Life is good. And then the husband has a dream where they need to drop everything, just leave it. Get in the car and drive cross country. Who knows what's gonna happen there? But God says it'll be good because your whole town is gonna get destroyed. Yeah. Right. Show me a woman that says, yeah, I'd do that. So Soraya was exceptional and yet she complained against Leigh and it was completely wrong to do so. So what was Lehigh's response? He says, and it, it had come to pass that my father spake on her saying I know that I am a visionary man for if I had not seen the things of God in her vision, I should not have known the goodness of God but had tarried at Jerusalem and had perished with my brethren. You notice he does not say with my Children. He says with the people that are still there. But behold, I have obtained a land of promise in the which things I do. Rejoice. Yeah . And I know that the Lord will deliver my sons out of the hands of Laban and bring them down again unto us in the wilderness. And after this manner of language, did my father Lehi comfort my mother Soraya concerning us while we were journey, while we journeyed in the wilderness up to the land of Jerusalem to obtain the record of the Jews. We're going to keep going with this. We need to pause and process this. Nei is the one writing this. He was there. You notice he doesn't say while we were taking forever to come back or we were delayed or whatever he just recognized, recognizes, this was what it took . This was the process, this was the required time to do what we needed to do. We went and we did what we needed to do and we came back. So after we look at life and we have all these mysteries about God's timing, God just wants us. There's some stop watching heaven and we just have to sit here for the next 30 years until this one thing comes true. No, there are conditions on everything. It's all cause and effect and the cause is never time itself. It could be things correlated to time, but it's never time. Uh You look back at Elma, Elma's people. They fled from a wicked king and um they ended up being in a situation where they got put into slavery into bondage and the Lord came to them and said, you've shown so much faith and diligence in trusting me that you've learned everything that this experience can teach you. So I'm gonna bring you out of it. There's no arbitrary suffering with God. He doesn't want you to suffer. He wants you to have greater abundance, not just temporarily, not even primarily temporarily. He wants you to have greater, enduring joy. That's what it's all about. Greater, enduring joy, our pleasure in the moment, enduring joy. So the second you learn everything you can in this situation, there's no point of you being there anymore unless it's helping someone else. In which case, those blessings are just pouring and whether you see him or not, there's no just arbitrary time with God. So nei recognized that that's why he says it the way he does that they had something to do , took them time to do it. And Soraya was losing her mind because she assumed all these things even though what was happening was exactly what was meant to happen and it had nothing to do with what she expected. So now let's back up a step. How did it says after this manner of language, did my father Lehigh comfort my mother first off bigger gospel topic here. You need to know what it's what language means when it's used in the scriptures. It's not words, it's ideas and this is how Leigh communicated with Soraya. It's not about the words he used. It's the ideas he conveyed and how he did. So that's really important when we talk about the language of Adam, a whole bunch of Yahoos with nothing better to do, start making extensions of Hebrew, which came much later and, and, and, and they assume that language must mean what it means to them. It must mean to God, what it means to them. It's not about words, folks, it's ideas and ways of expressing them has nothing to do with words except to that end. So that's, I won't go into them, but there's a long list of things in the gospel where once you know a little bit about what things actually mean, you look at all these people wasting all this time in things that are obviously not connected at all with what they really mean. And it ends up being a huge blessing because these people or just kind of chaff in the whirlwind. And if they knew a little bit more about the truth, they'd probably cause a lot of damage. But as things stand, you can just sort of brush them away and they don't, it's very evident as soon as someone comes around that has any idea about anything, let alone a set of someone's, it's very evident that these people have no value. They're, they're just wasting people's time. They have no idea what they're talking about. Um I probably won't go any further than that. Yeah, I can't, I can't think of a way of going further without giving those idiots the tools to do more damage. So I won't do that. So, um back to this, what, what does Lehigh actually say to comfort Soraya? And how does he say it? And then we can extract tools and this is how to comfort someone who's nagging you, whether it's a woman or a man doesn't matter. So, the first thing we're gonna talk about is that Lehi understood a principle that I call a thing must be what it is. The thing must be what it is. I've had some financial changes in my life that I've gone through . I won't call them downturns because, uh, my abundance comes from heaven, not my bank account. So, um but I've had some reductions in my bank account over my life for different reasons. And one of them was, was particularly immense. And I prayed to the Lord and I said, you know, I'm slightly worked up about this. Can you show me more about this? Because I don't understand, I've done everything right as far as I know. And it's not just the fact that I've kept the commandments as I sincerely understand them in all things because of what you've taught me about the commandments. I've also learned everything I can about reality to this point and lived according to that. And you said these things about prosperity and I understand it's not worldly prosperity, but I have these things that I would like to do to serve you. And I've made all these sacrifices to get to the point where I can do that with more of my time and have more resources to more adequately match my spiritual capacity to bring the temporal possibility up to the spiritual capacity and this is what's happened. And now I'm basically at square one again and I don't understand because I'm clearly wrong about something because this is not adding up. And I'll pause here, you know, when we see apparent contradictions, it doesn't matter if we're reading in the scriptures, we hit something that doesn't make sense. It doesn't seem right or like, like it, it, it seems self contradictory in the text or it seems contradictory to what we believe. When things don't make sense, you're gonna be hard pressed to find a better opportunity to get better, to get revelation, to get more revelation. You'll be hard pressed to find a better opportunity to get more revelation. But people just skip over it. You need to hit time out and realize that's probably like we, we started this very long video talking about, you don't know the hour that your Lord comes. He just can't, when you hit an apparent contradiction, something doesn't make complete sense to you to the point that you could explain it to 1/5 grader, you just hit a point where he's come to you. Now, what are you going to do about it? Because what you ought to do is seek him with full intent to figure it out. Formulate a question that takes work, take the question to him, use all the resources he's already made available to you, including, you know, if you've never read through the standard works to answer a question. You've never really inquired of the Lord, at least a book in the standard works like the New Testament, the Bible, whatever the scriptures. If you're not willing to put in that kind of effort, you don't really have a question for him yet. You, you certainly don't have real intent unless you're in a situation where a train is coming. You've got four seconds to decide, then the rules are a little different. So, anyway, thanks. Um, speaking of trains, I just lost mine. Uh, where were we with that? Talking about doing what it takes? Oh, yeah, contradictions. So, in this financial situation, I prayed to him and I said, what, what am I missing here? Because I'm clearly wrong and note the assumption I'm clearly wrong, right. Show me where I'm wrong. Show me where I could do better here. Where did I go wrong? And he, he basically said, well, why in this case, why does it have to be something you did wrong? And I said, uh, because I'm broke, I just lost a ton of money. And um, and everything I had planned for is now gone between this and some other things or whatever. And he said, but don't you see that in order to be the kind of person to do the things I need you to do, you also have to be the kind of person that would have done all those things too. And that doesn't mean that you're not capable of further growth. And he taught me the things that I lacked to make sure that those particular things never happen again for those reasons. But he said this was not a failure. This was not a mistake. This was you being exactly who you need to be in order for these better things to occur. And I'm really glad that we're in this scripture because that might not make any sense. But here we have an example that we can point to and say, it's like this Lehigh says his first thing to say to her is I know I'm a visionary man. And so she said, you're a visionary man. You let, and that means you took us into the, into the wilderness to die away from the land of our inheritance and now away from our sons who she presumes are dead. He says, he's got all the same information as her . He reacts completely differently. He says, I know I'm a visionary man. He admits all that right? But he sees the rest very differently. He says, because I'm a visionary man, I know the goodness of God because I know the goodness of God. He told me to leave Jerusalem and because we've left Jerusalem , we're not going to die with everyone else there. And he says, but I have obtained a land of promise so you could go line by line and compare what she said and what he said, she says that was led us forth from the land of our inheritance. He says, no, I've obtained a better inheritance and that's where we're going into which things I rejoice. He says all this stuff you're complaining about, that's the blood of the Lord dripping on my carpet. I wouldn't have it any other way because I understand that's what it takes for him to be near to me, for me to be near to Him, for me to be forgiven of my sins . This is what had to happen. And I can't think of anything more that I'd want than blood on my, in my house. And then he says, and I know that the Lord will deliver my sons out of the hands of Laban, who's the guy they were going to see and bring them down again unto us in the wilderness. God has promised me these things. Therefore, I see it differently. She knew that he had promised them all these things, but she didn't believe it. What caused her comfort, his faith. She did not have the faith to believe God directly in all these same ways. But seeing Him believe God directly gave her the strength to believe God, she had faith in Lehigh. And now I'm going to tell you something that you don't want to hear, but you need to hear. Jesus said, what manner of men ought you to be, even as I am. He said, be perfect. Man, your standards are too low, your standards for yourself. You know, as well as I do that women will find every single thing wrong with you and they'll weaponize every fault. You have to make your life even harder than it already is. The first step in taking away those weapons is for you to fix yourself. In most cases, your faults aren't things that you're just doing right now. There are things you've been doing for a very long time or things you haven't been doing for a very long time. You have a problem with this or that. Fix your problem today. And then as time goes by, you know, women are never going to forget your, your past faults, it's never gonna happen. However, the more time you put between those and now the more leverage you're going to have in helping them be the best people that they can be. Your wives and your kids, the kids see all your faults too. Not, maybe not so fully as your wife, but maybe I guess it just depends on things, but you're just not going to have the influence for good that you could if you followed the savior's commandment to be like him in all ways at all times, even when no one's looking, even when no one's on your case, your wife should never have to nag you about anything because you already know and you're already on top of it. If you're not you deserve to be an act and it helps you. She's helping you, help her. But if you're on top of it, you can immediately turn around and help her be comforted by telling her what's up. But if she has a case against you, remember the woman who went to the unjust judge, you're the unjust judge, but she also has the case against you. So you're both the judge and the defendant and you're not gonna win that case. Although it sounds like you couldn't lose, you, actually, you can't win. So you have to be perfect. Impeccable is a wonderful word, but you have to be without sin. And when you can turn to her and say everything I've done has been what I sincerely believed would be best for you with no calculation of the cost to me. If it's, if it's possible, I'd do it, even if it's impossible, it just takes a little longer. You know, that's the way you can help her have greater faith in God because if you're aligned that way, that's exactly what you're doing and helping her have greater faith in you because you notice there's nothing here about Soraya complaining about how Leigh didn't cut the grass when that's his job or didn't have a job when that was his job or, um, whatever, right? Or weighs £200 more than he should or whatever. She didn't have anything to complain about him except the things he had done in following God's commandments was Jesus say about being persecuted for his name's sake or for doing what he would do in your place. Blessed argue. And you say like, well, I never thought persecution would come from my wife. Then you haven't read the scriptures. Friend Jesus said, a man's enemy will be those of his own house. And what do you do about that? You overcome evil with good, you love them, which means not to do what they want but to do for them. What's best love is not giving people what they ask for? It's giving them what's good for them. And yes, as a man, it's your duty to know the difference. It's your duty to know what actually benefits and have something greater to compare against than just what people ask you for. Again, going back to the Lord's promises to give us what we ask for. One of the conditions is that, which is expedient. You'll see that word expedient. It has to actually be what benefits because God doesn't do anything but good. So there's that now, the final thing, let's see. I think I was gonna keep going. Yeah, there's two more things to talk about at least. So now how can you benefit as a man if you follow the advice I'm giving you, if you follow this model, I'm giving you of what God would do in your place. Well, here's what you have to look forward to it says that that Soraya was comforted, which means the nagging start a righteous man does not have to deal with a nagging wife because the source of that has gone away because she feels secure in him. In the kingdom, he provides the walls are up around her domain that she has her queendom. The kingdom goes beyond the walls. The queendom is in the walls, the walls have to be there or the queen gets anxious . And so you have to be the wall. And if all kinds of nonsense is coming in through the wall, she's gonna get really unhappy and anxious and Naggy. Here's something a righteous man can say to his wife when she comes to him, for example, with problems that are completely in her wheelhouse and within her capacity to solve, she comes nagging oh this, that whatever the husband says, would you like me to stop what I'm doing? That only I can do in order to do what you're doing that you're fully capable of doing. And she says, no, no, I don't. And that's the end. You do that enough times won't be very frequent that she comes doing that. And you might say, oh, that sounds terrible and cruel and harsh and whatever it would be harsh to stop doing what only you can do. That would actually be the harsh thing. It would be harsh to stop doing what only you can do in order to gratify the character quality that she needs to put aside to fight the perennial human nature as manifested in women because now you're enabling her to be a worse person than she would otherwise be. Instead of using your righteousness to help her be a better person than she would otherwise be your love. Do you see the difference? So this is really important. But you can't say that if you're not doing things that only you can do, right? You can't say that if you're not walking in the path that, that, you know, 100 and 50% is what God has laid out for you. My wife used to get really anxious about the things that I would do in following the Lord's commandments. And um you know, I, I remember one thing to, to avoid details, but it was super, super hard for me to do. And I felt like I felt like if I could just have some support from somewhere, it'd be easier. And I thought what better source of my wife and I went to her and I was like , well, I had to tell her anyway because it involved the family. And I said this is the thing that I'm thinking of doing. And she's like, I think that's a terrible idea. I think it's a really bad idea and I feel like it's gonna harm us big time for doing that. If we do that, even though the we was me , she didn't have to do anything, but she would bear the consequences if it turned out as terribly as she expected. And I said it hurt me because I felt like this was like the only thing I could do is fling something to the next thing. And the next thing was hopefully that she would give me a little bit of support to make it easier. And instead she just made it harder cause she put up another barrier. I already felt like it was the right thing. I just was lacking courage to move forward with it. And um it was a huge blessing for me. It was probably the last time that it's ever happened in my life . Um Because it was the last argument I needed to stop looking towards other people for support in what I knew God wanted me to do. If God wants it, that's all the support you need. And as a man, you need to get there because there are so many good things that you can't do if you need other people to help support you in making the decision anyway. So I replied to that by saying, look, I've led you through the analysis of this and you haven't contradicted anything there. If you have points, let me know, but counterpoints, but there's no way we're going to lose on this. The only question is what's the trade off between time for my part? Like we're not going to lose money on this, uh, or security. The question is what's the return on my time and stress going to be? And, um, it's a question of, is it worth it? But there's no question about, is this gonna harm our family or not? And she didn't have a counterpoint to that. And I said, well, I just want to let you know I'm gonna do this anyway. I, your dissent is noted. But in the end, I've learned that as a man, I carry the cost of the decisions I make whether you're on board or not. Right? So that's what it means to be a leader. I should have figured this out a long time ago, right? Because in the military, it's very obvious that what it means to be a leader is you enable good for everyone else when you get it right and glory for everyone else and you will bear every bit of the cost and the fault if anything goes wrong ever. And so that's not something that sane people would sign up for. The only reason you'd ever do it is if you just had a burning love for other people, and that's what it means to be a man to live up to being a man is to share all the benefits and bear all the costs. That's what it means. So, um it ended up that, that decision really , really, really saved our bacon in enormous, enormous ways. It was, it was an immensely tremendously good decision and it carried a heavy cost, but I bore the whole cost. And so as a result of enough things like that, you start to build credibility, which means that your wife is willing to believe you when all she's got against you is feelings and decisions that you make. And she's like, well, I feel terrible about this, but logically speaking, there's no counter argument and you've been right about everything else. So let's roll. And she can actually like Soriah, she can actually come to emotional peace and comfort through your track record. Now, that's not gonna give you any bonuses. If it all falls apart and you're wrong, she's gonna let you have it. There's no way to get out of that. There's no such thing as building up a balance of credibility. I mean, I mean, there is, but, but when one thing goes negative, it's all gone instantly. That's women tend to have the attitude of what have you done for me today? Not, you know, guys will look and say like, oh yeah, well, in the aggregate, things are pretty good today, might not be good. But in the aggregate, this relationship is pretty good. A woman's like, you know, you could have saved my life 50 times, but today you have not made me feel special. Therefore, you know, you dropped the ball today and now you're my mortal enemy henceforth and forever. So I'm exaggerating only slightly so be perfect. That's the solution. Be perfect. Take away every excuse for them to be like this. So what happens when he comforts her? Uh she stops nagging him and then when the kids come back, when we returned to the tent of my father, behold, their joy was full and my mother was comforted. She's extra comforted now and she spake saying now I know of a surety that the Lord hath commanded. Sorry. Oh gosh, I could just see Leigh rolling his eyes at this. Like now, I know of a surety that the Lord Hath commanded my husband to flee into the wilderness. Yeah. And I also know of a surety that the Lord hath protected my sons and delivered them out of the hands of Laban and given them power, whereby they could accomplish the thing which the Lord hath commanded them. And after this manner of language, did she speak? And it came to pass that they did rejoice exceedingly and did offer sacrifice and burnt offerings unto the Lord. And they gave thanks unto the God of Israel . Well, that's nice if you want power, you thank God like that when you're in the midst of your trial, which I say your trial is not gonna be one. When you're in a state of trial, you give thanks to God as if you've been delivered and you watch what happens. I, I dare you to do that. I dare you to trust God so much in affliction that you're as grateful to him as you would be if he took it away. And you, you see what happens by the way, that is what trusting God means. And anything less than that is less than trusting God. All right. So let's get back to Lehigh, rolling his eyes and his lovely wife. She says of a surety. Now, I know of a surety that the Lord has commanded my husband to flee in the wilderness. Why? Because she got everything she wanted again. So again, Soraya is heads and shoulders above average women. However, it's very clear that the only reason she's into this is because she thinks that she's gonna get more goodies. And it's really sad and you feel for Leigh who had to deal with this his whole life, maybe this is a great point. Uh time to bring up a point that for some reason needs to be brought up many times. I'm not sure why it's so hard to get through people's heads. The person you marry is extraordinarily unlikely to be equally yoked to you in any way. One because it's impossible for any two people to be on the same spiritual level according to God in the book of Abraham. But two, you're not optimizing for that in any way when you pick who you marry. Nor could you because you kind of need to see in the future to see a lifetime of how you're going to develop both of you, each of you, the best you can do is look at the past and look at right now and that's not going to accurately predict the future because you don't know it, you don't know the future spiritual lessons you're gonna learn. You don't even know who you really are yet. Most of you don't know who you really are yet even now. And a lot of people who watch this have been married for a long time. So what is the likelihood that you were gonna marry somebody that will be your spiritual partner, your spiritual equal ? It's basically zero. So, so why is this so hard for people to understand that this life is not the life where you find and develop this marriage that will endure for for eternity, that does happen here. But that's something that happens for very, very, very, very, very few people. And this isn't some Jehovah's witness. You know, only so many people are gonna have the blessings of the gospel, the full blessings of the gospel and for the rest of us, tough God has a plan. This world is neither the beginning nor the end. But it's absolutely absurd to believe that, you know, a righteous man like le high and a lady like Soraya are some ideal companionship. And it's probably absurd to believe that you and your spouse are some ideal companionship either. And that doesn't mean that it's a wonderful thing. That has tons of purpose in this life. That is precisely what you both need to take a step closer to whatever can happen after this life. You know? I don't know that, that, uh, well, of puppies, cotton candy and rainbows, I only know for a fact that rainbows exist in heaven, but that doesn't mean that cotton candy and puppies are bad. Right. I listen to music here that I know doesn't exist in heaven because the things there are so much better. I've heard the music there. It's the most beautiful thing. You can't even describe it. There's nothing that, that it connects to here that would convey it in any way. You may as well try to describe the sun to a blind person. So if that isn't even adequate to describe it, but that doesn't mean that the music I listen to doesn't serve its purpose here and isn't great. I feel like the music I listen to pulls me out of a pit sometimes often, maybe because I'm just desperate to see any glimmer of what I remember from heaven to, to just put it in a phrase to try to approximate what I'd like to say. Two words that maybe you would understand and sometimes when you're falling out of a tree, grasping for branches, uh a particular song that hits you in a particular way is just the thing to stop you from falling for this moment. So yeah, that's maybe saying my piece on that. And we need to get real about this because frankly this belief that yes, this tendency to make the not sacrosanct parts of marriage sacrosanct necessitates us missing the things that are actually sacrosanct while also enabling husbands and particularly wives to do really terrible things that they should not be enabled to do and would not be enabled to do if husbands had the least bit of sense about how this actually works. Husbands and wives, you are not jeopardizing anything eternally by doing everything you can to help your spouse be the best person. They can be every righteous thing you can to help them be the best person they can be. And that does not involve ignoring their faults. You are the person in this world best situated to help them with that. If you just put a band aid on it and pretend it's not there, you're making them a worse person and it will be on your head. And I don't mean that in a God's gonna punish you kind of way. I mean, you're going to punish yourself because you will be riddled with guilt that far exceeds your capability to understand when you die forever for eternity. I should say that that's not the same. Now, this is the final thing to help illustrate the effects of you being a knucklehead and not helping your spouse be the best person they could be including in these ways that we've talked about today, but in all other ways too, I'd like to briefly address the issue of what you could call generational sin or familiar spirits. There's lots of names for this floating around. But when a child is born, their gut biome is imprinted upon through their physical interactions with their mother, through birth, nursing, whatever happens while they're still in the womb, which is, I don't actually know how that's connected, but it is. Um and we know only the slightest bit about how important that is the gut biome. It's really important. So what, what am I using this analogy for? I promise you that you underestimate the effect your character your culture has on your Children. And I hope that it's not the case that you look at your kids and you see the concentrated version of the faults of both you and your spouse. But it is probably the case that when you look at your Children, you see the concentrated expression of the faults of you and your spouse. It tends to be the case that the Children inherit the sins of their fathers and mothers that they learn from their parents to do the same things that their parents do for good or evil. And since human nature is evil, it tends to work out worse for kids than better. It's more often the case that parents give Children things that they need to overcome rather than advantages to propel them further than their parents . And that's super sad, that super said. So God continues the existence of the world by sending spirits into families where those spirits have greater light than their parents. So a family might have a child out of many who's exceptional and pulls that family out of the mire, or at least gives everyone in that family the opportunity to pull themselves out of the mire beyond what they could if they hadn't come. But anyway, if you've read the book of Mormon, you're familiar with all the problems Nephi had to deal with from his brothers, Lehman and Lemuel. And you know how this cascaded through generations of problems. Let me ask you, where do you think Laban and Lemuel learned to murmur against the Lord? The answer is their mother Soria and we just read the evidence. Did you catch as we were reading that the same phrases that those two use throughout their lives? Because it's there they are there. It's the same attitude. And so if you're a husband and again, this all works always OK, I'm focusing on the wife being the bad guy in terms of nagging because that tends to be the case when we're talking about nagging. And because I really want to focus on helping to encourage men to be perfect. If that piece is in place, everything else is more likely to go into place if that piece is not in place. Good luck with anything else. So just to put my cards on the table. But this is true of all ways. It doesn't matter if we're talking about men, women, whatever. So if you're a guy and you erroneously believe that letting things slide, when your wife, you erroneously believe it's loving to ignore the faults of your wife. You are causing tremendous damage to her that you have the power to prevent and you are causing tremendous damage to your Children that you absolutely have the power to prevent. You know, I've heard crazy stories about men who take charge of their spiritual situation. They start to develop a relationship with the Lord and their wives fight them on this and command them that they will not share their spiritual beliefs with their Children. I could see how a man might come up with a case where it would be wisest to set up a deal with his wife. A trade off where each position is given equal time or something like that. But where either parent is fully open with the Children and they don't war with each other, but they just sincerely put cards on the table. There's no snide remarks. There's a demonstration of civility and differing spiritual beliefs. I could see a case for that being made. But if a man is doing his duty and living his life the way he should and can his wife will not have any grounds ever to suggest that he keep his spiritual views to himself. There are a multitude of arguments that could be made against that and we could go on and on through all facets of marriage here. But it all starts with you actually being like Jesus and those things to transmit to your Children. If you think it's bad now to have a nagging wife. Imagine, I don't know how many kids you have, let's say you have three kids, imagine four people nagging you in your house. How much is that going to detract from the good you would otherwise do. And I think the false belief one among many potentials is, well, if you're just man enough, you'll find a way to do it anyway. Let's stop pretending that resources can become infinite through willpower. So here's an analogy for you and this, this applies to so many things. Uh in this video, we're not talking about sexual things in porn, but that's a place we could take this as well. I'd like you to just actively run with this and apply it where it might apply. But here's an analogy in my home. Uh We, I don't know who the heck did the plumbing on this house, but we don't have a shut off for the outside water lines. And this has caused a surprising number of problems for us. Uh Once we had, we have a uh a freeze free hydrant outside that uh started leaking and because there's no independent line, we had to shut off all the water until I dug a hole all the way down by hand in really rocky dirt to get to the connection and fix it before we could turn the water back on. And I actually had to refill the hole too before we turned the water back on. I mean, we tested it, but I had to finish the job because it was below freezing when this happened. And then we had a pipe burst as well. So I want to talk about the pipe bursting. So the, the, the lines for the external water lines, they're in the ceiling in the basement and it's finished. So I can't get to them to because otherwise I would put the, the shut off there and that would be a wonderful solution to the problem. It makes it manageable. It's all good because I can't get to it without tearing off all the drywall. The, the best solution is to spend four bucks to get, um, these little styrofoam cups that go over the external taps in the winter time and it takes two seconds to put them on. It's an amazing little ingenious invention and they're cheap, right? No big deal. Four bucks is so much less than the damage, the cost of the damage of a burst pipe. So let's say that I didn't control whether I could go to the box store and buy one of these or Amazon, let's say only my wife could do that. So instead of just spending four bucks and solving the problem in two seconds, I would have to go into the roof, tear apart my whole basement to find these water pipes and make the outside line and then put drywall back up, not just on the walls but on the ceiling. And if you've ever done this, it's a nightmare. Unless you have the lifter thing and if you're not a specialist, you're not gonna have all the whiz bang tools and you know, you hurt your back along the way and whatever, but you can do it. It's gonna cost a fortune in time. Money and health might cause permanent damage to your back or your psyche, but you could fix the problem. It's just gonna take away from all that, all that time and money and your back could have been used for much better things, but you have to drop down to a lower level in order to handle those things and that is not good. You're not helping anybody. Uh, would it help my wife if I was tearing out the roof and wasting all that time and money? No, because the things, the good things I would do would benefit her more than anyone else. She's the number one in the chain that gets benefited from the things that I do as it should be. Right. Do you get that? I hope so. It's a useful analogy. And you should run with it. So next time you're tempted to lack the courage or to, to misunderstand the righteousness of the situation, you need to help your spouse be the best person they can be. And it doesn't matter if you're the husband or you're the wife, you have that duty above anyone else in this world, you have a duty to help them be their best. Now, the tools differ if you're a man or a woman, frankly, I'd say if you're a woman, it's way easier to help your husband be better than the other way around, you have way more leverage. You can do it easily in a way that he doesn't even know what you're doing and not only does he not complain, he's just going around thinking how awesome his marriage is all of a sudden use your imagination, right? For a guy, it's a billion times harder . There's just, we just have a lot less that appeals to the carnal mind of a woman. You know, because basically everything we would do to help her improve is gonna be a threat to her carnal desires, not fulfillment of them. Do you get it? Hopefully because women are all about security and so any time you try to change something, they're gonna think, oh, there goes all my security, right? So it's like Indiana Jones, you know that, that, that um iconic scene where he's gonna take the idol off the little stand and he's doing this with his, he puts his hat down. It's my beanie. He just puts his hat down and he's like, he takes a little sand out of his little sandbag and they swaps him out. That's what you've got to do as a man with security is if you're taking security away, you got to give him something, at least as good in return. And there can't be even a half a second of empty because otherwise that giant ball comes rolling for you and it will crush you. So the greatest source of security is you being like God, the longer you've been doing that and to the fullest extent, the more security she will feel in you and you. What is carnal security? It's feeling security in anything but God as men , we developed that directly with him through experiencing the failure of all other supports women experience that ideally in seeing their husband pull through on all these things that were more than what she could handle. Do you get it? She finds security in God through finding security in her husband and, and that's how she breaks free from secu carnal security of the goodies of the riches and the lotions and creams to quote Nacho Libre. Um So you got to get off of the carnal security and on security with God for men, the temptation from Eden was to find security in your wife. That's not where you're gonna find it, fellas that we're here dealing with an awful lot of stuff because Adam botched that one. The, the destiny of man. What we're called to do is find security in God alone instead of in our lives. And women are called to find security in their husbands instead of the world, which is what Satan successfully attempted Eve to do. And it still happens today with all the ladies. So there's your male and female nature. Um, two hours. Sheesh. I'm glad my voice lasted. I'm probably gonna be a frog for the rest of the day. I hope this was useful for you. There were some really serious important points in here. Um And I hope you rewatched this one.