0:00:00 - 0:00:24 I struggled to know what to title this presentation, but we'll go with this. God gives you what you want. I'm excited to cover these topics. Um I hope that they make sense. I hope it's not too broad of a collection of thoughts to share, but uh this is what it's time to teach. So let's get into it. Let's 0:00:24 - 0:00:48 start with motive. Um I'm gonna drop some truth bombs on you and I hope that you take notes or make mental notes at least of some of these ideas and come back to it and think about it um by applying these things to your life and thinking through examples and uh situations in your life. I think you would 0:00:48 - 0:01:13 get a lot more out of this. You get a lot more mileage. Um Most people in this world, they're motivated by feeling good. That's it. And you can connect all sorts of details to that general idea. But what's a much better motivation is to actually be good. Now, what good means? I, I go into some detail 0:01:12 - 0:01:33 in uh other things that I've taught in particular. I'm thinking of the book, uh The Glory of God. Is intelligence. I, I talked about good and evil a lot in that book, but good is God. God is good. He is the definition of what is good. And the more we get to know God, the better an idea, better an idea 0:01:33 - 0:01:51 we have of what good actually means. So if you're committed to being good, you're committed to positive change, you're committed to constant improvement because you have to acknowledge that you're much less than what God is. But also that because of who He is and what he is and what he's done, there 0:01:51 - 0:02:12 is a pathway for you to become more like him. And that's what it means to be good is to grow closer to how God is. So that's a progressive idea and that's not the point of this presentation, but I'm just trying to give a little bit of context here. Um Feeling good. On the other hand, it's not about reality 0:02:11 - 0:02:35 , it's about perception. So God is the absolute reality and everything that he understands about reality is what we should aim to understand. We should seek to acquire His uh his thoughts and ideas and his vision of what reality is. But instead of that, what most people do is they concern themselves 0:02:35 - 0:02:56 with how they perceive reality. And you can cons construct any sort of vain imagination that you would like about how things are. Um And that is an effective way to feel good, but feeling good is not the same as being good. Now, let's not say that you won't feel good by being good. In fact, you'll feel 0:02:56 - 0:03:27 the best that you can given reality. Um If you try to be good, if you actually become good, but feeling good is an illusion. And it's a very constrained situation where so much of what you identify with who you are and how life is, is is intricately tied to your perception of how reality works. When 0:03:27 - 0:03:53 life comes along, it slaps you around, it rips that out from you. And that's one of the most painful things you can experience. So it doesn't matter how good you feel, what matters is, how closely are your perceptions tied to how things really are and the closer they're tied to reality, the more robust 0:03:53 - 0:04:18 you will be and uh the more permanent your happiness will be because it won't be subject to change based on the revelation of things different differently than how you supposed them to be. I don't know if that makes sense, but uh we'll move on here. If you want to understand people, you have to understand 0:04:17 - 0:04:43 their motive and their motive in almost every case is to feel good. It's not to be good, it's to feel good. So most people, what they'll do and what they'll think and what they'll believe is what makes them feel good about who they are, who they are right now, not who they could be. Not who they should 0:04:42 - 0:05:07 be, but who they are. The natural man is an enemy to God. And our default state as human beings is to be something very much less than what we could be and very much less than what would give us the greatest degree of happiness. So this sets up a contradictory state. People will act in a way that makes 0:05:07 - 0:05:29 them feel good. But unfortunately, and by acting in that way, they guarantee that they won't actually be happy because they aren't actually good. And only by being actually good can you encounter the greatest amount of happiness? What happens is when, when someone has a belief system that is contradicted 0:05:28 - 0:05:53 by reality, they will bend over backwards to avoid every manifestation of their incorrectness. And so uh they will navigate their lives in such a way as to avoid any signal that what they have chosen to believe is wrong or incomplete, incorrect or incomplete and any people in their lives that might represent 0:05:52 - 0:06:13 that idea as well, they will avoid. And if they have to interact with them, they will hate them. This is just human nature. And so it's good to understand these things both to inform uh how you interact with others. And also to see these things in yourself when you're off track, which again is the default 0:06:13 - 0:00:00 position. So there are some very few, but there are some people whose motive is to be good. And for those um their their objective. They'd like to improve their understanding of what is good and they know that that will require them to change because they want to change to be more like what is good. 0:00:00 - 0:07:01 And, and so that's the dichotomy. First choice. You want to feel good about who you are. Second choice. You want to learn more about what it means to be good because you want to change to be more like that. You can sort everyone in this dichotomy and what you'll find is deep down inside. Almost no one 0:07:01 - 0:07:22 wants to be good. That's unfortunate. But that's just the way it is that you should ask yourself if you want to be good. It's one of my favorite passages from scripture. This is in John chapter three verse 19 says, and this is the condemnation that light has come into the world. And men loved darkness 0:07:22 - 0:07:41 rather than light because their deeds were evil for everyone that doeth evil, hate the light, neither cometh to the light lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God. This right here explains everything 0:07:40 - 0:08:02 that you see in the world. In terms of human behavior. When light is manifested, you can see how people react and most people like cockroaches, they'll turn from the light and run away as fast as they can. Some people will turn into the light and they'll run towards the light as fast as they can knowing 0:08:02 - 0:08:29 cuz cuz all men in women, all mankind knows that the light will manifest what you lack, it will tear apart your illusions and it will painfully expose the things that you don't yet understand the things about you that aren't good. That is not variable. Everyone knows that deep down inside. The question 0:08:28 - 0:08:49 is whether they admit it or not, the question is how do you react to that? And for most people, they'll run away from it as fast as they can. Some people will turn into it and run into it as fast as they can. But good luck finding people like that gonna transition into talking about humility, humility 0:08:48 - 0:09:11 is not minimizing the truth of what you have. Some people um Well, meaning people teach that humility means to minimize the truth of what you have. And they'll say, oh, you know, it doesn't matter if you've got a million bucks, you shouldn't talk about the fact that, that you have a million bucks. Well 0:09:11 - 0:09:31 , there are appropriate times to talk about that. Um Some people will say, oh, it doesn't matter if you hold the world record for heaviest squat, you shouldn't talk about that. Well, there are appropriate times to talk about that. I've talked about this before. Those are two silly examples, right? But 0:09:31 - 0:09:50 it goes with anything, you know, let's say there's a woman who's, who's one of the most beautiful women on earth. Why shouldn't she recognize that if it's truthful? This is a deep topic. I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I will mention this point again and I've brought it up before there 0:09:50 - 0:10:14 comes a time where if you don't recognize the truth of what you have, uh, and you happen to have a lot of something you will do far less than you would if you did recognize that truth. So, um, we were talking about money. Let's just focus on that for a second. If you are wealthy and you don't recognize 0:10:14 - 0:10:34 that you're wealthy, are you going to give as much money to others as you would? If you realize that you are wealthy, if you just feel like everybody else, then you're not going to feel any sense of responsibility to do more than everyone else does. And if it's a case that you have more than everyone 0:10:34 - 0:10:56 else or more than most, and you do just what most people do, then you will be held accountable for the good that you could have done but didn't. So it is very important to understand the truth of what you have. If Jesus acted like he was just a normal person, we'd all be in a lot of trouble and the same 0:10:55 - 0:11:19 is true to a lesser degree. For all of us, everyone has a gift given them from God. And if you don't accurately identify what those gifts are uh whether it's an actualized potential or just potential, waiting to be actualized. If you don't recognize what those gifts are, you're going to be. Um you're 0:11:19 - 0:11:40 going to have to contend with a, a great deal of sorrow after this life when uh a much greater share of reality is dispensed to you. And you realize, and you can't get away from the fact that you could have done so much more than, than you did. So, humility is not minimizing the truth of what you have 0:11:39 - 0:12:03 , what is humility. It's a correct realization of the magnitude of what you don't yet have. So, um you don't squish down what you have. What you do is you, you acquire a realistic understanding of what you don't have. And the funny thing about this false definition of humility of minimizing the truth 0:12:03 - 0:12:23 of what you have is if you think about what you will do as a result of it, of a, as a result of that perspective, if you're squishing down the truth of what you have and diminishing your recognition of that, your actions will be very different. So um I mentioned this a little with the money thing but 0:12:23 - 0:12:48 um let's flip this over and think about it from the perspective of, of true humility. It doesn't matter if you're the world's strongest man and you can squat £2000 or something crazy. Um That doesn't minimize what you don't have yet. There's still this whole world of things that you can work on and you 0:12:48 - 0:13:14 can progress in. But if you just minimize the truth of what you have and you say like, oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I lift weights and, you know, whatever, um, it doesn't highlight that those things that you have to work on and that's sort of the, the point of all of this. So when you correctly recognize 0:13:13 - 0:13:36 the truth in terms of what you have to offer, you will do more than if you don't. And when you correctly identify what you don't yet have, you'll do more to work on those things. I hope that makes sense. So using these definitions, here's an example of a prideful attitude. Now, no one, I'm gonna give 0:13:36 - 0:13:54 you two quotes here. No one's actually gonna say these things of course. But uh you can sort of put your, your uh translator on and when people act in a certain way or say certain things, this is what they really mean deep down inside. This is the belief that they're operating under. So prideful attitude 0:13:54 - 0:14:17 says, I assume that I know everything there is to know. Therefore anything new will be treated as an inferior position to the one I hold until proven otherwise. So these kinds of people that are not humble, they're prideful. They assume that what they know is everything there is to know. And because 0:14:17 - 0:14:38 of that attitude, any time new truth is presented to them now that could be explicitly through another person who says, hey, I want to tell you about this thing or it could be through life because they're presented with some challenge that they don't have the tools to handle or some situation where if 0:14:38 - 0:14:52 they were open minded, they would actually learn something from it. So when they're presented with these opportunities for new truth, the way they will react is, hey, I already know everything there is to know. So you better hit me with something that proves that I'm wrong because otherwise, and just 0:14:52 - 0:15:12 why would I even listen to you again? This is the default position of everyone on this planet. I'm not saying everyone is like this. I'm saying that we should operate from the assumption that everyone is like this because you will be right far more often than you're wrong. A humble attitude. On the other 0:15:11 - 0:15:33 hand, is something like this, I assume everything I know is incomplete or incorrect. Therefore, anything new will be treated as an improvement until proven. Otherwise, these people are open minded, they're humble, they're open to new truth and like a child, they explore the world as a limitless opportunity 0:15:32 - 0:16:01 to, to learn more everything they experience every person they meet. Uh It's all presumed to be an opportunity to learn and improve until proven otherwise. So they test everything and uh they have an open mind and they, they just learn massive amounts compared to the prideful now, I, I've spoken about 0:16:00 - 0:16:21 the need to have a filter, uh the need to be able to discern and I'm not going to go into that here. But that is something that you should think about. Every strength has an equal and opposite weakness that comes with it. And that has to be overcome to enjoy the full value of the strength and uh open 0:16:21 - 0:16:45 mindedness is no different than any other positive attribute. Um The the negative side of that is being naive and getting suckered into things that hurt you or at least keep you busy and keep you occupied from acquiring better things. OK. So continuing on with this question of humility, uh the more you 0:16:45 - 0:17:11 think you have, the less you will get, this is a true axiom. So again, this is something you can ponder and think about if you're doing this in your life. Um Remember true humility is a correct understanding of what you don't have. So one way to measure this is to see how you react to stimulus. So for 0:17:11 - 0:17:40 example, um I think that should actually be stimuli plural. Um A lot of people will react to putative new truth by asking themselves again, implicitly, I seriously doubt anyone does this explicitly but cause they would know how foolish it is they say is this going to make me feel good about who I am 0:17:39 - 0:18:00 and what I believe because again, they assume that they already know everything they need to know when you're having a conversation, you'll see this in people, right? Someone will suggest a way to improve or a way that they perceived the actions of this person or whatever, maybe highlight some limitations 0:17:59 - 0:18:20 to their thinking. And that person, you can see the gears cranking and how they react. You can predict it based on how it's going to make them feel. So if they're hearing something they don't want to hear and the wicked take the truth to be hard, what they'll do is they'll spin up any sort of response 0:18:19 - 0:18:41 that minimizes the negative feelings they might have. So they might shift the blame onto someone or something else or they might try to get that person angry. So then it's not their fault anymore or they might go to this, um this good thing that they did to try to justify or balance out the bad thing 0:18:40 - 0:18:58 , you know, the, the possibilities are endless, but this is the root cause they're trying to get themselves to the point where they feel good without actually being good. So suppose what you're offering them is actually truth. It's an improvement over whatever they have. The last thing they're going 0:18:58 - 0:19:20 to do is say, oh yeah. Yeah. OK. And, and change because that would be an admission that they are not, in fact perfect. And the last thing these kinds of people are gonna do is admit that instead they're gonna try to shortcut this somehow into, I'm already good and I'm, I'm going to feel good about how 0:19:20 - 0:19:43 I am right now instead of changing into something that's better than I am right now. So, um, humble people. On the other hand, what they're asking themselves is, is this going to help me improve my understanding of what is good and what to believe in other words, they're totally ok with the idea that 0:19:43 - 0:20:01 what's being presented to them is better than what they have. They're totally ok with the idea of shifting their beliefs growing them to something better because their underlying assumption is that everything they know is incorrect or incomplete. So they're actively looking for something better. They're 0:20:01 - 0:20:23 saying like, look right now, these are the tools that I have in my toolbox and I'm not married to these tools. I anticipate trading up for something better in every case. So my question is, uh which of these two attitudes do you think will yield the most growth and happiness? I hope the answer is ridiculously 0:20:22 - 0:20:48 obvious. Any attitude that leads to greater truth is going to yield greater growth and happiness than any attitude that does not. But this is the lie, this is the lie that is sold to us that somehow there is another way that somehow we can be happy without living after the manner of happiness that somehow 0:20:47 - 0:21:13 we can cheat reality and get something for nothing. And that's just not true. So if you're going to recognize every opportunity that's presented to you, to improve. You have to adopt this attitude. You have to deeply believe that no matter what you presently have, there's something radically better um 0:21:12 - 0:21:35 that you're not aware of. So this is the tools in the toolbox trading up idea. But uh I want you to pay attention to the two words I used intentionally here deeply and radically. You can't just believe that maybe something out there might be a little better than what you have. You have to deeply believe 0:21:34 - 0:22:05 that no matter what you have, there's something radically better. And the reason you have to deeply believe and the reason it has to be radically better is that the path to obtain these things is not gonna be short, it's not gonna be easy and it's not going to be pleasant. OK, let's transition to desire 0:22:04 - 0:22:33 in this life. We get what we desire. There should be a scripture quote here from Alma chapter. Oh I can't remember. Sorry. Um But I, I need to make some points about this and maybe that scripture is on another slide. Um What we desire is distinct usually from what we wish for. So you can say that you 0:22:33 - 0:22:52 want anything, it doesn't mean that you actually want it. And that might seem cryptic, but we're sort of exposing limitations of, of colloquial English here. You could say I want a million dollars. But if someone says, OK, well, here's 30 years, you need to work like a maniac and save tons of money and 0:22:52 - 0:23:09 invest very wisely and take these risks and get lucky. And at the end of that, you'll have a million dollars. Um, how many people are gonna say? Yeah, I'll do that. Well, guess what? You have that opportunity. Are you doing it? Probably not. But if someone says, do you want a million dollars, you'd say 0:23:09 - 0:23:29 ? Oh, yeah, I want a million dollars. So what you desire, at least in the, the way I'm using these words right now, what you desire is what you really want. In other words, what you're willing to pay the price of to get, but you can wish for any old thing you want. It doesn't mean you're willing to do 0:23:29 - 0:23:56 what's required to get it. So uh for the most part, people are unwilling to do what it takes to get what they say they want. So when we say that God gives us what we desire, we do not mean that he's some genie and you rub the lamp and you say your wish and you get the thing, God is subject to his own 0:23:56 - 0:24:21 law. Um whether it's by choice or whether he's constrained by a reality that exists external to him is irrelevant for our purposes here. But the point is that the rules of the game are fixed and we don't get to change those. We can choose to interact with them to a greater or lesser degree, but we can't 0:24:21 - 0:24:50 break them. So, uh, if you want to fulfill your desires, there is only one way to do that and that is by playing the game according to the rules that were set before we got here. So that requires, uh, that you let go of what you wish you could do or have or what you wish you were and instead move towards 0:24:49 - 0:25:16 a greater share of reality, a more accurate estimate of reality and what you really want. Now, I don't care what you wish for in life or even what you really want in life. But we ought to be brutally honest about what it is that, that we wish for what it is that we really want because otherwise we are 0:25:15 - 0:25:42 guaranteed to end up in a different place than where we want to be and persisting an illusion or a delusion as it might be more accurately phrased uh of what it is that we want will always increase suffering beyond what's necessary. OK? It's picture time. So let's suppose that this star uh is your desire 0:25:41 - 0:26:06 . And again, if you're listening to this, this is probably a part that you want to see rather than listen to. Um So this arrow is what you think the path is and this person is you. Um So one point to make here is so often, especially Christians, they get tied up with this idea that our desires are evil 0:26:06 - 0:26:31 . And again, you know, that that is true if you define desire a certain way. Um But it's only true in terms of the means that we assume will lead to the end that we desire. And I'll get into this more. But I think that you will find, if you analyze what it is, you actually desire instead of focusing 0:26:30 - 0:26:57 on what you assume the path is to get there, the desire is good. It's the path that's not so uh a, a whole big chunk of the gospel is actually about revealing the reality of the, the means we assume are required to fulfill the desires that we have. And, and that disconnect in the path is really where 0:26:57 - 0:27:17 the problem lies. It's not so much in what you desire. I mean, can you imagine, um do you know anyone that you could ask them? Hey, do you want to be happy? And they'd say no, no, I don't, I don't really, I just not interested. So um maybe that's a simplistic example, but if you go down the list of what 0:27:17 - 0:27:44 people desire, um the desire itself is probably good. It's the path that's wrong. It's incomplete or it's incorrect. And here's the issue when we pray or when we live the decisions, we make the belief systems, we adopt the feelings, we feel it's all fixed on what we think this path is. And when we pray 0:27:44 - 0:28:11 , what do we do? Do we ask for the fulfillment of the desire. No, we ask for help. Uh, on the path, we ask that the path that we've imagined be fulfilled. And that's really where the problem lies. Why? Well, God knows what the actual path is and he knows that it's not this simple walk through the woods 0:28:11 - 0:28:31 . Actually, there are man eating sharks at the beginning. And then there are these mountains, we have to climb in the middle and then in the end, there's this giant gorilla that we have to defeat before we can actually get to this thing that we've, we desire this outcome that we desire and maybe the 0:28:31 - 0:28:53 obstacles are different in every case, but it's something like this in every case. And actually the better the desire, the harder, the more difficult the path is to get to it. Now, remember that there's an incredible difference between God's awareness and our awareness. And so what looks to be right 0:28:52 - 0:29:19 around the corner for us and a walk in the park. God knows that that's not the case. He knows that it's actually much more difficult to get to that outcome than we think. Now I'm going to give you a little secret here. So get ready. Our awareness uh is sort of perpetually limited. We hope that we'll 0:29:19 - 0:29:39 grow in awareness, but that doesn't mean that it's still not gonna be massively less than what God has. So the question is, how can you posture yourself to overcome all these obstacles without actually knowing ahead of time what they're going to be. Uh Jesus gives this parable in the New Testament of 0:29:39 - 0:30:00 a king going out to war. And he says, well, who's gonna do that without sitting down and counting the cost before you do it? The details of what the gospel costs are unknown to us because we have limited awareness. But in a general sense, we're told what it's going to cost, it's going to cost everything 0:29:59 - 0:30:22 , everything we have to give. But we can't really comprehend what that means until we make that level of a sacrifice. So in the meantime, how do you posture yourself to overcome these things? The absolute only way is to trust in God. You have to get to know His character and then you can lean on that 0:30:22 - 0:30:52 and use it as a bridge to overcome these things that you're not presently aware of and that lie outside of your, your comprehension and your understanding. And uh that is a key. So I hope that's a principle that you can um learn and apply in your life. So, let's see. Um that that's OK as far as desires 0:30:52 - 0:31:12 go and asking for things. Uh In Luke 11, we read, I say unto you ask and it shall be given you seek and ye shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you for every one that asth receives and he that seeketh find and to him that knock it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you, that 0:31:12 - 0:31:30 is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish? Give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your Children. How much more shall your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to them that 0:31:30 - 0:31:50 ask him. And the point here is that the problem is not the desire. The problem is the way you go about getting it. Ok? So if you ask him for an egg, he's not gonna give you a scorpion. If you ask him for a loaf of bread, he's not gonna give you a, a snake or a rock or you know you want fish, you want 0:31:50 - 0:32:08 bread. He's not gonna give you these other things. That's not where the difference lies, the difference lies in the path. So if you find yourself saying, yeah, but I'm asking God for an egg and he's giving me a scorpion. No, he's not. You're focused on the path, not the outcome, shift your focus to the 0:32:08 - 0:32:29 outcome. I'll go into some detail about that in a minute. But this is, this is how it turns out to be God, knowing all things from the beginning, knows that you're about to face this, this uh this shark. So before you get there, he's gonna detour you to learn how to swim better. And once you have like 0:32:29 - 0:32:49 Michael Phelps, su superpowers, you can out swim that shark and then you move on to the next thing and he knows that you're gonna have to climb this mountain. So he's gonna train you to be stronger and then you'll um maybe avoid that obstacle or you'll overcome it directly more often than not. And then 0:32:49 - 0:33:12 you'll be prepared to face this gorilla because you'll be much stronger, et cetera. So this path contains things that you don't see and it will require you to be strong in ways. You don't yet realize you're weak. It'll also tend to be way longer than you anticipate. But none of that means that the desire 0:33:11 - 0:33:44 is bad and none of that means that the desire isn't worth it. How much you detour, uh how much you're willing to detour and how long you're willing to take to obtain your desire will dictate uh how many of these desires and how good of desires God can fulfill. The limit is not from God. God wants you 0:33:44 - 0:34:09 to possess all things that He has. We're the ones that limit that not Him. And the way we limit that is we quit, we suffer from unbelief. We limit what we believe is possible and we limit what we're willing to go through. And all of that stems from a fundamental distrust of God if we really believed 0:34:08 - 0:34:37 Him and we really believed how he is. We would not limit him in any way and we wouldn't quit and we would just keep at it in this life. God will subject you to the greatest portion, the greatest quantity of what you require to fulfill all these desires. And he'll keep doing it until you quit. I believe 0:34:36 - 0:34:58 fundamentally that there has yet to be a person who's taken out of the game before they quit. Um Maybe there's some fine print to that that I'm not aware of yet, but he will dump this on to you in the greatest quantity you're willing to receive. This is partially what it means to have the windows of 0:34:58 - 0:35:25 heaven open. Um to, to pour this, this stuff out on you to the degree that it overflows and it doesn't more doesn't fit in your life. You're the one who determines what your capacity is and he's, he stands ready to uh send all of this to you. Ok. So why does he stop short? Well, it's because of our reaction 0:35:24 - 0:35:51 because in almost every case, what'll happen is we'll either say stop, I'm good or we'll be so oblivious to this process that we're sitting here on a hamster wheel getting hit by the same exact obstacle over and over and over and over again. Now, what this obstacle is, the specifics can vary widely from 0:35:51 - 0:36:09 person to person, situation to situation. But once you see this pattern, you can, you can get to know someone and see this so clearly. And you're like, oh my gosh, don't you realize that all this grief in your life? Like it comes from this, this one thing, this one principle you're lacking or this one 0:36:09 - 0:36:26 thing that you're afraid of or whatever, and all you have to do is trust God and overcome that one thing. And then you're on this path. That's, that's way better than where you are right now. And you'll be filled with sorrow if you gain this wisdom, because you'll look around and you'll see people live 0:36:26 - 0:36:44 their whole lives getting beat down by this one thing, or they live their whole lives, not really growing at all or getting any closer to their magnificent potential as a child of God because they don't trust God and they never learn, they never learn these things that He's trying to teach them. And 0:36:44 - 0:37:10 it's so obvious, it's so obvious. All right, let's hit some scriptures. So, um here's one that supports this idea, uh that God has a path and that the only way to achieve your desires is through walking that path in DNC 104 16. He says it must needs be done in my own way. And behold, this is the way 0:37:09 - 0:37:33 that I the Lord have decreed and this occurs in a specific situation, but that's irrelevant. The general principle holds in any situation God has his own way. And if you want the effect you have to follow the cause. In Isaiah 55 8, he reminds us that his thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are 0:37:32 - 0:37:52 not our ways. His ways are higher than our ways. And if we're wise, we'll seek to better understand his ways instead of obsessing about our own. In Proverbs three, we read trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding in all thy ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct 0:37:52 - 0:38:15 thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes, fear the Lord and depart from evil. And Jacob 410 were told uh seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand. Why? Because we know that He counsel in wisdom and injustice and in great mercy over all his works. If you really believe in God, you 0:38:15 - 0:38:35 should have absolutely no hesitation in seeking Him on all matters and not assuming that you have any idea what you're talking about. Now, I'm a 29 4 through five. This is the one I promised to show you before. Uh He says I ought not to harrow up in my desires. The firm decree of a just God for I know 0:38:35 - 0:38:56 that he granted unto men according to their desire, whether it be unto death or unto life. Yeah, I know that he allot unto men. Yeah. Decree unto them decrees which are an unalterable according to their wills, whether they be unto salvation. Or unto destruction. Finally, in Isaiah 55 2, it says, wherefore 0:38:56 - 0:39:16 do you spend money for that? Which is not bread and your labor for that? Which satisfy not hearken diligently unto me and eat y that which is good and let your soul delight itself in fatness. I want to go back to this picture to make a note here when we try to take the off ramp from God's ordained path 0:39:15 - 0:39:37 for us, we think that we're escaping, but really all we're doing is is releasing the pressure from the pressure cooker. And what we're going to encounter by doing that is far more suffering without the attached joy and happiness than we would encounter on the path. It's not only that this is the only 0:39:37 - 0:40:00 way, but it's also the best way God does not uh direct us in paths that aren't the most beneficial for us. And so when we deviate from that or we call it quits, we're always choosing something that's inferior every time we will be worse off. And that's the dirty secret that they don't tell you up front 0:39:59 - 0:40:25 . But I'm telling you so that, you know, if you deviate from God's will for you, it will always be a lesser path and it won't be fun. There's more I could say about that. I'll just say one thing briefly. So remember that Satan's tactic is to minimize negative consequences and overemphasize positive consequences 0:40:24 - 0:40:47 . And a lot of times when we take the off ramp from God's ordained path. It's because we don't realize yet. We're not aware of all of the negative consequences or the scope of them because we assume that what is unseen doesn't exist, but I promise you that you are going to get hit by things that you're 0:40:47 - 0:41:08 not expecting. And if you knew about them ahead of time, you would absolutely stay on the path and keep your trust in God and go to where he wants you to go. He sees the end from the beginning. We don't unless he's showed it to us. And so we need to be really careful about those calculations because 0:41:08 - 0:41:33 we have a lot of missing variables. All right. So uh I, I made the claim that our desires are typically good. It's the means that aren't. And um again, I'm, I'm using my own definitions of these words. I'm aware that uh the natural man's desires are evil continually, et cetera. But um when you separate 0:41:33 - 0:41:58 the means from the end, then you can um recognize that the properties change on those specific terms. OK. So let's talk about some examples. So if someone says, hey, I want a lot of money, do they actually want a lot of money or do they want to be able to buy the things that a lot of money buys or really 0:41:58 - 0:42:19 fundamentally do they just want security? So if security is the desire, money's just a means. And if you make your goal, the money, you're probably going to be on a path that's not ideal from God's perspective. But if you want security, then he does have a path to give you greater security than anything 0:42:19 - 0:42:45 else in life can give you. So if you look at the lives of the righteous, many times, we have many examples of these ending in gruesome, brutal ways. Stephen was stoned. Isaiah was sawed in half from the bottom up. Um And so on. Jesus died on the cross and yet these people had more security than anyone 0:42:45 - 0:43:07 does. So there's a path there, right? I'm probably not selling this. Well, if I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, it gets on in half. It's great. Anyway, let's just keep going. Um What about uh love? So people do a lot of things in the quote unquote name of love. But what are they really after if you sit down and 0:43:07 - 0:43:30 you define what they're actually desiring here? There's probably a uh a path that's very different than what they're pursuing to get there. And the desire itself is good. It's a good desire to, to want to love and be loved. But we mess up in our idea of what that path is because when you have the awareness 0:43:30 - 0:43:53 that God does, it's gonna look a lot different than it does from our perspective. And then what about happiness? I, I uh did this experiment once where I, I asked this group of younger people. Um I asked them what they wanted out of life and most of them said, well, I wanna be happy and I made them write 0:43:53 - 0:44:14 an essay about it. This was in one of my classes and uh it was really interesting cause I said, don't say I wanna be happy, define what you mean when you say happiness. And uh some people said they don't wanna have to worry about money. Other people said they want to spend time with family, um, and so 0:44:13 - 0:44:36 on. But everyone has a specific, uh, definition of what this means, but almost always what they use to define it is things and people, in other words, they define it with external things that they can't really control. At the end of the day, if your happiness is defined by external things, you will never 0:44:36 - 0:45:00 have unshakeable happiness because all of those things will always let you down. And uh there will always be cases where they don't apply. They don't either, they either they don't exist or there's a lapse or something happens or, you know, whatever it is. So it's really important to unders to separate 0:44:59 - 0:45:18 the, the ends and the means and the ends can be good. And we don't necessarily have to negotiate on those. But the means we have to absolutely trust God. I used to trust God on everything. But what I'm trying to say is those desires are probably from Him. They're probably programmed in you as part of 0:45:18 - 0:45:41 your being a child of God. And the problem isn't the end, it's the means. And you should turn that over to God and seek His awareness and he will show you a better way to obtain the end, not only a better way, the only way. So let's pivot here and uh we're gonna going to talk about um the same idea of 0:45:41 - 0:46:01 means and ends, but we're gonna apply it to you personally. So not so much about what you want out of life, but in terms of who you are, there's this phrase in scripture, uh seeing as you are seen, it pops up a couple times. Let's see. First John chapter three, there's a little bit about it. Um There's 0:46:01 - 0:46:21 some of this, I think second Corinthians, but here's a quote from DNC 7694. It says they who dwell in his presence in God's presence are the church of the first born. And they see as they are seen and know as they are known, having received his fullness and of his grace as you're reading through the 0:46:21 - 0:46:41 scriptures and you hit these little phrases, it pays dividends to dig in and ask God, what do you mean when you say this? Because He doesn't just throw words around. When you see something, it means something and you should figure out why he uses the words he uses. So in this case, this phrase see as 0:46:41 - 0:47:06 they are seen it's pregnant with meaning and value. So, a starting point here is to realize if you believe that God has uh uh an exceedingly great awareness compared to you, you should also admit that that awareness does not only apply to external things but also internally to who you really are deep 0:47:06 - 0:47:27 down inside. And um the fact is that you do not see yourself as God sees you. Does that make sense? So if you're looking at the world with really messed up vision and you need like coke bottle glasses, um and, and you're taking off your glasses and you're looking around and then you put your glasses 0:47:26 - 0:47:51 on, things are gonna look very, very different. And essentially we have very messed up vision and God has perfect vision. And so he sees us very differently than we see ourselves. He sees, sees things as they really are. And this isn't just um a character judgment, it's a context, judgment. So we tend 0:47:51 - 0:48:18 to see ourselves in a vacuum and God sees us in context of everything else in reality. So I'll give you an example of this. It can go both ways, right? So David was the youngest child in a family and he was mostly disregarded in terms of value. But when uh God's prophet came to David's parents to find 0:48:17 - 0:48:36 him and anoint him as king and the parents presented all the kids from young or all the sons from, from oldest to youngest uh the prophet said, uh, none of these are the guy. Do you have another son? And the parents are like, oh, yeah, you know, there's David, he's out with the sheep and the guy says 0:48:35 - 0:48:57 , well, come bring him here because, uh, I've got some, some work to do. God judged David's heart. He didn't judge the outside. And what that means is not just where David was at the moment, but his, the seed of his character within him, his divine potential was greater than his brother's even though 0:48:56 - 0:49:15 it hadn't manifested yet. And this, if you're a book writer or a novel writer, I should say, or a movie maker, this is a theme that can get played out over and over again. We love movies about this and books about this, about this hero that doesn't know that he's a hero yet or heroine that doesn't know 0:49:15 - 0:49:42 she's a heroine yet. And um this is a real thing so God can see in you a potential that you do not see. Now. We, this is a sidetrack, but we misinterpret stories in the scriptures uh very frequently in terms of uh people like Gideon who were chosen by God and maybe even David. But we have this false 0:49:41 - 0:50:03 paradigm where God chooses some arbitrary person. And then he, he waves his magic wand over this person and then this person turns into a great person that is not the way it works. So there's nothing magic about the gospel and the principles that apply in this case are that when God calls someone to 0:50:03 - 0:50:32 do something that is the next logical step of their progression. As we read, for example, in Alma 13, um just because our awareness of someone's progression is um is jagged, does it mean that it's not completely continuous uh if we were to be aware of all things. So we see someone like Gideon and it 0:50:32 - 0:50:56 seems like out of nowhere, God calls him to come and defeat the Midianites and be this great hero for Israel. Uh that didn't come out of nowhere in God's awareness of all things. Gideon was, was completely prepared for that next step. It was the next logical progression from where he was. But to those 0:50:56 - 0:51:14 around him, he was just Gideon. You know, there's nothing special about him, same thing with David. And it's only after they do what they're meant to do that, you can look back and say, oh yeah. Uh I can see how this person was actually way different than everyone thought. We just didn't have um the 0:51:14 - 0:51:36 context to see those attributes manifested yet. If you look at what David did or what Abraham did or any of these people. Uh Jesus is obviously the prime example, his siblings and the people in his hometown uh rejected him at least initially in the case of his siblings. Um because they said, hey, we 0:51:36 - 0:51:58 know this guy and there's nothing special about him and it wasn't until he had the context to manifest the differences within him that he was seen as anything different. Anyway, that's a sidetrack. Um, it can go the other way as well where, and this unfortunately is much, much more likely you are probably 0:51:58 - 0:52:20 way more wicked than, you know, but if you trust God and you subject yourself to him and you pay attention to everything he's showing you in, in your life and everything he's causing you to experience in your life. He will manifest to you how you really are. And so for some of us, we'll realize that 0:52:20 - 0:52:47 we are um endowed with certain qualities that we were not aware of, that are positive, but much more often. He'll reveal to us things that aren't so hot and these are opportunities for us to grow. No um revelation 317 to 19. It says because thou sayest, this is the Lord rebuking a group of people, but 0:52:47 - 0:53:06 it's actually very applicable in a general sense. He says, because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich and 0:53:06 - 0:53:26 white raiment that thou mayest be clothed and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear and anoint thine eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten be zealous therefore, and repent. Now, I hope this is from Revelation three is the Lord speaking. I hope you remember 0:53:25 - 0:53:44 from John chapter three, these are parallel passages. What happens when the light shines, most of us run away into the cracks where it's still dark like cockroaches. If you turn to God with all of your heart might mind and strength, he's gonna shine that light right into the deepest corners of your heart 0:53:44 - 0:54:05 . And you're gonna find out that while you might think that you're rich and have need of nothing, he's gonna show you that you're wretched, you're miserable. That's important, right? You might think you're happy because you know, you go backpacking in Europe and have all this fun doing this or that you 0:54:04 - 0:54:25 have this fancy house or this nice car or this trophy spouse or these kids that are really good at soccer or whatever, but he's going to tear all of that from you or show you that in the end, none of it matters and that you're actually miserable with respect to reality. And the, and the reason he's doing 0:54:25 - 0:54:54 this, of course, isn't to arbitrarily punish you or make you suffer more than is helpful. It's to show you that in reality, this is actually how it is. Uh, I, I don't wanna deviate to say this, but I'm supposed to. So, um, the fact is that we look at uh we look at these gut wrenching events when we're 0:54:54 - 0:55:17 super sad or when we're suffering a whole ton or this really unexpected thing happens, we see these as uh glitches in the matrix. We see these as random unfortunate events that there's nothing you can do to prepare for and they just kind of happen and it's not life, it's just this thing that happens 0:55:16 - 0:55:40 sometimes in life that is completely wrong. So God has all things before him continually. And one way to think about this, it's very hard to describe these ideas. But one way to think about this is that how you feel when this super unfortunate rare thing happens to you or someone you love, imagine a 0:55:40 - 0:56:01 situation where it's like that all the time. Now, the reason those things are so hard to deal with is because your belief system is inadequate to support that. And I don't mean belief system in the narrow sense of like a a prescribed religion or something. I mean, how you actually interact with life 0:56:00 - 0:56:25 if you had stronger principles. So when these things happen to you, it zaps all of your happiness and you just wanna die, you know, but it, it might be impossible to imagine. But try to imagine a situation where you have principles that are strong enough that you can have the maximum level of happiness 0:56:25 - 0:56:49 possible to have in this life while also going through things like that. That might sound absolutely nuts. But it shouldn't. It's actually the exact objective of the gospel of Jesus Christ for that to happen because God has every negative thing before him continually and yet he's happier than any of 0:56:49 - 0:57:09 us are. He has more joy. And that's something that, that's the mystery of Godliness and that's something that you have to figure out. And the point of the gospel is to get you there anyway. That's all from that word miserable in verse 17 here and poor and blind and naked. So God's not saying in this 0:57:09 - 0:57:26 verse, like I'm gonna take all these things away from you and we'll see how much you suffer. He's saying it's actually already like this in your life. You just don't realize it yet. And by my grace and mercy, I'm insulating you from all these things that are right there, at least in terms of your awareness 0:57:25 - 0:57:47 so that you can have a space to prepare for that so that you don't have to suffer as much as you would. If I just sort of broke open the floodgates, it would be overwhelming to you. So he says, I counsel thee to buy of me gold, tried in the fire that you may be rich, white Raymond, et cetera. He's saying 0:57:47 - 0:58:07 , come to me, I have these higher principles and when I give them to you, you'll see, um you'll, you'll have a greater awareness, you'll see how all this works and you'll be able to overcome all of this and uh experience great joy in spite of it all. But the path is for him to correct us, for him to 0:58:07 - 0:00:00 give us things that we don't have to replace the things that we think we have with better things and to give us additional things over what we have. And I'm not talking about objects. I'm talking about principles, ways of thinking, um skill sets, strength. OK. So, um when it comes to your character, 0:00:00 - 0:58:49 one way to think about it is with a star chart and you may never have seen one of these things before. But basically, uh each one of these lines, it starts from, from the center and the length of the line is, is the degree of whatever it is that we're measuring and uh the angles of the line don't really 0:58:49 - 0:59:09 matter. In this case, it's just these are different properties. So your character is multidimensional, but here I've drawn uh seven lines to kind of just give it a, give an idea of what this might be. And so some of these lines are really long and those are things that you're really good at. And some 0:59:08 - 0:59:24 of these lines are really short and these are qualities in which you're deficient. And because we're talking about character, um all these things are positive, but you could also think about this in terms of negative attributes that you're trying to minimize. But in this case, we're talking about positive 0:59:23 - 0:59:44 attributes that you're trying to maximize. So this graph right here, let's suppose that this is how you think you are. Um uh excuse me, how you actually are now, these chalky lines are how you think you are. So remember I said that the length of the line is the degree to which you've developed this attribute 0:59:43 - 1:00:03 . So in this case, uh let's look at this line that goes from the center straight down. So how you actually are short. So it means you're, you're kind of deficient in this quality. But what you think is that you actually excel in this quality and you can go around this and look at each spoke and on uh 1:00:03 - 1:00:26 two of them, it's pretty close what, what you think versus what actually is. And in some cases, uh you think that you're much more advanced in the quality than you actually are and in some cases you think that you're uh much less developed in the quality than you actually are. So, what are the consequences 1:00:25 - 1:00:46 of this? So if you're spot on, that's great, right? But what if you think that you're much more developed in a certain area than you actually are, what's going to happen? Well, for one, you're going to resist opportunities to grow in that area because you're gonna think that you're already there. That's 1:00:46 - 1:01:10 bad. Two, you're probably gonna push what you think onto other people in that category. And um that's not good either because what you think is kind of an illusion and you're wrong about it also. Um What? Well, let's change gears. What about if you, um, don't yet realize that you're really advanced in 1:01:10 - 1:01:29 some quality? Well, uh, there are a few consequences to that one is you're not going to do great things in that category two is you're going to undervalue yourself in a general sense because uh you're not going to give yourself credit where credits do. And maybe that's like the only thing you're good 1:01:29 - 1:01:51 at and you don't realize it and maybe it's a really big deal, but uh you're never going to get anywhere with that. Um But I, I think the number one deficit there in, in the case where your actual quality exceeds what you think it is is that you're not gonna go out and bless other people with this gift 1:01:51 - 1:02:10 that you have. Now, uh the extreme case of this is actually the line to the right, the horizontal line to the right where you have this huge gift and you have no clue that you have it at all. And that's a really unfortunate case and I see this frequently. So all of these things happen, you see it every 1:02:10 - 1:02:30 day if your eyes are open to it. Now, there's another line we could plot and I'm sorry, this is getting kind of crowded and that is your potential and this has consequences as well. So in some cases, you have an enormous potential and it's, it's not realized at all yet. Um And depending on what you perceive 1:02:29 - 1:02:49 to be your actual qualities and depending on what your actual qualities are in reality, um, this will have different consequences, right? So, um, let's look at the line that starts at the origin and goes straight down. So again, to, to remind you what the legend is, what each of these lines mean. The 1:02:49 - 1:03:07 shortest one there is where you really are. The chalky line is where you think you are. So that's a problem. And then the green lines, what your potential is. So in this case, you think you're way ahead of where you actually are, but your potential is even more than that. And in this specific case, you 1:03:07 - 1:03:28 are never gonna get there. Not until you realize where you actually are. That's the first step. So uh going back to that revelation three passage, who the people that, that God loves He, he corrects. And um the reason He does this is because He's trying to get you to achieve your potential because the 1:03:28 - 1:03:51 desires you have inside of you in many cases will only be fulfilled through God teaching you the things that you lack to achieve your potential. In other words, you can't reach up and grab that star until you become who you could become. So how do you see more clearly what you have? How can you get a 1:03:51 - 1:04:13 more accurate estimation of who you really are right now because that is key to you progressing and living the life that is ordained for you. Well, first you shouldn't presume we assume so much about who we are. We shouldn't do that. We should let r reality reveal it to us. And it does, as you acquire 1:04:13 - 1:04:30 more and more wisdom, you also acquire a lot of sorrow because you look around and see these people who are struggling with things that just should be so abundantly obvious to them. But they don't trust God and they're overconfident in their abilities and they presume way too much. The other thing is 1:04:30 - 1:04:52 we shouldn't imagine. Um There's this phrase in the scriptures, vain imaginations and uh this presentation is already too long. So I'll leave it at that. But it's possible to imagine what we're like. We shouldn't assume we shouldn't imagine. We should let reality reveal it to us and it will. So, um let's 1:04:52 - 1:05:09 go back to money because this is simple. Everyone understands it, but it certainly isn't what's most important in life. But um it's easy to measure and it's easy to think about. So, if you're always struggling with money, maybe you should think about why that is. And there's probably a principle here 1:05:09 - 1:05:26 that you're lacking. And until you address it, it's gonna be like that shark on the hamster wheel. Probably not gonna hear that analogy anywhere else anyway. Every time you go around the wheel, you're gonna get bit by this shark. So why don't you deal with that shark? What is the shark? How, how do you 1:05:26 - 1:05:52 overcome that? And until you do that and you think about your life in a, an intentional way and address those deficits, they're going to keep getting you every single time. Let reality reveal it to you. Um I'm anonyms this story. Ok. So suppose there's a person who finds that everyone they care about 1:05:51 - 1:06:15 seriously um ends up doing this completely unexpected thing and defending them in some major way. Um If that's the case with every single person you get close to in life, there's a, there's a common denominator here and it's you. So that's an example of reality showing you something you lack, which it 1:06:15 - 1:06:33 turns out that there's some massively bad thing in your character where you keep doing this to yourself and sabotaging these relationships and you should uncover what the real problem is. Maybe the real problem is that you have these serious flaws in your character and any time you get close enough to 1:06:33 - 1:06:56 somebody for them to sh to realize this and point it out to you, you immediately run away from them because you're like a cockroach and you run into the dark when the lights come on. It's uh John chapter three again, know what your limits are. Reality, will reveal this to you. Ok. Let's think about this 1:06:56 - 1:07:17 in a strictly spiritual sense. But again, all of these principles are as temporal as they are spiritual. So, suppose you're the kind of person goes around saying, oh, I've received the gift of tongues. Oh, I've been ordained to the priesthood. Oh, I've had this spiritual experience. I've been baptized 1:07:16 - 1:07:44 . I've been baptized with fire, doesn't matter what the thing is. But you have these credentials and you tout out these credentials every time a person or life shows you what your limitations are you say? Yeah, but I'm special because as long as you do that, you're going to cut yourself off from the 1:07:44 - 1:08:03 growth that God has ordained for you to experience. Going back to that desire graph you're saying stop or you're getting on that hamster wheel and you're gonna get hit by the same thing that you lack over and over and over again. Another example is people say, well, I've been saved. So what do you really 1:08:02 - 1:08:21 have? Everything that God wants to give you? Just because you're quote unquote saved, who cares? Keep going? What do you lack? It's not about what you think you have. It's about what you lack. This is where we started with the definition of humility. You remember it's an accurate understanding of what 1:08:21 - 1:08:46 you don't have. So here are some tools that can help you expose this. Is there anything that you read about in the scriptures that you have not yet experienced? If so those are things that you lack is there anything in the scriptures that you can't explain? So if the answer is no, then I would like to 1:08:46 - 1:09:09 meet you because you have a lot to teach me. Um Chances are there's a very long list of things in the scriptures that either don't make sense to you or if you're really clever, you can hide that and say no, it makes sense. But then the test is uh what would you do in whatever situation in the future 1:09:08 - 1:09:34 ? Because if you can't perfectly predict the future, you don't yet know God. That was probably a bombshell, but it's true. Think about it. If you really want to grow the way you're going to do that is to increase your trust in God, you have to honestly believe and live according to the belief that his 1:09:34 - 1:09:58 ways are higher than your ways that his ability to see reality exceeds yours. So one way to peel back the edges here and progress is to use the unknowns to learn more. What do I mean by that? Uh And again, this is a long presentation. If you wanna pause, come back to it, re listens to parts. That's a 1:09:58 - 1:10:19 really good idea. I seriously doubt you're gonna extract everything you can from going through this once. Um So what do I mean by using the known unknowns to learn more? So you've got different kinds of unknowns. There are unknown, unknowns and those forget about it. You've got no clue. But there are 1:10:18 - 1:10:35 also these known unknowns. What's a known unknown. It's something you know that you lack. So there are, there's a huge sea of things that you lack that you have no clue about. But we're not talking about those. You can't get traction there. It's the ones where you have a little handle to, to grab these 1:10:35 - 1:10:55 , these unknowns because you know that you lack them. So recognize situations where you lack understanding uh are there consequences that you can't explain. So can you look at your life and explain why things are the way they are? If there are things that you can't explain, that's an opportunity to learn 1:10:54 - 1:11:14 . Uh going back to the scriptures. Can you explain why God did everything that he did when he did and why he did it? If you can't, then those are opportunities to learn and again, don't fool yourself into thinking. Yeah. Yeah. No, I get this, test yourself, test the accuracy of your model by predicting 1:11:14 - 0:00:00 the future and then see if it comes to pass. If you're wrong, then that's an opportunity to learn because God wouldn't be wrong in his prediction of the future. Uh One note of caution, I talk sometimes about trivia. So if you think about like the the exam questions you get at religious institutions, 0:00:00 - 1:11:59 they're absolutely ridiculous things that no one should care about ever. It's like uh how many times was Paul shipwrecked? This is trivia, right? Or Oh, what do you know about this one tenant of faith? Who cares? Right? Everything we search for in the gospel should be directly connected to how we think 1:11:59 - 1:12:20 , how we feel, how we act, how we will help others. If it's not connected to that, it doesn't matter. Now, the great thing about that is if you apply that filter, it turns out that everything in the scriptures is relevant in some way, but this really changes. It doesn't so much change what's there, it 1:12:20 - 1:12:41 changes, how we interact with what's there. And I know so many people, probably 50% of the emails I get or, hey, what do you know about this thing or have you ever thought about this or? Um and you know, if you've sent me one of those emails, I'm not saying that just because you use those phrases, you're 1:12:41 - 1:13:02 , you're on my naughty list about this stuff. What I'm saying is the space of things that people think about is cluttered with stuff that doesn't freaking matter. OK? Focus on what you're doing, what you're not doing, how you think about things, how you react to things in respect to your relationship 1:13:02 - 1:13:23 to God. If that's not getting better and you're not coming to know Him more than you do. You're absolutely wasting your time in what you're choosing to spend it on, keep the rubber on the road and don't lie to yourself. OK? As an example of this, let's say we're reading through the scriptures and we 1:13:23 - 1:13:48 get to that part where the 70 return and, and uh one of jesus' disciples says, hey, this guy has this demon and I can't cast it out. So here's the question for one, didn't Jesus tell that guy that he had authority to cast out demons? So why couldn't he? And then you read Jesus gives him an answer and 1:13:48 - 1:14:12 he says that kind cometh not out except by prayer and fasting. So then interestingly, Jesus proceeds to cast out that demon without praying and without fasting. So my question to you is what the heck is going on here. There's an answer to this question, but you should go deeper, you should learn details 1:14:11 - 1:14:30 . You should really ask yourself uh what's going on here. And then good analogy for this is you can think, you know a topic and then when you try to teach it, you realize there are all these things that you didn't know half of that comes from the questions of your students and they hit you with something 1:14:29 - 1:14:47 that exposes a limitation to your understanding. That's what life will do to you as well. You don't actually have to teach to have this experience. You just have to live life intentionally with open eyes and God will show you through reality the limits of your understanding. But if you're just kind of 1:14:47 - 1:15:11 rolling through life with your eyes closed, bumping into things and just assuming that's the way it is, you'll never get there. All right. So in Job chapter 38 we get this uh monologue from the Lord and it is fantastic. Um And a lot of the language is kind of archaic, but the point is he's going through 1:15:10 - 1:15:30 all these things that he knows about and he's saying it in and he's giving, uh he's relating these things in terms that job can understand and that might be external to what we can understand in some ways. But um in other ways, it's clear and, and in general, the takeaway should be clear, which is that 1:15:30 - 1:15:55 God knows so much more than we know. You could read this in job 38 I think for time, I'm gonna skip it. But uh it's very clear as you read through this that we just have absolutely no clue what's going on. We are fools before God in DNC 52. There's an interesting passage that um reminds us how critical 1:15:54 - 1:16:17 it is for us to, to have a contrite spirit or an assumption that God knows so much more than we do and, and not just lip service, but to actually deep down believe this. And it says, uh he says, again, I will give unto you a pattern in all things that you may not be deceived. So what's the pattern? He 1:16:17 - 1:16:36 explains it by giving examples. He says, uh wherefore he that pray whose spirit is contrite? The same is accepted of me. If he obey mine ordinances, he that speaketh whose spirit is contrite, whose language is meek and edifies the same is of God. If He obey mine ordinances, and again, He that tremble 1:16:36 - 1:16:55 under my power shall be made strong and shall bring forth fruits, praise and wisdom according to the revelations and the truths which I have given you. And again, he that is overcome and bringeth not forth fruits. Even according to this pattern is not of me wherefore by this pattern, ye shall know the 1:16:55 - 1:17:20 spirits in all cases under the whole heavens. There's a lot of this passage and I'm just going briefly focus on some things. But the idea here is that this pattern is uh humility. It's contrition before God, it's trembling under his power and having all actions derive from that relationship with God 1:17:20 - 1:17:45 . It's very important to recognize that we are at an enormous deficit when it comes to comparing our understanding with God. We're very far behind. When you have this attitude, you will act differently. This passage is from uh Nehemiah nine and he's offering a prayer to God and he's incredibly honest 1:17:45 - 1:18:08 about things as they really are. And you should read this. Um I'll skip over it for now for time, but you can see the depth of humility in this passage. And he accurately recounts all the limitations of his people. And this is interesting cause this prayer he's asking for something, but he starts by 1:18:08 - 1:18:30 listing out all the reasons why they're not worthy of getting what they want and, um, what they're about to ask for. So he recognizes that this path is very important and it has to come from God. And on this path, there are things that we might not want to face. But the only way to get to the end of 1:18:29 - 1:18:56 the path is to turn right into the darkness and to ask God to, to shed light on all the things that we don't really want to see. You have to be extremely sincere and earnest. Um For example, if you feel really uncomfortable with compliments, one reason that might be is that you might be lying to yourself 1:18:55 - 1:19:16 about who you really are and you might have an inflated ego. So when people echo your representation of yourself, it makes you feel super uncomfortable because you're capable of lying to yourself. But you don't feel so good when other people lie to you because you haven't trained yourself to be deceitful 1:19:16 - 1:19:43 in that respect yet. Um Another way is maybe you deflate your ego. Um So you, you have a character trait in which you're more advanced than your self image suggests. And in that case, you're going to be overwhelmed by despair because God has given you these tools to attack life and you've buried them 1:19:43 - 1:20:10 . And now you're exposed to these challenges that you have the power to overcome, but you choose not to the truth is that you really are nothing. So that is true. But in God, you can be everything. So if you choose to overstate who you really are, you'll be unprepared to contend with reality. If you 1:20:10 - 1:20:29 choose to understate who you really are, you will also be unprepared to contend with reality. The key to being able to contend with reality is to seek God with all your heart might mind and strength to realize that He will give you everything you need to contend with reality with God. All things are 1:20:29 - 1:20:55 possible. And as you turn to God, he will expose the areas in which you lack. And He will also give you all the tools to make those weaknesses, strengths. These are truths. His strength is made perfect in weakness. That's a phrase from Paul and the way it's made perfect in weakness is when we're honest 1:20:54 - 1:21:20 about those weaknesses, that reality will reveal to us, we will turn to God and He will teach us the principles we lack so that in our knowledge can uh empower us to overcome those weaknesses and they'll actually be made strengths. So as we're conducting an honest inventory of where we stand, we should 1:21:20 - 1:21:43 think about first and foremost. And what do we still sin if we still sin in anything? We're still in an elementary phase of the gospel. And it's time to really believe God and really repent. And that is possible. It's also required as we progress from that elementary state. Here are some advanced questions 1:21:42 - 1:22:08 we can ask, which are equally important, but they're, they rely on that foundation. What do you fear anything you fear is an opportunity for God to teach you because uh there is no fear in faith. Perfect love, overcome all fear. That's the love that God has for us. If you truly believe that God loves 1:22:08 - 1:22:28 you, then you can't really fear anything because you trust that everything that you will face as you're perfectly obedient to Him is for your good. And it's given to you from a God with perfect knowledge and with all power. And so it's impossible to fear anything. And maybe that sounds like a ridiculous 1:22:28 - 1:22:51 statement, but I promise you that it is possible, it is possible to live without fear of anything. Next question. What wouldn't God ask you to do if you have an answer to this question? Then that is an area that you can learn to trust God more. What can't you do? This is a very interesting one. Uh if 1:22:51 - 1:23:08 you read through the scriptures and you see all these things and you say, well, I can't do that. I've never done this. I don't believe that I could do that. We have to uh come to the point where we sincerely possess the attitude that Nephi had. And he said, if God commanded me to do all things I could 1:23:08 - 1:23:29 do them, you have to honestly believe that. What can't you explain if there's anything in the scriptures? That doesn't make total sense to you? That's an area that you can seek God and learn what overwhelms you. This isn't exactly the same as fear. But uh think about God for a second and think about 1:23:28 - 1:23:51 his awareness. So you might get overwhelmed when life causes you to spend a few more plates than you're used to in the air at the same time. But think about how many plates God is spinning because he's got all of his own plates, which I would suspect is more plates than any individual has. And he's perfectly 1:23:50 - 1:24:13 aware of everyone else's plates, which in effect, he is also spinning. Next question, what hurt you? If anything has the potential to hurt you beyond sorrowing for other people's sins, then those are areas that you can grow in the sorrowing for other people that never goes away. It just keeps growing 1:24:12 - 1:24:32 . Next question. What are you doing that detracts from your ultimate potential desires and goals. It's a really good question to meditate on and take copious notes because God will teach you anything that detracts from your potential desires and goals is something that you should minimize in your life 1:24:32 - 1:25:00 and maybe eradicate. And the flip side of that question, the inverse of it. What are you not doing to achieve your ultimate potential desires and goals? And if you can do that, then you should, I went over that and that. So every tradition constrains the options. God has to give you something better 1:25:00 - 1:25:21 than what you have. Think about that. He's got a whole bucket of things he wants to give you. And uh those might be principles, those might be outcomes. This might be situations, it doesn't matter. But he wants to give you these things because that would lead to an improved state over where you are right 1:25:21 - 1:25:47 now. But he is constrained by uh several things that are your choices. One of those things are the traditions that you cling to because while you hold any tradition, it constrains what he can give to you, it limits him. So you have to let go of every tradition. And what's a tradition? The tradition is 1:25:46 - 1:26:12 um the assumption of terminality in a belief that might be overly complicated. But the idea is, it's a belief that you think is final. That's all a tradition is. And in the scriptures, the word tradition is usually preceded by the word false. We talk about false traditions. But in this definition that 1:26:12 - 1:26:33 I've just given you every tradition is either incomplete or incorrect. And uh a false tradition, I guess would be an incorrect tradition. But incomplete traditions are also harmful in the same way. They limit, they are limited and therefore they limit what God can give you anything that is limited, will 1:26:33 - 1:27:00 beget limitation. Traditions can only ever get you what those who hold those traditions have obtained. This is one way of measuring the limits of traditions if someone holds a certain belief, well, let's do it this way. If you consider the set of people that hold a certain belief and you analyze what 1:26:59 - 1:27:25 they have in their life and what they don't have in their life, you will probably stumble on to or be able to enumerate the limits of those traditions. So could go into great detail with cultures here or with uh certain segments of society. But uh you could probably think about that and get a lot of 0:00:00 - 0:00:24 I struggled to know what to title this presentation, but we'll go with this. God gives you what you want. I'm excited to cover these topics. Um I hope that they make sense. I hope it's not too broad of a collection of thoughts to share, but uh this is what it's time to teach. So let's get into it. Let's 0:00:24 - 0:00:48 start with motive. Um I'm gonna drop some truth bombs on you and I hope that you take notes or make mental notes at least of some of these ideas and come back to it and think about it um by applying these things to your life and thinking through examples and uh situations in your life. I think you would 0:00:48 - 0:01:13 get a lot more out of this. You get a lot more mileage. Um Most people in this world, they're motivated by feeling good. That's it. And you can connect all sorts of details to that general idea. But what's a much better motivation is to actually be good. Now, what good means? I, I go into some detail 0:01:12 - 0:01:33 in uh other things that I've taught in particular. I'm thinking of the book, uh The Glory of God. Is intelligence. I, I talked about good and evil a lot in that book, but good is God. God is good. He is the definition of what is good. And the more we get to know God, the better an idea, better an idea 0:01:33 - 0:01:51 we have of what good actually means. So if you're committed to being good, you're committed to positive change, you're committed to constant improvement because you have to acknowledge that you're much less than what God is. But also that because of who He is and what he is and what he's done, there 0:01:51 - 0:02:12 is a pathway for you to become more like him. And that's what it means to be good is to grow closer to how God is. So that's a progressive idea and that's not the point of this presentation, but I'm just trying to give a little bit of context here. Um Feeling good. On the other hand, it's not about reality 0:02:11 - 0:02:35 , it's about perception. So God is the absolute reality and everything that he understands about reality is what we should aim to understand. We should seek to acquire His uh his thoughts and ideas and his vision of what reality is. But instead of that, what most people do is they concern themselves 0:02:35 - 0:02:56 with how they perceive reality. And you can cons construct any sort of vain imagination that you would like about how things are. Um And that is an effective way to feel good, but feeling good is not the same as being good. Now, let's not say that you won't feel good by being good. In fact, you'll feel 0:02:56 - 0:03:27 the best that you can given reality. Um If you try to be good, if you actually become good, but feeling good is an illusion. And it's a very constrained situation where so much of what you identify with who you are and how life is, is is intricately tied to your perception of how reality works. When 0:03:27 - 0:03:53 life comes along, it slaps you around, it rips that out from you. And that's one of the most painful things you can experience. So it doesn't matter how good you feel, what matters is, how closely are your perceptions tied to how things really are and the closer they're tied to reality, the more robust 0:03:53 - 0:04:18 you will be and uh the more permanent your happiness will be because it won't be subject to change based on the revelation of things different differently than how you supposed them to be. I don't know if that makes sense, but uh we'll move on here. If you want to understand people, you have to understand 0:04:17 - 0:04:43 their motive and their motive in almost every case is to feel good. It's not to be good, it's to feel good. So most people, what they'll do and what they'll think and what they'll believe is what makes them feel good about who they are, who they are right now, not who they could be. Not who they should 0:04:42 - 0:05:07 be, but who they are. The natural man is an enemy to God. And our default state as human beings is to be something very much less than what we could be and very much less than what would give us the greatest degree of happiness. So this sets up a contradictory state. People will act in a way that makes 0:05:07 - 0:05:29 them feel good. But unfortunately, and by acting in that way, they guarantee that they won't actually be happy because they aren't actually good. And only by being actually good can you encounter the greatest amount of happiness? What happens is when, when someone has a belief system that is contradicted 0:05:28 - 0:05:53 by reality, they will bend over backwards to avoid every manifestation of their incorrectness. And so uh they will navigate their lives in such a way as to avoid any signal that what they have chosen to believe is wrong or incomplete, incorrect or incomplete and any people in their lives that might represent 0:05:52 - 0:06:13 that idea as well, they will avoid. And if they have to interact with them, they will hate them. This is just human nature. And so it's good to understand these things both to inform uh how you interact with others. And also to see these things in yourself when you're off track, which again is the default 0:06:13 - 0:00:00 position. So there are some very few, but there are some people whose motive is to be good. And for those um their their objective. They'd like to improve their understanding of what is good and they know that that will require them to change because they want to change to be more like what is good. 0:00:00 - 0:07:01 And, and so that's the dichotomy. First choice. You want to feel good about who you are. Second choice. You want to learn more about what it means to be good because you want to change to be more like that. You can sort everyone in this dichotomy and what you'll find is deep down inside. Almost no one 0:07:01 - 0:07:22 wants to be good. That's unfortunate. But that's just the way it is that you should ask yourself if you want to be good. It's one of my favorite passages from scripture. This is in John chapter three verse 19 says, and this is the condemnation that light has come into the world. And men loved darkness 0:07:22 - 0:07:41 rather than light because their deeds were evil for everyone that doeth evil, hate the light, neither cometh to the light lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God. This right here explains everything 0:07:40 - 0:08:02 that you see in the world. In terms of human behavior. When light is manifested, you can see how people react and most people like cockroaches, they'll turn from the light and run away as fast as they can. Some people will turn into the light and they'll run towards the light as fast as they can knowing 0:08:02 - 0:08:29 cuz cuz all men in women, all mankind knows that the light will manifest what you lack, it will tear apart your illusions and it will painfully expose the things that you don't yet understand the things about you that aren't good. That is not variable. Everyone knows that deep down inside. The question 0:08:28 - 0:08:49 is whether they admit it or not, the question is how do you react to that? And for most people, they'll run away from it as fast as they can. Some people will turn into it and run into it as fast as they can. But good luck finding people like that gonna transition into talking about humility, humility 0:08:48 - 0:09:11 is not minimizing the truth of what you have. Some people um Well, meaning people teach that humility means to minimize the truth of what you have. And they'll say, oh, you know, it doesn't matter if you've got a million bucks, you shouldn't talk about the fact that, that you have a million bucks. Well 0:09:11 - 0:09:31 , there are appropriate times to talk about that. Um Some people will say, oh, it doesn't matter if you hold the world record for heaviest squat, you shouldn't talk about that. Well, there are appropriate times to talk about that. I've talked about this before. Those are two silly examples, right? But 0:09:31 - 0:09:50 it goes with anything, you know, let's say there's a woman who's, who's one of the most beautiful women on earth. Why shouldn't she recognize that if it's truthful? This is a deep topic. I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I will mention this point again and I've brought it up before there 0:09:50 - 0:10:14 comes a time where if you don't recognize the truth of what you have, uh, and you happen to have a lot of something you will do far less than you would if you did recognize that truth. So, um, we were talking about money. Let's just focus on that for a second. If you are wealthy and you don't recognize 0:10:14 - 0:10:34 that you're wealthy, are you going to give as much money to others as you would? If you realize that you are wealthy, if you just feel like everybody else, then you're not going to feel any sense of responsibility to do more than everyone else does. And if it's a case that you have more than everyone 0:10:34 - 0:10:56 else or more than most, and you do just what most people do, then you will be held accountable for the good that you could have done but didn't. So it is very important to understand the truth of what you have. If Jesus acted like he was just a normal person, we'd all be in a lot of trouble and the same 0:10:55 - 0:11:19 is true to a lesser degree. For all of us, everyone has a gift given them from God. And if you don't accurately identify what those gifts are uh whether it's an actualized potential or just potential, waiting to be actualized. If you don't recognize what those gifts are, you're going to be. Um you're 0:11:19 - 0:11:40 going to have to contend with a, a great deal of sorrow after this life when uh a much greater share of reality is dispensed to you. And you realize, and you can't get away from the fact that you could have done so much more than, than you did. So, humility is not minimizing the truth of what you have 0:11:39 - 0:12:03 , what is humility. It's a correct realization of the magnitude of what you don't yet have. So, um you don't squish down what you have. What you do is you, you acquire a realistic understanding of what you don't have. And the funny thing about this false definition of humility of minimizing the truth 0:12:03 - 0:12:23 of what you have is if you think about what you will do as a result of it, of a, as a result of that perspective, if you're squishing down the truth of what you have and diminishing your recognition of that, your actions will be very different. So um I mentioned this a little with the money thing but 0:12:23 - 0:12:48 um let's flip this over and think about it from the perspective of, of true humility. It doesn't matter if you're the world's strongest man and you can squat 2000 pounds or something crazy. Um That doesn't minimize what you don't have yet. There's still this whole world of things that you can work on 0:12:47 - 0:13:14 and you can progress in. But if you just minimize the truth of what you have and you say like, oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I lift weights and, you know, whatever, um, it doesn't highlight that those things that you have to work on and that's sort of the, the point of all of this. So when you correctly recognize 0:13:13 - 0:13:36 the truth in terms of what you have to offer, you will do more than if you don't. And when you correctly identify what you don't yet have, you'll do more to work on those things. I hope that makes sense. So using these definitions, here's an example of a prideful attitude. Now, no one, I'm gonna give 0:13:36 - 0:13:54 you two quotes here. No one's actually gonna say these things of course. But uh you can sort of put your, your uh translator on and when people act in a certain way or say certain things, this is what they really mean deep down inside. This is the belief that they're operating under. So prideful attitude 0:13:54 - 0:14:17 says, I assume that I know everything there is to know. Therefore anything new will be treated as an inferior position to the one I hold until proven otherwise. So these kinds of people that are not humble, they're prideful. They assume that what they know is everything there is to know. And because 0:14:17 - 0:14:38 of that attitude, any time new truth is presented to them now that could be explicitly through another person who says, hey, I want to tell you about this thing or it could be through life because they're presented with some challenge that they don't have the tools to handle or some situation where if 0:14:38 - 0:14:52 they were open minded, they would actually learn something from it. So when they're presented with these opportunities for new truth, the way they will react is, hey, I already know everything there is to know. So you better hit me with something that proves that I'm wrong because otherwise, and just 0:14:52 - 0:15:12 why would I even listen to you again? This is the default position of everyone on this planet. I'm not saying everyone is like this. I'm saying that we should operate from the assumption that everyone is like this because you will be right far more often than you're wrong. A humble attitude. On the other 0:15:11 - 0:15:33 hand, is something like this, I assume everything I know is incomplete or incorrect. Therefore, anything new will be treated as an improvement until proven. Otherwise, these people are open minded, they're humble, they're open to new truth and like a child, they explore the world as a limitless opportunity 0:15:32 - 0:16:01 to, to learn more everything they experience every person they meet. Uh It's all presumed to be an opportunity to learn and improve until proven otherwise. So they test everything and uh they have an open mind and they, they just learn massive amounts compared to the prideful now, I, I've spoken about 0:16:00 - 0:16:21 the need to have a filter, uh the need to be able to discern and I'm not going to go into that here. But that is something that you should think about. Every strength has an equal and opposite weakness that comes with it. And that has to be overcome to enjoy the full value of the strength and uh open 0:16:21 - 0:16:45 mindedness is no different than any other positive attribute. Um The the negative side of that is being naive and getting suckered into things that hurt you or at least keep you busy and keep you occupied from acquiring better things. OK. So continuing on with this question of humility, uh the more you 0:16:45 - 0:17:11 think you have, the less you will get, this is a true axiom. So again, this is something you can ponder and think about if you're doing this in your life. Um Remember true humility is a correct understanding of what you don't have. So one way to measure this is to see how you react to stimulus. So for 0:17:11 - 0:17:40 example, um I think that should actually be stimuli plural. Um A lot of people will react to putative new truth by asking themselves again, implicitly, I seriously doubt anyone does this explicitly but cause they would know how foolish it is they say is this going to make me feel good about who I am 0:17:39 - 0:18:00 and what I believe because again, they assume that they already know everything they need to know when you're having a conversation, you'll see this in people, right? Someone will suggest a way to improve or a way that they perceived the actions of this person or whatever, maybe highlight some limitations 0:17:59 - 0:18:20 to their thinking. And that person, you can see the gears cranking and how they react. You can predict it based on how it's going to make them feel. So if they're hearing something they don't want to hear and the wicked take the truth to be hard, what they'll do is they'll spin up any sort of response 0:18:19 - 0:18:41 that minimizes the negative feelings they might have. So they might shift the blame onto someone or something else or they might try to get that person angry. So then it's not their fault anymore or they might go to this, um this good thing that they did to try to justify or balance out the bad thing 0:18:40 - 0:18:58 , you know, the, the possibilities are endless, but this is the root cause they're trying to get themselves to the point where they feel good without actually being good. So suppose what you're offering them is actually truth. It's an improvement over whatever they have. The last thing they're going 0:18:58 - 0:19:20 to do is say, oh yeah. Yeah. OK. And, and change because that would be an admission that they are not, in fact perfect. And the last thing these kinds of people are gonna do is admit that instead they're gonna try to shortcut this somehow into, I'm already good and I'm, I'm going to feel good about how 0:19:20 - 0:19:43 I am right now instead of changing into something that's better than I am right now. So, um, humble people. On the other hand, what they're asking themselves is, is this going to help me improve my understanding of what is good and what to believe in other words, they're totally ok with the idea that 0:19:43 - 0:20:01 what's being presented to them is better than what they have. They're totally ok with the idea of shifting their beliefs growing them to something better because their underlying assumption is that everything they know is incorrect or incomplete. So they're actively looking for something better. They're 0:20:01 - 0:20:23 saying like, look right now, these are the tools that I have in my toolbox and I'm not married to these tools. I anticipate trading up for something better in every case. So my question is, uh which of these two attitudes do you think will yield the most growth and happiness? I hope the answer is ridiculously 0:20:22 - 0:20:48 obvious. Any attitude that leads to greater truth is going to yield greater growth and happiness than any attitude that does not. But this is the lie, this is the lie that is sold to us that somehow there is another way that somehow we can be happy without living after the manner of happiness that somehow 0:20:47 - 0:21:13 we can cheat reality and get something for nothing. And that's just not true. So if you're going to recognize every opportunity that's presented to you, to improve. You have to adopt this attitude. You have to deeply believe that no matter what you presently have, there's something radically better um 0:21:12 - 0:21:35 that you're not aware of. So this is the tools in the toolbox trading up idea. But uh I want you to pay attention to the two words I used intentionally here deeply and radically. You can't just believe that maybe something out there might be a little better than what you have. You have to deeply believe 0:21:34 - 0:22:05 that no matter what you have, there's something radically better. And the reason you have to deeply believe and the reason it has to be radically better is that the path to obtain these things is not gonna be short, it's not gonna be easy and it's not going to be pleasant. OK, let's transition to desire 0:22:04 - 0:22:33 in this life. We get what we desire. There should be a scripture quote here from Alma chapter. Oh I can't remember. Sorry. Um But I, I need to make some points about this and maybe that scripture is on another slide. Um What we desire is distinct usually from what we wish for. So you can say that you 0:22:33 - 0:22:52 want anything, it doesn't mean that you actually want it. And that might seem cryptic, but we're sort of exposing limitations of, of colloquial English here. You could say I want a million dollars. But if someone says, OK, well, here's 30 years, you need to work like a maniac and save tons of money and 0:22:52 - 0:23:09 invest very wisely and take these risks and get lucky. And at the end of that, you'll have a million dollars. Um, how many people are gonna say? Yeah, I'll do that. Well, guess what? You have that opportunity. Are you doing it? Probably not. But if someone says, do you want a million dollars, you'd say 0:23:09 - 0:23:29 ? Oh, yeah, I want a million dollars. So what you desire, at least in the, the way I'm using these words right now, what you desire is what you really want. In other words, what you're willing to pay the price of to get, but you can wish for any old thing you want. It doesn't mean you're willing to do 0:23:29 - 0:23:56 what's required to get it. So uh for the most part, people are unwilling to do what it takes to get what they say they want. So when we say that God gives us what we desire, we do not mean that he's some genie and you rub the lamp and you say your wish and you get the thing, God is subject to his own 0:23:56 - 0:24:21 law. Um whether it's by choice or whether he's constrained by a reality that exists external to him is irrelevant for our purposes here. But the point is that the rules of the game are fixed and we don't get to change those. We can choose to interact with them to a greater or lesser degree, but we can't 0:24:21 - 0:24:50 break them. So, uh, if you want to fulfill your desires, there is only one way to do that and that is by playing the game according to the rules that were set before we got here. So that requires, uh, that you let go of what you wish you could do or have or what you wish you were and instead move towards 0:24:49 - 0:25:16 a greater share of reality, a more accurate estimate of reality and what you really want. Now, I don't care what you wish for in life or even what you really want in life. But we ought to be brutally honest about what it is that, that we wish for what it is that we really want because otherwise we are 0:25:15 - 0:25:42 guaranteed to end up in a different place than where we want to be and persisting an illusion or a delusion as it might be more accurately phrased uh of what it is that we want will always increase suffering beyond what's necessary. OK? It's picture time. So let's suppose that this star uh is your desire 0:25:41 - 0:26:06 . And again, if you're listening to this, this is probably a part that you want to see rather than listen to. Um So this arrow is what you think the path is and this person is you. Um So one point to make here is so often, especially Christians, they get tied up with this idea that our desires are evil 0:26:06 - 0:26:31 . And again, you know, that that is true if you define desire a certain way. Um But it's only true in terms of the means that we assume will lead to the end that we desire. And I'll get into this more. But I think that you will find, if you analyze what it is, you actually desire instead of focusing 0:26:30 - 0:26:57 on what you assume the path is to get there, the desire is good. It's the path that's not so uh a, a whole big chunk of the gospel is actually about revealing the reality of the, the means we assume are required to fulfill the desires that we have. And, and that disconnect in the path is really where 0:26:57 - 0:27:17 the problem lies. It's not so much in what you desire. I mean, can you imagine, um do you know anyone that you could ask them? Hey, do you want to be happy? And they'd say no, no, I don't, I don't really, I just not interested. So um maybe that's a simplistic example, but if you go down the list of what 0:27:17 - 0:27:44 people desire, um the desire itself is probably good. It's the path that's wrong. It's incomplete or it's incorrect. And here's the issue when we pray or when we live the decisions, we make the belief systems, we adopt the feelings, we feel it's all fixed on what we think this path is. And when we pray 0:27:44 - 0:28:11 , what do we do? Do we ask for the fulfillment of the desire. No, we ask for help. Uh, on the path, we ask that the path that we've imagined be fulfilled. And that's really where the problem lies. Why? Well, God knows what the actual path is and he knows that it's not this simple walk through the woods 0:28:11 - 0:28:31 . Actually, there are man eating sharks at the beginning. And then there are these mountains, we have to climb in the middle and then in the end, there's this giant gorilla that we have to defeat before we can actually get to this thing that we've, we desire this outcome that we desire and maybe the 0:28:31 - 0:28:53 obstacles are different in every case, but it's something like this in every case. And actually the better the desire, the harder, the more difficult the path is to get to it. Now, remember that there's an incredible difference between God's awareness and our awareness. And so what looks to be right 0:28:52 - 0:29:19 around the corner for us and a walk in the park. God knows that that's not the case. He knows that it's actually much more difficult to get to that outcome than we think. Now I'm going to give you a little secret here. So get ready. Our awareness uh is sort of perpetually limited. We hope that we'll 0:29:19 - 0:29:39 grow in awareness, but that doesn't mean that it's still not gonna be massively less than what God has. So the question is, how can you posture yourself to overcome all these obstacles without actually knowing ahead of time what they're going to be. Uh Jesus gives this parable in the New Testament of 0:29:39 - 0:30:00 a king going out to war. And he says, well, who's gonna do that without sitting down and counting the cost before you do it? The details of what the gospel costs are unknown to us because we have limited awareness. But in a general sense, we're told what it's going to cost, it's going to cost everything 0:29:59 - 0:30:22 , everything we have to give. But we can't really comprehend what that means until we make that level of a sacrifice. So in the meantime, how do you posture yourself to overcome these things? The absolute only way is to trust in God. You have to get to know His character and then you can lean on that 0:30:22 - 0:30:52 and use it as a bridge to overcome these things that you're not presently aware of and that lie outside of your, your comprehension and your understanding. And uh that is a key. So I hope that's a principle that you can um learn and apply in your life. So, let's see. Um that that's OK as far as desires 0:30:52 - 0:31:12 go and asking for things. Uh In Luke 11, we read, I say unto you ask and it shall be given you seek and ye shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you for every one that asth receives and he that seeketh find and to him that knock it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you, that 0:31:12 - 0:31:30 is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish? Give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your Children. How much more shall your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to them that 0:31:30 - 0:31:50 ask him. And the point here is that the problem is not the desire. The problem is the way you go about getting it. Ok? So if you ask him for an egg, he's not gonna give you a scorpion. If you ask him for a loaf of bread, he's not gonna give you a, a snake or a rock or you know you want fish, you want 0:31:50 - 0:32:08 bread. He's not gonna give you these other things. That's not where the difference lies, the difference lies in the path. So if you find yourself saying, yeah, but I'm asking God for an egg and he's giving me a scorpion. No, he's not. You're focused on the path, not the outcome, shift your focus to the 0:32:08 - 0:32:29 outcome. I'll go into some detail about that in a minute. But this is, this is how it turns out to be God, knowing all things from the beginning, knows that you're about to face this, this uh this shark. So before you get there, he's gonna detour you to learn how to swim better. And once you have like 0:32:29 - 0:32:49 Michael Phelps, su superpowers, you can out swim that shark and then you move on to the next thing and he knows that you're gonna have to climb this mountain. So he's gonna train you to be stronger and then you'll um maybe avoid that obstacle or you'll overcome it directly more often than not. And then 0:32:49 - 0:33:12 you'll be prepared to face this gorilla because you'll be much stronger, et cetera. So this path contains things that you don't see and it will require you to be strong in ways. You don't yet realize you're weak. It'll also tend to be way longer than you anticipate. But none of that means that the desire 0:33:11 - 0:33:44 is bad and none of that means that the desire isn't worth it. How much you detour, uh how much you're willing to detour and how long you're willing to take to obtain your desire will dictate uh how many of these desires and how good of desires God can fulfill. The limit is not from God. God wants you 0:33:44 - 0:34:09 to possess all things that He has. We're the ones that limit that not Him. And the way we limit that is we quit, we suffer from unbelief. We limit what we believe is possible and we limit what we're willing to go through. And all of that stems from a fundamental distrust of God if we really believed 0:34:08 - 0:34:37 Him and we really believed how he is. We would not limit him in any way and we wouldn't quit and we would just keep at it in this life. God will subject you to the greatest portion, the greatest quantity of what you require to fulfill all these desires. And he'll keep doing it until you quit. I believe 0:34:36 - 0:34:58 fundamentally that there has yet to be a person who's taken out of the game before they quit. Um Maybe there's some fine print to that that I'm not aware of yet, but he will dump this on to you in the greatest quantity you're willing to receive. This is partially what it means to have the windows of 0:34:58 - 0:35:25 heaven open. Um to, to pour this, this stuff out on you to the degree that it overflows and it doesn't more doesn't fit in your life. You're the one who determines what your capacity is and he's, he stands ready to uh send all of this to you. Ok. So why does he stop short? Well, it's because of our reaction 0:35:24 - 0:35:51 because in almost every case, what'll happen is we'll either say stop, I'm good or we'll be so oblivious to this process that we're sitting here on a hamster wheel getting hit by the same exact obstacle over and over and over and over again. Now, what this obstacle is, the specifics can vary widely from 0:35:51 - 0:36:09 person to person, situation to situation. But once you see this pattern, you can, you can get to know someone and see this so clearly. And you're like, oh my gosh, don't you realize that all this grief in your life? Like it comes from this, this one thing, this one principle you're lacking or this one 0:36:09 - 0:36:26 thing that you're afraid of or whatever, and all you have to do is trust God and overcome that one thing. And then you're on this path. That's, that's way better than where you are right now. And you'll be filled with sorrow if you gain this wisdom, because you'll look around and you'll see people live 0:36:26 - 0:36:44 their whole lives getting beat down by this one thing, or they live their whole lives, not really growing at all or getting any closer to their magnificent potential as a child of God because they don't trust God and they never learn, they never learn these things that He's trying to teach them. And 0:36:44 - 0:37:10 it's so obvious, it's so obvious. All right, let's hit some scriptures. So, um here's one that supports this idea, uh that God has a path and that the only way to achieve your desires is through walking that path in DNC 104 16. He says it must needs be done in my own way. And behold, this is the way 0:37:09 - 0:37:33 that I the Lord have decreed and this occurs in a specific situation, but that's irrelevant. The general principle holds in any situation God has his own way. And if you want the effect you have to follow the cause. In Isaiah 55 8, he reminds us that his thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are 0:37:32 - 0:37:52 not our ways. His ways are higher than our ways. And if we're wise, we'll seek to better understand his ways instead of obsessing about our own. In Proverbs three, we read trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding in all thy ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct 0:37:52 - 0:38:15 thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes, fear the Lord and depart from evil. And Jacob 410 were told uh seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand. Why? Because we know that He counsel in wisdom and injustice and in great mercy over all his works. If you really believe in God, you 0:38:15 - 0:38:35 should have absolutely no hesitation in seeking Him on all matters and not assuming that you have any idea what you're talking about. Now, I'm a 29 4 through five. This is the one I promised to show you before. Uh He says I ought not to harrow up in my desires. The firm decree of a just God for I know 0:38:35 - 0:38:56 that he granted unto men according to their desire, whether it be unto death or unto life. Yeah, I know that he allot unto men. Yeah. Decree unto them decrees which are an unalterable according to their wills, whether they be unto salvation. Or unto destruction. Finally, in Isaiah 55 2, it says, wherefore 0:38:56 - 0:39:16 do you spend money for that? Which is not bread and your labor for that? Which satisfy not hearken diligently unto me and eat y that which is good and let your soul delight itself in fatness. I want to go back to this picture to make a note here when we try to take the off ramp from God's ordained path 0:39:15 - 0:39:37 for us, we think that we're escaping, but really all we're doing is is releasing the pressure from the pressure cooker. And what we're going to encounter by doing that is far more suffering without the attached joy and happiness than we would encounter on the path. It's not only that this is the only 0:39:37 - 0:40:00 way, but it's also the best way God does not uh direct us in paths that aren't the most beneficial for us. And so when we deviate from that or we call it quits, we're always choosing something that's inferior every time we will be worse off. And that's the dirty secret that they don't tell you up front 0:39:59 - 0:40:25 . But I'm telling you so that, you know, if you deviate from God's will for you, it will always be a lesser path and it won't be fun. There's more I could say about that. I'll just say one thing briefly. So remember that Satan's tactic is to minimize negative consequences and overemphasize positive consequences 0:40:24 - 0:40:47 . And a lot of times when we take the off ramp from God's ordained path. It's because we don't realize yet. We're not aware of all of the negative consequences or the scope of them because we assume that what is unseen doesn't exist, but I promise you that you are going to get hit by things that you're 0:40:47 - 0:41:08 not expecting. And if you knew about them ahead of time, you would absolutely stay on the path and keep your trust in God and go to where he wants you to go. He sees the end from the beginning. We don't unless he's showed it to us. And so we need to be really careful about those calculations because 0:41:08 - 0:41:33 we have a lot of missing variables. All right. So uh I, I made the claim that our desires are typically good. It's the means that aren't. And um again, I'm, I'm using my own definitions of these words. I'm aware that uh the natural man's desires are evil continually, et cetera. But um when you separate 0:41:33 - 0:41:58 the means from the end, then you can um recognize that the properties change on those specific terms. OK. So let's talk about some examples. So if someone says, hey, I want a lot of money, do they actually want a lot of money or do they want to be able to buy the things that a lot of money buys or really 0:41:58 - 0:42:19 fundamentally do they just want security? So if security is the desire, money's just a means. And if you make your goal, the money, you're probably going to be on a path that's not ideal from God's perspective. But if you want security, then he does have a path to give you greater security than anything 0:42:19 - 0:42:45 else in life can give you. So if you look at the lives of the righteous, many times, we have many examples of these ending in gruesome, brutal ways. Stephen was stoned. Isaiah was sawed in half from the bottom up. Um And so on. Jesus died on the cross and yet these people had more security than anyone 0:42:45 - 0:43:07 does. So there's a path there, right? I'm probably not selling this. Well, if I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, it gets on in half. It's great. Anyway, let's just keep going. Um What about uh love? So people do a lot of things in the quote unquote name of love. But what are they really after if you sit down and 0:43:07 - 0:43:30 you define what they're actually desiring here? There's probably a uh a path that's very different than what they're pursuing to get there. And the desire itself is good. It's a good desire to, to want to love and be loved. But we mess up in our idea of what that path is because when you have the awareness 0:43:30 - 0:43:53 that God does, it's gonna look a lot different than it does from our perspective. And then what about happiness? I, I uh did this experiment once where I, I asked this group of younger people. Um I asked them what they wanted out of life and most of them said, well, I wanna be happy and I made them write 0:43:53 - 0:44:14 an essay about it. This was in one of my classes and uh it was really interesting cause I said, don't say I wanna be happy, define what you mean when you say happiness. And uh some people said they don't wanna have to worry about money. Other people said they want to spend time with family, um, and so 0:44:13 - 0:44:36 on. But everyone has a specific, uh, definition of what this means, but almost always what they use to define it is things and people, in other words, they define it with external things that they can't really control. At the end of the day, if your happiness is defined by external things, you will never 0:44:36 - 0:45:00 have unshakeable happiness because all of those things will always let you down. And uh there will always be cases where they don't apply. They don't either, they either they don't exist or there's a lapse or something happens or, you know, whatever it is. So it's really important to unders to separate 0:44:59 - 0:45:18 the, the ends and the means and the ends can be good. And we don't necessarily have to negotiate on those. But the means we have to absolutely trust God. I used to trust God on everything. But what I'm trying to say is those desires are probably from Him. They're probably programmed in you as part of 0:45:18 - 0:45:41 your being a child of God. And the problem isn't the end, it's the means. And you should turn that over to God and seek His awareness and he will show you a better way to obtain the end, not only a better way, the only way. So let's pivot here and uh we're gonna going to talk about um the same idea of 0:45:41 - 0:46:01 means and ends, but we're gonna apply it to you personally. So not so much about what you want out of life, but in terms of who you are, there's this phrase in scripture, uh seeing as you are seen, it pops up a couple times. Let's see. First John chapter three, there's a little bit about it. Um There's 0:46:01 - 0:46:21 some of this, I think second Corinthians, but here's a quote from DNC 7694. It says they who dwell in his presence in God's presence are the church of the first born. And they see as they are seen and know as they are known, having received his fullness and of his grace as you're reading through the 0:46:21 - 0:46:41 scriptures and you hit these little phrases, it pays dividends to dig in and ask God, what do you mean when you say this? Because He doesn't just throw words around. When you see something, it means something and you should figure out why he uses the words he uses. So in this case, this phrase see as 0:46:41 - 0:47:06 they are seen it's pregnant with meaning and value. So, a starting point here is to realize if you believe that God has uh uh an exceedingly great awareness compared to you, you should also admit that that awareness does not only apply to external things but also internally to who you really are deep 0:47:06 - 0:47:27 down inside. And um the fact is that you do not see yourself as God sees you. Does that make sense? So if you're looking at the world with really messed up vision and you need like coke bottle glasses, um and, and you're taking off your glasses and you're looking around and then you put your glasses 0:47:26 - 0:47:51 on, things are gonna look very, very different. And essentially we have very messed up vision and God has perfect vision. And so he sees us very differently than we see ourselves. He sees, sees things as they really are. And this isn't just um a character judgment, it's a context, judgment. So we tend 0:47:51 - 0:48:18 to see ourselves in a vacuum and God sees us in context of everything else in reality. So I'll give you an example of this. It can go both ways, right? So David was the youngest child in a family and he was mostly disregarded in terms of value. But when uh God's prophet came to David's parents to find 0:48:17 - 0:48:36 him and anoint him as king and the parents presented all the kids from young or all the sons from, from oldest to youngest uh the prophet said, uh, none of these are the guy. Do you have another son? And the parents are like, oh, yeah, you know, there's David, he's out with the sheep and the guy says 0:48:35 - 0:48:57 , well, come bring him here because, uh, I've got some, some work to do. God judged David's heart. He didn't judge the outside. And what that means is not just where David was at the moment, but his, the seed of his character within him, his divine potential was greater than his brother's even though 0:48:56 - 0:49:15 it hadn't manifested yet. And this, if you're a book writer or a novel writer, I should say, or a movie maker, this is a theme that can get played out over and over again. We love movies about this and books about this, about this hero that doesn't know that he's a hero yet or heroine that doesn't know 0:49:15 - 0:49:42 she's a heroine yet. And um this is a real thing so God can see in you a potential that you do not see. Now. We, this is a sidetrack, but we misinterpret stories in the scriptures uh very frequently in terms of uh people like Gideon who were chosen by God and maybe even David. But we have this false 0:49:41 - 0:50:03 paradigm where God chooses some arbitrary person. And then he, he waves his magic wand over this person and then this person turns into a great person that is not the way it works. So there's nothing magic about the gospel and the principles that apply in this case are that when God calls someone to 0:50:03 - 0:50:32 do something that is the next logical step of their progression. As we read, for example, in Alma 13, um just because our awareness of someone's progression is um is jagged, does it mean that it's not completely continuous uh if we were to be aware of all things. So we see someone like Gideon and it 0:50:32 - 0:50:56 seems like out of nowhere, God calls him to come and defeat the Midianites and be this great hero for Israel. Uh that didn't come out of nowhere in God's awareness of all things. Gideon was, was completely prepared for that next step. It was the next logical progression from where he was. But to those 0:50:56 - 0:51:14 around him, he was just Gideon. You know, there's nothing special about him, same thing with David. And it's only after they do what they're meant to do that, you can look back and say, oh yeah. Uh I can see how this person was actually way different than everyone thought. We just didn't have um the 0:51:14 - 0:51:36 context to see those attributes manifested yet. If you look at what David did or what Abraham did or any of these people. Uh Jesus is obviously the prime example, his siblings and the people in his hometown uh rejected him at least initially in the case of his siblings. Um because they said, hey, we 0:51:36 - 0:51:58 know this guy and there's nothing special about him and it wasn't until he had the context to manifest the differences within him that he was seen as anything different. Anyway, that's a sidetrack. Um, it can go the other way as well where, and this unfortunately is much, much more likely you are probably 0:51:58 - 0:52:20 way more wicked than, you know, but if you trust God and you subject yourself to him and you pay attention to everything he's showing you in, in your life and everything he's causing you to experience in your life. He will manifest to you how you really are. And so for some of us, we'll realize that 0:52:20 - 0:52:47 we are um endowed with certain qualities that we were not aware of, that are positive, but much more often. He'll reveal to us things that aren't so hot and these are opportunities for us to grow. No um revelation 317 to 19. It says because thou sayest, this is the Lord rebuking a group of people, but 0:52:47 - 0:53:06 it's actually very applicable in a general sense. He says, because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich and 0:53:06 - 0:53:26 white raiment that thou mayest be clothed and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear and anoint thine eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten be zealous therefore, and repent. Now, I hope this is from Revelation three is the Lord speaking. I hope you remember 0:53:25 - 0:53:44 from John chapter three, these are parallel passages. What happens when the light shines, most of us run away into the cracks where it's still dark like cockroaches. If you turn to God with all of your heart might mind and strength, he's gonna shine that light right into the deepest corners of your heart 0:53:44 - 0:54:05 . And you're gonna find out that while you might think that you're rich and have need of nothing, he's gonna show you that you're wretched, you're miserable. That's important, right? You might think you're happy because you know, you go backpacking in Europe and have all this fun doing this or that you 0:54:04 - 0:54:25 have this fancy house or this nice car or this trophy spouse or these kids that are really good at soccer or whatever, but he's going to tear all of that from you or show you that in the end, none of it matters and that you're actually miserable with respect to reality. And the, and the reason he's doing 0:54:25 - 0:54:54 this, of course, isn't to arbitrarily punish you or make you suffer more than is helpful. It's to show you that in reality, this is actually how it is. Uh, I, I don't wanna deviate to say this, but I'm supposed to. So, um, the fact is that we look at uh we look at these gut wrenching events when we're 0:54:54 - 0:55:17 super sad or when we're suffering a whole ton or this really unexpected thing happens, we see these as uh glitches in the matrix. We see these as random unfortunate events that there's nothing you can do to prepare for and they just kind of happen and it's not life, it's just this thing that happens 0:55:16 - 0:55:40 sometimes in life that is completely wrong. So God has all things before him continually. And one way to think about this, it's very hard to describe these ideas. But one way to think about this is that how you feel when this super unfortunate rare thing happens to you or someone you love, imagine a 0:55:40 - 0:56:01 situation where it's like that all the time. Now, the reason those things are so hard to deal with is because your belief system is inadequate to support that. And I don't mean belief system in the narrow sense of like a a prescribed religion or something. I mean, how you actually interact with life 0:56:00 - 0:56:25 if you had stronger principles. So when these things happen to you, it zaps all of your happiness and you just wanna die, you know, but it, it might be impossible to imagine. But try to imagine a situation where you have principles that are strong enough that you can have the maximum level of happiness 0:56:25 - 0:56:49 possible to have in this life while also going through things like that. That might sound absolutely nuts. But it shouldn't. It's actually the exact objective of the gospel of Jesus Christ for that to happen because God has every negative thing before him continually and yet he's happier than any of 0:56:49 - 0:57:09 us are. He has more joy. And that's something that, that's the mystery of Godliness and that's something that you have to figure out. And the point of the gospel is to get you there anyway. That's all from that word miserable in verse 17 here and poor and blind and naked. So God's not saying in this 0:57:09 - 0:57:26 verse, like I'm gonna take all these things away from you and we'll see how much you suffer. He's saying it's actually already like this in your life. You just don't realize it yet. And by my grace and mercy, I'm insulating you from all these things that are right there, at least in terms of your awareness 0:57:25 - 0:57:47 so that you can have a space to prepare for that so that you don't have to suffer as much as you would. If I just sort of broke open the floodgates, it would be overwhelming to you. So he says, I counsel thee to buy of me gold, tried in the fire that you may be rich, white Raymond, et cetera. He's saying 0:57:47 - 0:58:07 , come to me, I have these higher principles and when I give them to you, you'll see, um you'll, you'll have a greater awareness, you'll see how all this works and you'll be able to overcome all of this and uh experience great joy in spite of it all. But the path is for him to correct us, for him to 0:58:07 - 0:00:00 give us things that we don't have to replace the things that we think we have with better things and to give us additional things over what we have. And I'm not talking about objects. I'm talking about principles, ways of thinking, um skill sets, strength. OK. So, um when it comes to your character, 0:00:00 - 0:58:49 one way to think about it is with a star chart and you may never have seen one of these things before. But basically, uh each one of these lines, it starts from, from the center and the length of the line is, is the degree of whatever it is that we're measuring and uh the angles of the line don't really 0:58:49 - 0:59:09 matter. In this case, it's just these are different properties. So your character is multidimensional, but here I've drawn uh seven lines to kind of just give it a, give an idea of what this might be. And so some of these lines are really long and those are things that you're really good at. And some 0:59:08 - 0:59:24 of these lines are really short and these are qualities in which you're deficient. And because we're talking about character, um all these things are positive, but you could also think about this in terms of negative attributes that you're trying to minimize. But in this case, we're talking about positive 0:59:23 - 0:59:44 attributes that you're trying to maximize. So this graph right here, let's suppose that this is how you think you are. Um uh excuse me, how you actually are now, these chalky lines are how you think you are. So remember I said that the length of the line is the degree to which you've developed this attribute 0:59:43 - 1:00:03 . So in this case, uh let's look at this line that goes from the center straight down. So how you actually are short. So it means you're, you're kind of deficient in this quality. But what you think is that you actually excel in this quality and you can go around this and look at each spoke and on uh 1:00:03 - 1:00:26 two of them, it's pretty close what, what you think versus what actually is. And in some cases, uh you think that you're much more advanced in the quality than you actually are and in some cases you think that you're uh much less developed in the quality than you actually are. So, what are the consequences 1:00:25 - 1:00:46 of this? So if you're spot on, that's great, right? But what if you think that you're much more developed in a certain area than you actually are, what's going to happen? Well, for one, you're going to resist opportunities to grow in that area because you're gonna think that you're already there. That's 1:00:46 - 1:01:10 bad. Two, you're probably gonna push what you think onto other people in that category. And um that's not good either because what you think is kind of an illusion and you're wrong about it also. Um What? Well, let's change gears. What about if you, um, don't yet realize that you're really advanced in 1:01:10 - 1:01:29 some quality? Well, uh, there are a few consequences to that one is you're not going to do great things in that category two is you're going to undervalue yourself in a general sense because uh you're not going to give yourself credit where credits do. And maybe that's like the only thing you're good 1:01:29 - 1:01:51 at and you don't realize it and maybe it's a really big deal, but uh you're never going to get anywhere with that. Um But I, I think the number one deficit there in, in the case where your actual quality exceeds what you think it is is that you're not gonna go out and bless other people with this gift 1:01:51 - 1:02:10 that you have. Now, uh the extreme case of this is actually the line to the right, the horizontal line to the right where you have this huge gift and you have no clue that you have it at all. And that's a really unfortunate case and I see this frequently. So all of these things happen, you see it every 1:02:10 - 1:02:30 day if your eyes are open to it. Now, there's another line we could plot and I'm sorry, this is getting kind of crowded and that is your potential and this has consequences as well. So in some cases, you have an enormous potential and it's, it's not realized at all yet. Um And depending on what you perceive 1:02:29 - 1:02:49 to be your actual qualities and depending on what your actual qualities are in reality, um, this will have different consequences, right? So, um, let's look at the line that starts at the origin and goes straight down. So again, to, to remind you what the legend is, what each of these lines mean. The 1:02:49 - 1:03:07 shortest one there is where you really are. The chalky line is where you think you are. So that's a problem. And then the green lines, what your potential is. So in this case, you think you're way ahead of where you actually are, but your potential is even more than that. And in this specific case, you 1:03:07 - 1:03:28 are never gonna get there. Not until you realize where you actually are. That's the first step. So uh going back to that revelation three passage, who the people that, that God loves He, he corrects. And um the reason He does this is because He's trying to get you to achieve your potential because the 1:03:28 - 1:03:51 desires you have inside of you in many cases will only be fulfilled through God teaching you the things that you lack to achieve your potential. In other words, you can't reach up and grab that star until you become who you could become. So how do you see more clearly what you have? How can you get a 1:03:51 - 1:04:13 more accurate estimation of who you really are right now because that is key to you progressing and living the life that is ordained for you. Well, first you shouldn't presume we assume so much about who we are. We shouldn't do that. We should let r reality reveal it to us. And it does, as you acquire 1:04:13 - 1:04:30 more and more wisdom, you also acquire a lot of sorrow because you look around and see these people who are struggling with things that just should be so abundantly obvious to them. But they don't trust God and they're overconfident in their abilities and they presume way too much. The other thing is 1:04:30 - 1:04:52 we shouldn't imagine. Um There's this phrase in the scriptures, vain imaginations and uh this presentation is already too long. So I'll leave it at that. But it's possible to imagine what we're like. We shouldn't assume we shouldn't imagine. We should let reality reveal it to us and it will. So, um let's 1:04:52 - 1:05:09 go back to money because this is simple. Everyone understands it, but it certainly isn't what's most important in life. But um it's easy to measure and it's easy to think about. So, if you're always struggling with money, maybe you should think about why that is. And there's probably a principle here 1:05:09 - 1:05:26 that you're lacking. And until you address it, it's gonna be like that shark on the hamster wheel. Probably not gonna hear that analogy anywhere else anyway. Every time you go around the wheel, you're gonna get bit by this shark. So why don't you deal with that shark? What is the shark? How, how do you 1:05:26 - 1:05:52 overcome that? And until you do that and you think about your life in a, an intentional way and address those deficits, they're going to keep getting you every single time. Let reality reveal it to you. Um I'm anonyms this story. Ok. So suppose there's a person who finds that everyone they care about 1:05:51 - 1:06:15 seriously um ends up doing this completely unexpected thing and defending them in some major way. Um If that's the case with every single person you get close to in life, there's a, there's a common denominator here and it's you. So that's an example of reality showing you something you lack, which it 1:06:15 - 1:06:33 turns out that there's some massively bad thing in your character where you keep doing this to yourself and sabotaging these relationships and you should uncover what the real problem is. Maybe the real problem is that you have these serious flaws in your character and any time you get close enough to 1:06:33 - 1:06:56 somebody for them to sh to realize this and point it out to you, you immediately run away from them because you're like a cockroach and you run into the dark when the lights come on. It's uh John chapter three again, know what your limits are. Reality, will reveal this to you. Ok. Let's think about this 1:06:56 - 1:07:17 in a strictly spiritual sense. But again, all of these principles are as temporal as they are spiritual. So, suppose you're the kind of person goes around saying, oh, I've received the gift of tongues. Oh, I've been ordained to the priesthood. Oh, I've had this spiritual experience. I've been baptized 1:07:16 - 1:07:44 . I've been baptized with fire, doesn't matter what the thing is. But you have these credentials and you tout out these credentials every time a person or life shows you what your limitations are you say? Yeah, but I'm special because as long as you do that, you're going to cut yourself off from the 1:07:44 - 1:08:03 growth that God has ordained for you to experience. Going back to that desire graph you're saying stop or you're getting on that hamster wheel and you're gonna get hit by the same thing that you lack over and over and over again. Another example is people say, well, I've been saved. So what do you really 1:08:02 - 1:08:21 have? Everything that God wants to give you? Just because you're quote unquote saved, who cares? Keep going? What do you lack? It's not about what you think you have. It's about what you lack. This is where we started with the definition of humility. You remember it's an accurate understanding of what 1:08:21 - 1:08:46 you don't have. So here are some tools that can help you expose this. Is there anything that you read about in the scriptures that you have not yet experienced? If so those are things that you lack is there anything in the scriptures that you can't explain? So if the answer is no, then I would like to 1:08:46 - 1:09:09 meet you because you have a lot to teach me. Um Chances are there's a very long list of things in the scriptures that either don't make sense to you or if you're really clever, you can hide that and say no, it makes sense. But then the test is uh what would you do in whatever situation in the future 1:09:08 - 1:09:34 ? Because if you can't perfectly predict the future, you don't yet know God. That was probably a bombshell, but it's true. Think about it. If you really want to grow the way you're going to do that is to increase your trust in God, you have to honestly believe and live according to the belief that his 1:09:34 - 1:09:58 ways are higher than your ways that his ability to see reality exceeds yours. So one way to peel back the edges here and progress is to use the unknowns to learn more. What do I mean by that? Uh And again, this is a long presentation. If you wanna pause, come back to it, re listens to parts. That's a 1:09:58 - 1:10:19 really good idea. I seriously doubt you're gonna extract everything you can from going through this once. Um So what do I mean by using the known unknowns to learn more? So you've got different kinds of unknowns. There are unknown, unknowns and those forget about it. You've got no clue. But there are 1:10:18 - 1:10:35 also these known unknowns. What's a known unknown. It's something you know that you lack. So there are, there's a huge sea of things that you lack that you have no clue about. But we're not talking about those. You can't get traction there. It's the ones where you have a little handle to, to grab these 1:10:35 - 1:10:55 , these unknowns because you know that you lack them. So recognize situations where you lack understanding uh are there consequences that you can't explain. So can you look at your life and explain why things are the way they are? If there are things that you can't explain, that's an opportunity to learn 1:10:54 - 1:11:14 . Uh going back to the scriptures. Can you explain why God did everything that he did when he did and why he did it? If you can't, then those are opportunities to learn and again, don't fool yourself into thinking. Yeah. Yeah. No, I get this, test yourself, test the accuracy of your model by predicting 1:11:14 - 0:00:00 the future and then see if it comes to pass. If you're wrong, then that's an opportunity to learn because God wouldn't be wrong in his prediction of the future. Uh One note of caution, I talk sometimes about trivia. So if you think about like the the exam questions you get at religious institutions, 0:00:00 - 1:11:59 they're absolutely ridiculous things that no one should care about ever. It's like uh how many times was Paul shipwrecked? This is trivia, right? Or Oh, what do you know about this one tenant of faith? Who cares? Right? Everything we search for in the gospel should be directly connected to how we think 1:11:59 - 1:12:20 , how we feel, how we act, how we will help others. If it's not connected to that, it doesn't matter. Now, the great thing about that is if you apply that filter, it turns out that everything in the scriptures is relevant in some way, but this really changes. It doesn't so much change what's there, it 1:12:20 - 1:12:41 changes, how we interact with what's there. And I know so many people, probably 50% of the emails I get or, hey, what do you know about this thing or have you ever thought about this or? Um and you know, if you've sent me one of those emails, I'm not saying that just because you use those phrases, you're 1:12:41 - 1:13:02 , you're on my naughty list about this stuff. What I'm saying is the space of things that people think about is cluttered with stuff that doesn't freaking matter. OK? Focus on what you're doing, what you're not doing, how you think about things, how you react to things in respect to your relationship 1:13:02 - 1:13:23 to God. If that's not getting better and you're not coming to know Him more than you do. You're absolutely wasting your time in what you're choosing to spend it on, keep the rubber on the road and don't lie to yourself. OK? As an example of this, let's say we're reading through the scriptures and we 1:13:23 - 1:13:48 get to that part where the 70 return and, and uh one of jesus' disciples says, hey, this guy has this demon and I can't cast it out. So here's the question for one, didn't Jesus tell that guy that he had authority to cast out demons? So why couldn't he? And then you read Jesus gives him an answer and 1:13:48 - 1:14:12 he says that kind cometh not out except by prayer and fasting. So then interestingly, Jesus proceeds to cast out that demon without praying and without fasting. So my question to you is what the heck is going on here. There's an answer to this question, but you should go deeper, you should learn details 1:14:11 - 1:14:30 . You should really ask yourself uh what's going on here. And then good analogy for this is you can think, you know a topic and then when you try to teach it, you realize there are all these things that you didn't know half of that comes from the questions of your students and they hit you with something 1:14:29 - 1:14:47 that exposes a limitation to your understanding. That's what life will do to you as well. You don't actually have to teach to have this experience. You just have to live life intentionally with open eyes and God will show you through reality the limits of your understanding. But if you're just kind of 1:14:47 - 1:15:11 rolling through life with your eyes closed, bumping into things and just assuming that's the way it is, you'll never get there. All right. So in Job chapter 38 we get this uh monologue from the Lord and it is fantastic. Um And a lot of the language is kind of archaic, but the point is he's going through 1:15:10 - 1:15:30 all these things that he knows about and he's saying it in and he's giving, uh he's relating these things in terms that job can understand and that might be external to what we can understand in some ways. But um in other ways, it's clear and, and in general, the takeaway should be clear, which is that 1:15:30 - 1:15:55 God knows so much more than we know. You could read this in job 38 I think for time, I'm gonna skip it. But uh it's very clear as you read through this that we just have absolutely no clue what's going on. We are fools before God in DNC 52. There's an interesting passage that um reminds us how critical 1:15:54 - 1:16:17 it is for us to, to have a contrite spirit or an assumption that God knows so much more than we do and, and not just lip service, but to actually deep down believe this. And it says, uh he says, again, I will give unto you a pattern in all things that you may not be deceived. So what's the pattern? He 1:16:17 - 1:16:36 explains it by giving examples. He says, uh wherefore he that pray whose spirit is contrite? The same is accepted of me. If he obey mine ordinances, he that speaketh whose spirit is contrite, whose language is meek and edifies the same is of God. If He obey mine ordinances, and again, He that tremble 1:16:36 - 1:16:55 under my power shall be made strong and shall bring forth fruits, praise and wisdom according to the revelations and the truths which I have given you. And again, he that is overcome and bringeth not forth fruits. Even according to this pattern is not of me wherefore by this pattern, ye shall know the 1:16:55 - 1:17:20 spirits in all cases under the whole heavens. There's a lot of this passage and I'm just going briefly focus on some things. But the idea here is that this pattern is uh humility. It's contrition before God, it's trembling under his power and having all actions derive from that relationship with God 1:17:20 - 1:17:45 . It's very important to recognize that we are at an enormous deficit when it comes to comparing our understanding with God. We're very far behind. When you have this attitude, you will act differently. This passage is from uh Nehemiah nine and he's offering a prayer to God and he's incredibly honest 1:17:45 - 1:18:08 about things as they really are. And you should read this. Um I'll skip over it for now for time, but you can see the depth of humility in this passage. And he accurately recounts all the limitations of his people. And this is interesting cause this prayer he's asking for something, but he starts by 1:18:08 - 1:18:30 listing out all the reasons why they're not worthy of getting what they want and, um, what they're about to ask for. So he recognizes that this path is very important and it has to come from God. And on this path, there are things that we might not want to face. But the only way to get to the end of 1:18:29 - 1:18:56 the path is to turn right into the darkness and to ask God to, to shed light on all the things that we don't really want to see. You have to be extremely sincere and earnest. Um For example, if you feel really uncomfortable with compliments, one reason that might be is that you might be lying to yourself 1:18:55 - 1:19:16 about who you really are and you might have an inflated ego. So when people echo your representation of yourself, it makes you feel super uncomfortable because you're capable of lying to yourself. But you don't feel so good when other people lie to you because you haven't trained yourself to be deceitful 1:19:16 - 1:19:43 in that respect yet. Um Another way is maybe you deflate your ego. Um So you, you have a character trait in which you're more advanced than your self image suggests. And in that case, you're going to be overwhelmed by despair because God has given you these tools to attack life and you've buried them 1:19:43 - 1:20:10 . And now you're exposed to these challenges that you have the power to overcome, but you choose not to the truth is that you really are nothing. So that is true. But in God, you can be everything. So if you choose to overstate who you really are, you'll be unprepared to contend with reality. If you 1:20:10 - 1:20:29 choose to understate who you really are, you will also be unprepared to contend with reality. The key to being able to contend with reality is to seek God with all your heart might mind and strength to realize that He will give you everything you need to contend with reality with God. All things are 1:20:29 - 1:20:55 possible. And as you turn to God, he will expose the areas in which you lack. And He will also give you all the tools to make those weaknesses, strengths. These are truths. His strength is made perfect in weakness. That's a phrase from Paul and the way it's made perfect in weakness is when we're honest 1:20:54 - 1:21:20 about those weaknesses, that reality will reveal to us, we will turn to God and He will teach us the principles we lack so that in our knowledge can uh empower us to overcome those weaknesses and they'll actually be made strengths. So as we're conducting an honest inventory of where we stand, we should 1:21:20 - 1:21:43 think about first and foremost. And what do we still sin if we still sin in anything? We're still in an elementary phase of the gospel. And it's time to really believe God and really repent. And that is possible. It's also required as we progress from that elementary state. Here are some advanced questions 1:21:42 - 1:22:08 we can ask, which are equally important, but they're, they rely on that foundation. What do you fear anything you fear is an opportunity for God to teach you because uh there is no fear in faith. Perfect love, overcome all fear. That's the love that God has for us. If you truly believe that God loves 1:22:08 - 1:22:28 you, then you can't really fear anything because you trust that everything that you will face as you're perfectly obedient to Him is for your good. And it's given to you from a God with perfect knowledge and with all power. And so it's impossible to fear anything. And maybe that sounds like a ridiculous 1:22:28 - 1:22:51 statement, but I promise you that it is possible, it is possible to live without fear of anything. Next question. What wouldn't God ask you to do if you have an answer to this question? Then that is an area that you can learn to trust God more. What can't you do? This is a very interesting one. Uh if 1:22:51 - 1:23:08 you read through the scriptures and you see all these things and you say, well, I can't do that. I've never done this. I don't believe that I could do that. We have to uh come to the point where we sincerely possess the attitude that Nephi had. And he said, if God commanded me to do all things I could 1:23:08 - 1:23:29 do them, you have to honestly believe that. What can't you explain if there's anything in the scriptures? That doesn't make total sense to you? That's an area that you can seek God and learn what overwhelms you. This isn't exactly the same as fear. But uh think about God for a second and think about 1:23:28 - 1:23:51 his awareness. So you might get overwhelmed when life causes you to spend a few more plates than you're used to in the air at the same time. But think about how many plates God is spinning because he's got all of his own plates, which I would suspect is more plates than any individual has. And he's perfectly 1:23:50 - 1:24:13 aware of everyone else's plates, which in effect, he is also spinning. Next question, what hurt you? If anything has the potential to hurt you beyond sorrowing for other people's sins, then those are areas that you can grow in the sorrowing for other people that never goes away. It just keeps growing 1:24:12 - 1:24:32 . Next question. What are you doing that detracts from your ultimate potential desires and goals. It's a really good question to meditate on and take copious notes because God will teach you anything that detracts from your potential desires and goals is something that you should minimize in your life 1:24:32 - 1:25:00 and maybe eradicate. And the flip side of that question, the inverse of it. What are you not doing to achieve your ultimate potential desires and goals? And if you can do that, then you should, I went over that and that. So every tradition constrains the options. God has to give you something better 1:25:00 - 1:25:21 than what you have. Think about that. He's got a whole bucket of things he wants to give you. And uh those might be principles, those might be outcomes. This might be situations, it doesn't matter. But he wants to give you these things because that would lead to an improved state over where you are right 1:25:21 - 1:25:47 now. But he is constrained by uh several things that are your choices. One of those things are the traditions that you cling to because while you hold any tradition, it constrains what he can give to you, it limits him. So you have to let go of every tradition. And what's a tradition? The tradition is 1:25:46 - 1:26:12 um the assumption of terminality in a belief that might be overly complicated. But the idea is, it's a belief that you think is final. That's all a tradition is. And in the scriptures, the word tradition is usually preceded by the word false. We talk about false traditions. But in this definition that 1:26:12 - 1:26:33 I've just given you every tradition is either incomplete or incorrect. And uh a false tradition, I guess would be an incorrect tradition. But incomplete traditions are also harmful in the same way. They limit, they are limited and therefore they limit what God can give you anything that is limited, will 1:26:33 - 1:27:00 beget limitation. Traditions can only ever get you what those who hold those traditions have obtained. This is one way of measuring the limits of traditions if someone holds a certain belief, well, let's do it this way. If you consider the set of people that hold a certain belief and you analyze what 1:26:59 - 1:27:25 they have in their life and what they don't have in their life, you will probably stumble on to or be able to enumerate the limits of those traditions. So could go into great detail with cultures here or with uh certain segments of society. But uh you could probably think about that and get a lot of 1:27:25 - 1:27:46 mileage out of this thought. So I invite you to explore that. Well, this is the last slide I've got for this set of ideas. I hope this is beneficial and I encourage you to revisit parts of this. Uh This is pretty long, but I think you'll get a lot of mileage out of exploring these things further.