A Powerful Experience

Smiling faces in Florida!

I feel like this week I should mention something about the importance of preparation. When we want a spiritually uplifting experience there is a price for it. We have to show faith and sincerity to the Lord by making preparation to commune with Him and receive the message that He has to tell us. 

I've learned over the course of my mission that if we prepare for meetings, events, temple attendance, or even our daily personal prayers, then we will feel a power and a closeness to the Lord that we may not normally experience without that kind of preparation. 

As an example, how can we prepare to have a powerful experience at the temple? Here's a list of things that I've found helpful: pray and ask God to help you prepare, study general conference talks about the temple or the sealing power or personal revelation, study Ensign articles about those same subjects, look for examples in the scriptures of when people prepared for spiritual events, read the Kirtland temple dedicatory prayer in D&C 109, pray about what you could fast for while attending the temple, fast for those things, come away from the temple with action items of what you will do better. Those are only a few of the ways we can prepare.

I promise that if we approach our church meetings and other sacred events with this kind of an attitude then we will see a drastic change in our closeness to the Spirit.