Nourished by the Good Word of God

My thoughts on Brother Judd's talk "Nourished by the Good Word of God"

Like Brother Judd, we have a similar situation with our dog. He loves cheese and will do anything for cheese. He knows what the word “cheese” means and so if you just say it he comes running. The kids know this and when they want him they will sometimes say, “cheese” but won’t give him any. Just last night we got after our 16 year old for doing just this. But I think that is where the similarities end.

“What can we as teachers and leaders in the Church do to provide increased doctrinal and spiritual nourishment for those we serve?”

Elder Holland says, “They come seeking a spiritual experience. They want peace. They want their faith fortified and their hope renewed. They want, in short, to be nourished by the good word of God, to be strengthened by the powers of heaven.”

I have to ask myself—Is this one of the reasons I go to church? I work in primary behind the piano—I’m a teacher, not a student, and I’m using the word teacher loosely here.

Holland continues, “those of us who are called upon to speak or teach or lead have an obligation to help proved that, as best we possibly can.”

OH, that’s what I’m supposed to do.

“…it was possible to feed a horse without nourishing him.”

As parents we know this to be true. I can feed my kids a bunch of junk, but I didn’t provide substance for them to grow. We see this in poorly run YM nights. When basketball is the only activity that they do. Many of us just say, “well at least my son stepped into the church today.” Or “At least he got his muscles moving.” I say, “Basketball is great and wonderful, but what about working on Duty to God or Scouting requirements. There is so many other worthwhile activities that lend themselves to teaching and nourishing the body and soul.”

“As a leader I have learned that leadership meetings are more meaningful if our highest priority is an integrated effort to build faith in Christ and strengthen families and not simple a correlated calendar.”

I will disagree with Brother Judd here for just a moment (just hang on). I have sat in many Ward Council meetings that are supposed to last 60 minutes. I have sat in them for many, many years as RS president, YM president, ward music chairman, activities chairman and I’m sure there are few more that I can’t think of right now. There were very efficiently run meetings and there were poorly run meetings. I had one bishop who took Brother Judd’s words literally and all we did was talk about our missionary opportunities during the week. Come the following weeks we had discord over who was to use the gym and worst of all a ward activity called off on Friday because we didn’t look at the calendar and see the conflicts. Or the Thursday before a ward activity the counselor over activities would find fault with the activity and it would have to be changed within 24 hours (yes, that happened to me more times than I want to count). These activities are great opportunities for us to do great missionary work, not just talk about it. Had we spent just a little bit of the meeting correlating activities we could have had those missionary opportunities and then bear testimony in them in sacrament meeting, RS, Priesthood or other meetings. (But I’m not bitter.)

But I will agree with Brother Judd that in these meetings there needs to be opportunity to build faith in Christ and strengthen the families of the ward. The object is balance in these meetings. In our family we have a family council. The whole purpose of this meeting is to make it so that our family will run smoothly so that we can have peace and have those opportunities to strengthen our family and build faith. As will all things we must first have order so that principles of the gospel can be taught. It is only when this is accomplished can we be “nourished by the good word of God.”