Old Testament Lesson 42: Ingraining God in Our Hearts

Gospel Doctrine Old Testament Lesson #42;  Jeremiah 16; 23; 29; and 31.

My husband is not a person who shares my faith. However, there is one key thing we both agree on— we both feel that the most important aspect of spirituality is staying connected to the divine. For me, the divine is my Heavenly Parents and Christ. As my husband always says, if you are connected to the divine, you don’t have to worry about any other decision.

And I think that’s what it means to have God’s law written in your heart. For me, frankly, this has more to do with the heart and less to do with the law. Having God’s law written in your heart, I think, means it is so deeply ingrained in us that we naturally default to divine behavior. We are slow to anger. We automatically reach to help. We are aware of others’ needs.

So how do we go about getting God ingrained in our hearts? Here’s some ideas, that I think women specifically could try:

1- Get a good’s night sleep. I’m not kidding. I am 100% more patient (i.e. kind) to those around me if I have enough energy in my system to breathe deep a few times.

2- Fill your bucket. Similar to #1— while it is possible to help someone from an empty bucket, it is much more difficult. If you come from a place of abundance (not indulgence), then you have the time, energy, happiness and resources to give to someone else.

3- Cultivate peace. I think this is completed differently for different people. Some people get more peace from reading scriptures, some from music, some from taking a walk. I have one friend who claims heavy metal rock does it for him. I laughed because I just can’t imagine that— but it’s mine to do. But however peace comes, I think it drills access to our hearts in order to let God in.

4- Be humble. I use to visit India because it made me humble. It made me cognizant, quite simply, that I was not God. Sometimes we all forget that we are not one of the Supreme Beings of the Universe. We lecture God on why our lives should go a different way or complain about how things happen. We confuse our view with an eternal view.

5- Be grateful. Nothing like a little gratitude to reboot our perspective.

6- Ask. Quite simply, ask God to be present in your heart.