Jan. 27, 2012

Jesus Shoots Down Power

This past week Marie and I have been reading a book called "Heaven is For Real". It is the story of Colton Burpo who during an extremely severe illness was in the operating room and went to Heaven for 3 minutes. He was three and a half years old and a few weeks to two years after he recovered he continued to tell his parents about Heaven. It is a very special book about a very special child or a child just like all other children in the eyes of Jesus. One of the chapters talks about how he saw Jesus shoot down power from Heaven upon his father who is a minister in the Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, Nebraska. He told his father that while he would be giving his sermons he could see Jesus shoot down power upon his dad to help him preach his sermon that day. I find this all very interesting and wonder what his dad would do if asked to listen to the missionary discussions. Anyway it is a very special look at Heaven from the eyes of a child who had been there. 

Well the reason for this post is that I like the way he explained help from Heaven while we are teaching. I was asked to teach the High Priests Group last week and I was to use the talk by Elder Christofferson on Repentance. I spent Saturday making some models from match sticks that I could use to represent the five parts of repentance that he choose to expound on in his talk. While preparing it I thought about how to present the materials just as I always do and wasn't coming up with much other than the little match stick representations to show a burning of bridges talked about in the third point. Well as I gave the lesson my mind was taken to Ammon, Lamoni, and Lamoni's father's story and there were several parts of that story that fit perfectly into illustrating those 5 points of repentance including the burning of all the bridges in every direction as you repent so that you can't go back and repeat sins committed. Well when the Lamanites buried their swords and weapons and kneeled before the attack from the other Lamanites they had definitely burned their bridges. As I thought about the lesson later I realized that in all my preparations for the lesson that story had not crossed my mind at all yet like a Shot of Power from Jesus it came when I needed it most.