Trials and receiving strength

Trials come and they go and hopefully we learn something from them. I am grateful for my trials, but they are a hard thing to face sometimes. I have been learning a lot and how I really need to rely on the Lord for strength. I have been reading the Book of Mormon for my personal study and I am in 2 Nephi. Nephi faces a lot of challenges and is always receiving strength from the Lord to overcome them. I am teaching in Seminary of the challenges that the saints from the New Testament received and how the Lord helped them to overcome or to receive the strength to face their challenges. I am grateful for the strength of the Lord and how he has taught me and is still teaching me the things I need to know to be strong in this deteriorating world. I am also glad that he is being patient with me.
I feel like I have been complaining a lot about life lately and how I feel things have just been piling up and I felt like I have been getting very little sleep. People keep calling me for one thing or another and I found myself grumbling and complaining instead of greeting the challenge with a positive outlook. Well, I was at a camp meeting last Saturday and Sister Nichols, the Stake Young Womens President quoted the Stake President, Brian Rawson from the Stake Leaders training meeting. He said "Service least convenient to you is most acceptable to the Lord."
Ouch! That one cut me to the very center. I have thought about that over and over and over. I think about it often when I am asked to do something with very little rest. I think about the Savior and how he had very little rest and had to walk everywhere so that he could do the work that Heavenly Father wanted him to do. Nephi and his family did the same, where they had to walk everywhere and had to completely rely on the Lord. I have so many things to be grateful for and yet I don't always take the time to recognize them and give thanks to the Lord. I read in the B of M the other day about how the Lord will make weakness become strong. I know that the Lord gives us challenges because he loves us and wants us to grow. If something is hard then it is the Lord showing his love for us because he wants us to become like him. "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad..." 2 Nephi 2:11.
"...and thy days shall be spent in the service of thy God..." 2 Nephi 2:3.
The Lord has given his whole life so that we can return to our Heavenly Father. We are all unprofitable servants because all the good that we do for the Lord he will always bless us and there is no way that we can pay him back because he will continue to bless us and we will forever be in debt. I would rather be in debt that way though. I am trying to be as a little child.
"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yeilds to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father." -Mosiah 3:19
I am grateful for my life as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am grateful for the Prophet Thomas S. Monson and his councelors and for the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The gospel richly blesses my life, my marriage and my family. I know that as we hold fast to it the Lord will always make sure that we are taken care of. He keeps his promises always. All we have to do is to "Keep his commandments, yea, with all [our] might, mind and strength" (Doctrine and Covenants 11:20) and he will bless us with what ever it is that we stand in need of. I know that is true with all my heart.
Put your trust in the Lord and you will never be led astray.

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