More insight on how/why to keep the Sabbath day holy!

Wow! Bloggy! You still exist! Things are great here. :) I found a really good article today about keeping the Sabbath day holy. It is a really big focus in the Church. The article highlighted that it's important to see the Sabbath as a day to express your love for Heavenly Father through your actions. So, everyone can show that sign in their own individual way--the article mentioned that some people could do that through joining the ward choir or being early for church. I thought about what I can do to show Heavenly Father my love more fully, and I think it's going to be staying in my church clothes all day, and trying to find a certain amount of names in family history every week. I will start with those things! I'm excited! These are really good breakthroughs. :)

This week has had a lot of other powerful insights, and while I don't want to get too absorbed in writing this (because I need to get started on family history), I do want to write them down so that I don't forget them. One of them was just the underscoring of how important it is to be sincere in prayer. Honestly, lately, I have felt spiritually weak, especially in my prayers.

I went to a devotional on Friday, and the speaker talked about the nature of Heavenly Father.  First of all, it was a huge tender mercy, because I have been praying for SUCH a long time to understand His true character. Without understanding His character, it can be very difficult to want to follow Him or trust Him. The speaker said a simple quote, but it had a huge impact on me: "He's loving, He's kind, He's gentle, He's happy." I wrote that down and put it by my bed, and my understanding of Him is growing and it is so incredible. Finally, I understand what it means to act out of a sense of love. It has been one of the biggest tender mercies in my life! I also learned from the speaker about how to pray more sincerely, as he shared a story about how he prayed. I started to change my prayers so that they were more of a conversation, and super sincere at that. That is the only way prayers can be powerful. I strongly believe that a sincere prayer of "Heavenly Father, I don't want to do what's right right now. Please help me to change that." is more powerful than an insincere, nice-sounding prayer. Sincerity is how we come to truly connect with the Lord, and He wants to hear our honest opinion about every aspect of our lives!

Another prayer that was answered this week was another one that I have been praying for help with for quite a long time, and the inspiration came! I have tried for SO LONG to go to bed on time and always failed. This week, I realized the root problem--I sometimes get to the end of the day and haven't read my scriptures. So, I end up staying up for a long time trying to get a solid scripture study in. The answer turns out to be breaking my scripture study down into five-minute increments, if that's all that I have at the time. Then cumulatively, by the end of the day, I will have read the scriptures! It has totally answered the problem, and for the past few days, I've gone to bed at 10! Also, it helped to learn that we get second wind at 10:30, which is why I always feel awake so late!