Obedience

For Family Home Evening, we taught Rachel about obedience. She talked through half of the lesson, even after being "shushed" so I'm not sure how much of it has sunk in. I guess we'll just have to keep teaching her about it until she gets it.

Anyway, we first read the section about obedience in the Preach My Gospel manual, of course applying it to our own situation:

As a [baby/person], you are expected to keep
the commandments willingly, to obey
[house] rules, and to follow the counsel of
your leaders [and parents]. Obedience is the first law of
heaven. It is an act of faith. You may
sometimes be required to do things you do not
completely understand. As you obey, you
increase in faith, knowledge, wisdom,
testimony, protection, and freedom. Strive to
be obedient to the Lord, the living prophet,
and your [parents].

We talked about how obedience is how we show Heavenly Father that we love him. It's also a good way we can show our parents that we love them. Often we are asked to do things and we don't understand why...but if we just do them, we'll be blessed. As parents, we know more than Rachel. As our Heavenly Father, he knows more than us. It's often best to follow counsel from those who know more than you.

Sometimes, though, the world or Satan try to tell us to do things. We need to learn how to recognize if something is good or bad and make good choices. If someone tells you to do something bad, you don't have to do it. Mostly because there is usually a commandment from the Lord that supercedes whatever wrong thing you were told to do.

There are lots of ways to know if something comes from the Lord or from Satan. We told Rachel that if it feels good, and you don't lose (or risk losing) the Spirit, then do it!

We also talked about how we get blessings when we are obedient to the Lord's commandments, just the same way that when you are obedient to your parents they give you more privileges (typically).

Man, there's a lot of good stuff in Preach My Gospel. We've been using it for our FHE lessons for a while and it's just full of good (and super easy to prepare) lessons. Most sections are really short so if you're pressed for time (which we definitely were last semester) the lesson goes really quick.

Today was the first day of winter semester and Andrew's schedule is so much nicer than last semester. He was home by six o'clock and we had time to eat dinner together, have a lesson, play a game, and play with Rachel! Last semester's Monday nights were not so great. He didn't ever get home until 7:30, or later, and then had so much homework that we always rushed through dinner and a lesson (often we had the lesson while rushing through dinner) so that he could get straight to work.

We actually have a little bit of leisure time now. It was a nice relaxing evening. And Rachel went straight to bed, just like we told her to. Perhaps our lesson did do some good after all.