Good morning brothers and sisters and Merry Christmas! I hope you all have enjoyed the past few days and few weeks with your family and friends and feeling the spirit of Christmas! I am Kylie Little, the daughter of brother and sister little in the ward, but most of you probably know me. And most of you probably know that I’ve received a call to serve a mission for the lord and I am oh so excited. I will be leaving in 2 and a half weeks to prepare to serve in the Ukraine, Kyiv mission and learning Russian! Ever since high school I’ve really had a special interest in world cultures and world affairs, and I am so excited to be going to an area of world with so much history and to be a part of it for awhile. And also bless the lives of those there with the gospel.
I have been asked today to speak on the spirit of Christmas and how we a can experience this wonderful feeling throughout the entire year and share it with others. President Thomas S. Monson, the prophet of the church today has said the spirit we feel at Christmas time is the spirit of Christ. So how can we have the spirit of Christ with us all year long? The best way I could think of to share my ideas with you is to bare my testimony of a few ways I have felt closer to my savior, my heavenly father, and the holy ghost over the past year as I have prepared to serve a mission.
The first and foremost principle that has been essential to my spiritual development has been to gain a better understanding of who I am, who exactly my heavenly father is and what our relationship is. I know that I am a daughter of my Heavenly Father, just as we are all his sons and his daughters. I know that the Joseph Smith account of the first vision is true, that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith and from this we learn that they both have bodies. Like I have a body!! Like each of you have a body! Do you know how amazing this concept is! God, our Heavenly father, is not some alien creature, or someone so incomprehensible that some people have given up trying to explain Him. We are the same form. He has a glorified and perfected body like each of us will have one day, and he is willing to listen to us, help us, and bless us when we seek his hand in our life.
A few weeks ago in a Sunday school class in another ward I attended, the teacher posed the following question to the class. “If you could have one hour to sit down face to face with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, what would you ask them?” Immediately, immediately a question sprang from my heart. It is not to know the answer to a doctrinal conundrum, or ask why a certain event has happened in my life. What is most important to me, what I would ask my Heavenly Father face to face if I was given the opportunity is this: “Do you really love me? And do you really believe I can succeed in this life?” just as quickly as the question arrived, I received a most beautiful feeling of warmth, comfort, and love within my chest, as an answer from my Heavenly father, that yes, he does love me, and He not only wants me to accomplish everything I want to in this life, but he has never doubted in me. And each of you can obtain this knowledge by asking our Heavenly Father in sincere prayer. I can hardly describe the courage I have gained to go forward in life from gaining this knowledge. Heavenly Father, no further questions. I don’t need to know anything else or why certain things happen in my life. I know that my Heavenly Father loves and is looking out for me and is always believing in me and I can always turn to him for help. Through prayer, which is my second principle that has brought the spirit of Christ into my life.
I now have a visual image of who my Heavenly Father is, someone with a glorified body who is the great creator, and I know that he loves me. These truths have made it so much easier and frankly natural to drop to my knees every time I say a personal prayer. And as I lower myself to the ground, I am sufficiently humbled to begin to address our Heavenly Father. He knows what’s going on in our lives; there is nothing we can hide from him. But we need to show our faith in Him by updating him on our lives, our feelings, and our desires.
Over the past few weeks my prayers have included the line, unfortunately, I know, “Dear Heavenly Father, I hate my job. Please help me to get through this next shift, the next four hours. Please.” And countless times my Heavenly Father has blessed me with a moment at work where I felt appreciated, or when I felt needed, or for a small moment I brightened someone’s day. My heavenly Father knows that this is all I need to make it through a day at work, and I know that he is watching out for me, and when I begin my days with him, he helps me to have a good day. When we offer up a prayer to our Heavenly Father, whatever the circumstances, whether we need to be comforted, whether we need to be reminded of His love for us, or whenever we simply ask for safety as we go about our day, He hears us and he blesses us.
The Third thing that I have found has blessed my life and the lives of those around me is best summed up in a quoted from Joseph Fielding Mcconkie. Can’t go wrong with a name like that. This is from one of His books (Valiant in the Testimony of Christ, pg 170):
“…our whole experience in life was intended to be…[in] movement forward. Knowledge, testimony, and wisdom are all things we grow up into rather than obtain at a given point. No one would say I received my education on a certain day. Education is an ongoing thing. We might say that we completed a given course or part of our education at a given time or place, but the process goes on. It goes on or it shrivels up and dies.
So it is in the realm of spiritual things. Spiritual knowledge is a living thing, and as such it must continue to grow and change. If we are to follow the path that Christ followed, we must continually seek to advance from one grace to a greater grace.”
When I read this I immediately thought of my dad. My dad is always switching up his study habits. For awhile he was reading the New Testament, and then the next time I check in with him he’s in the Old Testament, and then the next day he is commending the servant of a servant of a servant from the Book of Mormon for their amazing acts of faith. He draws comparisons between different scripture stories and time periods and shares it with us, his family. The most amazing part of these study habits is that I don’t remember him being like this before. He always set a good example of reading the scriptures, but the depth that has he achieved now I feel has developed over the past few years. He has evolved his study habits to deepen his understanding of the gospel in order to continue bless his maturing family. I admire this quality and thank him for his devotion to learning and knowledge.
The few things I have shared with you so far are ways to improve our lives and welcome this spirit of Christ into them: to come to know that our Heavenly Fathers knows us, loves us, and wants to bless us and to open our hearts to him through sincere prayer with faith, and then to also continue to study the gospel with evolving habits. The last two things I want to talk about are ways to help bless the lives of others and bring them the spirit of Christ. And these are Charity through perfecting listening to the Holy Ghost, and then the Priesthood.
A few weeks ago, President Peterson of the stake presidency stood at this pulpit and gave us some advice that has not left my heart since. He advised us to never suppress a generous thought. Never suppress a generous thought. A good way to live your life, absolutely, but deeper than that…Generous thoughts always come from the Holy Ghost I believe. The Holy Ghost provides inspiration for all that is light and good. If any of us have suppressed a generous thought, and I know I have, which I should have so obviously recognized as the Holy Ghost prompting me to bless someone else, how many other thoughts, more subtle, have I suppressed from the Holy Ghost that could have blessed me or those around me? Each of us would describe the promptings of the Holy Ghost in different ways, and that fine, but the important thing is that we recognize them immediately and act on them unquestionably. In my own personal pursuit of trying to recognize the Holy Ghost speaking to me, for example, I’ll have a random idea pop into my head, like take one freeway way over another. Once I recognize that thought as having really no source within my own conscience, I say a silent prayer for a confirmation. And if I feel at peace after, I can thank the Holy Ghost for the prompting and proceed to follow it. And I encourage and challenge you all to increase your recognition and gratitude for the Holy Ghost. We should be recognizing and receiving promptings daily to help bless our lives and the lives of other with the light of Christ.
Lastly, I want to bear my testimony of the priesthood and how this has blessed me profoundly with the spirit of Christ and how I am so grateful for the priesthood. On LDS.ORG the first descriptive paragraph of the priesthood that is accessible to anyone who searches it my topic says this:
“The priesthood is the eternal power and authority of God. Through the priesthood God created and governs the heavens and the earth. Through this power He redeems and exalts His children, bringing to pass “the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). God gives priesthood authority to worthy male members of the Church so they can act in His name for the salvation of His children. Priesthood holders can be authorized to preach the gospel, administer the ordinances of salvation, and govern the kingdom of God on the earth.”
The priesthood is such a blessing in our lives to invite and act as Christ would if He were here on the earth, so what better way to have the spirit of Christ than to do his work by his power.
In Matthew 16:19 Jesus Christ is describing his priesthood to one of his apostles, peter, and says
“And I will give unto the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever thou shalt lose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven”
The priesthood binds things as they are on earth in Heaven, meaning eternal marriage, eternal families, and sealing the covenants we make on earth like at baptism and in the temple. And things loosed on earth shall be loosed in Heaven. To me, personally, this scripture means that the chains from sin that bind me on this earth can be loosed by working with the proper priesthood and authority and remain loosed as I continue throughout the eternities. My sins can be washed away forever. A few weeks ago I was out with the missionaries listening to a simple lesson about the beautiful gift of forgiveness and the atonement. I was overwhelmed with such gratitude for this atonement. I felt impressed to email my bishop back in Boston where I’ve live the past couple years who helped me make my weaknesses become strengths and helped me become more pure in the eyes of my Heavenly Father through the proper use of the atonement through the proper use of the priesthood. I thanked him for his wise counsel, his support, and his priesthood. Because I have been washed clean by his proper priesthood authority, I have found so much happiness and joy now in my life, and I know it will bless the lives of my future family, and the joy will continue on with me into the eternities. The impact of his helping me with his priesthood to use the atonement is eternal. And I know that the priesthood is eternal. In his response email, among other things, my bishop said, “Congratulations, Kylie, you have discovered the value of the gospel and the atonement.”
I know that I have discovered the joy that this gospel can bring me and I never want to lose it. It is a pearl of great price that will continue to bless my life and I strive to live the gospel. I am excited to share this testimony for the next year and a half and also the rest of my life. I am thankful for my family and this ward for loving me and nurturing me to get me to this beautiful point in my life and I know that my family will continue to love and nurture me as I continue on. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
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