Personal and Family Victories

In the Pearl of Great Price, in Moses 1:39, the Lord teaches us about His mission and His ultimate goal for us:

For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

Every time I read this verse, my heart sings. It reminds me that God is aware of me and wants me to have personal victories every day. He wants me to come off conqueror! How does this verse help me in that effort?

He Loves Us!

First, this verse helps me begin to understand God's great love for me and for all of us. Think about it, God's work, and His glory, is to bring about our immortality and eternal life. He, the greatest of all, wants us to become, like He is, immortal, and eternal! What wondrous, marvelous love!

He Wants Us to be Happy!

Second, it follows that if God loves us, He wants us to be happy! Both anciently and in our day, God has revealed through prophets, the great plan of happiness, which could also be called the great plan of personal victory. Why? The plan helps us understand who we are, why we are here, and where we are going. Each of us is a child of God. Elder Marvin J. Ashton, in a wonderful talk he gave in the 1973 LDS General Conference, gives this insight:

As children of God we are somebody. He will build us, mold us, and magnify us if we will but hold our heads up, our arms out, and walk with him. What a great blessing to be created in his image and know of our true potential in and through him! What a great blessing to know that in his strength we can do all things!

In his strength we can do all things, gaining personal victory and family victories every day. I know for myself that this is true. I am a weak man. I make many mistakes. Yet, I've seen the hand of God many times in my life, allowing me to accomplish things that I couldn't possibly accomplish on my own.

For example, I can't count the number of times I've misplaced something or my children have misplaced something and it seemingly disappeared. Then when we prayed, we were able to find the lost items.

In times when I've been out of work, I seen God's hand guiding both me and my family. This past year I resigned from a very good paying position because of ethical concerns. It was one of the most difficult decisions have had to face. Yet in praying about what to do, I had the calm assurance that as I put my trust in God, everything would work out, so I went forward.

After resigning, I was out of work for six months. During that time finances were tight, but we were able to make it. We had no health insurance, but we were blessed that no one had any illnesses or injuries requiring medical attention.  After looking for a while for work, and passing on several opportunities, I was contacted out of the blue by a recruiter for a new position that would require us to move. I interviewed for the position and ultimately got a different, but wonderful position, within the same company. We had the means to do some final work on our home and get it ready to go on the market and were able find a great realtor. Our home, which we had had on the market the previous year for over six months with relatively no interest shown, was on the the market for one week and we received a very good offer.

All through that time, we did everything we could as a family to stay close to the Lord. We prayed every day as a family and individually. We read our scriptures regularly, both individually and as a family. We held regular family home evening. We paid our tithing on any income that came in, and continued to pay fast offerings to help others less fortunate than ourselves. The Lord did the rest. Truly, in this case, he blessed us with a family victory.

God is there. He loves us. He knows us as individuals and as a families. As we trust in Him, and keep His commandments, He can and will help us do whatever He needs us to do.

Author

Randy McNeely is a father of five, an aspiring author as well as a singer/songwriter. He has written several patriotic songs, children’s songs and multiple religious hymns, including Oh Jesus, Savior of Mankind, which won a Special Recognition award in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints 2008 Music Submission contest.