Prepare your heart

Do you wanna know what happened as I studied the scriptures for this week?

I literally told my husband: “This week is rough. I’m having a hard time feeling inspired from these scriptures.”

I was trying, and this usually comes very naturally to me.

Normally, I come up with tons of post ideas, and then painstakingly narrow it down to the 5 ideas that I will post on Instagram that week.

But every scripture that I read seemed to be about something so random that it didn’t seem applicable to anything… or it seemed to be about an uncomfortable topic that I wasn’t finding inspiration in.

I wasn’t going to even be able to come up with enough ideas to post on Instagram.

I kept praying and praying, and I still wasn’t getting very far.

And then my eyes were pulled to D&C 132:3, which I had already read, but hadn’t connected with yet.

“Prepare thy heart to receive and obey the instructions which I am about to give unto you”.

Boom. That was the answer that I needed.

I needed to prepare my heart a bit better to receive whatever I needed the Spirit to give me in these scriptures.

I prayed for a softer, more prepared heart.

I humbled myself and was ready to be taught.

And then I read these scriptures again.

Some of them still seemed random and irrelevant, and some of them still covered uncomfortable topics.

But I found what the Lord wanted to teach me.

At least, I found what He wanted to teach me right then, because I’m sure there is much more that I can learn.

Sometimes, we just need to prepare.

Prepare our hearts to be sensitive to hard things.

Prepare our hearts to not worry about the stuff that we don’t need to worry about right now.

Prepare our hearts to be a little more humble and submissive to the Spirit.

So that’s what I learned.

Scripture study isn’t always easy. Finding inspiration isn’t always easy.

Maybe this week will be easy for you.

Maybe you’ll struggle a bit as I did.

It’s all good.

But there is still always something to learn, and my testimony of that was strengthened even more with this reading.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black