Invite someone over!

???? It’s foolproof! Instead of a big open-ended never-finished task, you’ve now placed a deadline, and then you just magically get it done in whatever time you have!

To all my friends, yes, this is honestly why I like hosting play dates at our house so much. #truestory

Because I am a procrastinator!

So what’s so wrong about procrastinating our repentance?

First of all, we don’t know when the deadline is.

We have no clue when all this repenting needs to be complete. And so we can’t wait until right before the deadline, because then we’d probably miss it.

But much more importantly, what does repentance mean?

To change.

And God doesn’t want us to wait to change.

Because that’s literally why we are here on earth!

I’m actually working on getting better at doing small cleaning habits so that I don’t even have to rush before friends come over.

And I’m getting better and better at doing that! Taking care of little messes as soon as they happen, cleaning up toys as we go, doing dishes more often… those little things all add up to not needing to scramble as much when someone comes over.

And that’s what we really want in our spiritual lives, right?

Making small little daily changes in order to just be more spiritually mature as we go, instead of trying to “grow up” later.

Seeing sin that has taken root and doing the daily maintenance to keep it at bay.

Or when things get really bad, and our lives need a “deep clean” – we just get it done. We scrub the baseboards and the corners and the back of the fridge.

Instead of sitting with the weight of feeling dirty, we realize we have the agency to start casting off that weight and moving toward freedom and cleanliness. We rely fully upon the Savior for his cleansing power, but we have the agency to START that process.

Little sins, big sins, bad habits, weaknesses…

It’s an everyday maintenance.

And I think that when we realize this, it makes the Sacrament that much more meaningful.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Procrastination cleaning tips first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

He teaches the Zoramites to cry unto God wherever they may be – refuting their claims that they couldn’t worship due to being cast out of the synagogues.

Pray anywhere and pray everywhere.

Have your heart drawn out in prayer continually to Him.

But then he goes into the most important part of his sermon:

“Do no suppose this is all;

“For after ye have done all these things (praying everywhere), if ye turn away the needy, and the naked, and visit not the sick and afflicted, and impart of your substance… to those in need…

“YOUR PRAYER IS IN VAIN.” (Alma 34:28)

What a humbling lesson.

We can’t pray for more income, and then not improve our skill set or apply to new jobs.

We can’t pray for peace, and then share divisive articles that demonize “the other side”.

We can’t pray for a child to regulate their emotions, and then refuse to regulate our own.

It’s a tough pill to swallow, but I think sometimes we have to own up to the fact that we’ve prayed for a result, and then done nothing to achieve that result, or even worked against it.

That’s what Amulek calls being a hypocrite.

Yikes.

So, as with all things, the best way to repent for past hypocritical actions is to change moving forward.

What’s a prayer in your heart right now?

Maybe it’s for yourself, or for your family, or for your community, or for the world.

If you’ve got the first half of the equation down, and you are realllly good at praying fervently about it, that is beautiful!

And now might be a great time to think about how you can act to make it happen.

What’s something you can do TODAY in order to move that desire forward?

Here’s mine for right now:

I’ve been praying to manage my time more wisely for quite a while, but I’m realizing I haven’t actually changed what I’m doing. So I’m setting time boundaries for accomplishing certain tasks, and I’ve been reading up on some new strategies (like the Pomodoro 25-minute method) that I’m going to start. Changing my “wishful prayers” into real effort! And then I have faith that my productivity will increase, or I’ll be led to discover the right routines that will work for me!

If you feel comfortable sharing, I’d love to hear what your ACTION goal is in the comments!

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Pray and then ACT first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

I watered it once.

And then I forgot about it and it died.

The end.

Was I shocked that it died? Absolutely not. Because I had done nothing to nourish that poor little plant.

I neglected it, and it died. No surprise!

Just like this short-lived plant, Alma asks us to consider if we are NOURISHING or NEGLECTING our seeds of faith.

From a logical standpoint, it makes sense, right?

If we do nothing to nourish our testimony every day, it will eventually wither away.

But when we are actually down in the trenches, living life every day, it seems easy to lose sight of this logic.

When we stop reading our scriptures because we are tired, and we are just a little too busy to pray, and church has been cancelled for forever so we haven’t had a lesson in a while…

We seem to get really down.

And we look for signs of God’s love.

But we can’t seem to feel the Spirit.

And so we throw our hands up for a bit and say there’s no use in reading, praying, or finding other good stuff.

And then we get even farther away.

If we let this cycle continue for too long, we start to think we never really had a good seed in the first place, because it’s obviously not bringing any good fruit.

But that’s when we need to really step back and consider: am I doing my best every single day in order to nourish my testimony?

Reading even when it doesn’t make sense? Praying even when we don’t feel a connection?

Watering the plant, even if it doesn’t immediately perk back up, but having faith that if we continue to add more every single day, life will come again?

We are either nourishing or neglecting. There is no middle ground.

And we have to play the long-game, because just like plants, testimonies take a lot of little consistency, and not grand gestures once a week.

So what can you do today to nourish? And what habits of neglect can you throw off?

Give the seed the time and attention it needs in order to prove it can bring good fruit.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Nourish or neglect first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

What does “humble” really mean?

Many of us know “humble” and “humility” as the opposite of pride.

So if you think of “pride” as considering yourself better than everyone else, you start to think that “humility” means considering yourself worse than everyone else.

But pride really means seeing all of God’s children at different lengths from God’s love – some being “more worthy” and thus closer, and others being more distant and thus less worthy.

So the opposite of pride is really seeing all of God’s children lined up in an equal line – all equally distant and equally worthy of His love. No matter what we do/say/accomplish/earn.

Isn’t that powerful?!

We are all equal. We all are equally loved by God.

Literally everyone on this earth.

Including the people you don’t like. And the people you admire. And the people who annoy you. And the people who have made choices that have brought them to terrible situations. And the people who are filthy rich and powerful. And the people who are doing amazing, inspiring things with their time.

We are all equally loved.

And we all require God’s strength to do anything.

When we realize this, when we recognize that no one is better than anyone else, and that we all are given our breath from God…

It is transformational.

Alma taught, “He that truly humbleth himself, and repenteth of his sins, and endureth to the end, the same shall be blessed”. (Alma 32:15)

True humility leads us to repentance, because we realize that we can not do anything without Him.

And so we give our hearts and our wills to Him.

We gain humble hearts.

But living in this pride-sick world, this has to be an ongoing process, right?

Rooting out the pride that creeps in, most of the time unintentionally, as jealousy, pity, division, anger, envy, hatred…

And humbling ourselves constantly by turning to God, remembering our utter dependence, and falling back (or stepping up) to our equal place in the realm of His love.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post In humility first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

There are quite a few theories out there, but no scientist has ever figured out how to prove that the law of gravity is 100% true 100% of the time.

But living daily life has shown everyone on earth that things fall toward the ground – they are being pulled downward by some sort of force. We’ve got an overwhelming body of evidence.

The scientific community has done many experiments, and gravity seems to always hold up.

But we still can’t see gravity. We can’t prove that it always happens or that it will always happen. We can’t explain exactly why it works.

You see where I’m going, right?

Alma is preaching to the poor and lowly amongst the Zoramites. They have an extremely toxic view of religion at this point, and need to learn how to grow their faith.

And so Alma gives the beautifully famous analogy comparing our faith to planting a seed and nourishing it.

But then he addresses the question that I think many of us have grappled with in our self-development:

How do we turn from FAITH to KNOWLEDGE?

Why do some people bear their testimony and say, “I KNOW…”?

How can we possibly KNOW while here on this earth?

Because we’ve planted the seed, given it a chance, and it’s brought forth good fruit.

And we’ve seen others plant the same seeds, given it nourishment and time, and it’s brought forth good fruit, too.

And eventually, we notice that this has happened so many times: people hearing about Christ, having a desire to believe, nourishing their faith, holding fast while the sun scorches, and then bringing forth beautiful lives filled with service and happiness…

It becomes like a law of nature to us.

We may not know WHY this happens, we may not have proof that would stand up to the scientific community.

It’s on a longer time frame. These experiments take months or even years to carry out, unlike gravity that can be displayed with the drop of a hat.

But we’ve seen it happen enough times to just KNOW that it will always continue to happen.

That’s how we move from faith to knowledge.

We run the experiment enough times. We see others have the same exact results.

And we know that the seed is good.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post How can we KNOW?! first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.