But other times, God gives us the answer right away! ⁣

Joshua, the new leader of the Israelites, approached the city of Jericho. ⁣

This was the climax of 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and now what?! ⁣

Well, the Lord tells Joshua: ⁣

“See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.” (Joshua 6:2) ⁣

The Lord then proceeded to tell Joshua exactly what to do– march around the city once a day for six days, and on the seventh day, march seven times more. The priests will then blow ram’s horns, the people will shout, and the walls of Jericho will come tumbling down. ⁣

The prophet Joshua told his people the plan, they followed the directions, and the city was theirs. ⁣

Easy peasy, right? ⁣

Asked and answered. ⁣

Sometimes, the Lord is ready to give us the exact answer that we need.⁣

But the tricky part then becomes having enough faith to actually follow through on the plans. ⁣

Have you had an experience like this before? ⁣

Receiving direct answers to prayers is the best. ⁣

But then we have to trust and act. ⁣

Because receiving the answer is only the first half of the equation. ⁣

Whether that means to quit the job, have that conversation, or march around a city blowing horns and shouting, it takes a lot of faith to follow through on our answered prayers.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post The faith to march around Jericho  first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

I searched all the usual suspect places.

I asked my kids.

I looked in unusual places.

And then I did what I think most of us have learned to do in these types of situations:

I said a quick prayer and kept searching.

The Spirit loves action, right?!

Surely I’d be led to my keys now.

But……… nothing.

And I really had to leave to go somewhere.

I decided to say another prayer, but this time, I was going to be really sincere and then pause to listen for promptings.

I was surprised that when I prayed and paused, a calm but certain thought came to my mind that I WASN’T going to find my keys.

I knew that I needed to find another way to get where I was going.

When David Whitmer struggled, the Lord gave him this advice:

“You are left to inquire for yourself at my hand, and ponder upon the things which you have received.” (D&C 30:3)

Yes, we need to ask and inquire as we say prayers.

But we also need to ponder!

I was so sure that the Spirit would help me find my keys as I searched…

That I forgot to wait and listen for an answer.

And there have been other situations in my life when I’ve prayed, pondered, and then had my mind brought to an earlier conversation that suddenly seemed like an answer.

The Lord answers prayers when we ask.

But sometimes, and more often than I’d like to admit,

It’s possible I’m missing the little answers, the nudges, or the guidance because I’m not leaving time to ponder and listen.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post The lost keys first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

I was recently thinking about a time when I was NOT looking for a new job.

But I WAS looking for some more fulfillment in my life. ⁣

A random job opportunity popped up.

I browsed through the application information out of curiosity. ⁣

And suddenly, I knew that I needed to fill out that application.

I got the job.

And that job completely changed the trajectory of my life in the best way possible.

I had been praying for more fulfillment in my life…

And God knew exactly how I needed to get there.

No matter how random it may have seemed.

But it took faith to follow those out-of-left-field promptings!

The brother of Jared had been praying for his family and friends to be spared from having their languages confounded.

And pretty shortly after, the Lord told him:

“Go to work and build, after the manner of barges which ye have hitherto built.” (Ether 2:16)

How do sincere prayers for protection and freedom turn into commandments to build barges?

God knows.

Only He knows.

And the brother of Jared had the faith to follow the direction!

Do we have the faith in Jesus Christ to follow the promptings we receive, even when they don’t seem to match with the questions we had in the first place?

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post  The random prompting 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 other people to feel more love, and then ignore them.

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

We can’t pray for our children to change in some way, and then not adjust anything at home to facilitate the change.

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 maybe we’ve even worked against it. ⁣

That’s what Amulek calls being a hypocrite. ⁣

Yikes. ⁣

(Sometimes there are situations where we literally can’t do anything else other than pray though, and I fully believe that God can still make miracles happen.)

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. ⁣

“Pray as if everything depended on God, work as though everything depended on you”. – Saint Ignatius

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? ⁣

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

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

Or prayed that you could sleep well, and then you do?⁣

Or prayed that you’d be able to get everything done before your deadline, and then you do?⁣

There are a lot of prayers that God answers without fanfare or drama. ⁣

These answers are difficult to recognize because they look like natural things happening.

They make us think, “Eh, that would have happened whether or not I prayed about it.”

When… maybe it wouldn’t have.

After years of praying and pleading for help from the people in Zarahemla, King Limhi and his people had a group of strangers arrive in their land.

A case of mistaken identity led to King Limhi preparing to put this group of strangers to death.

Right before putting them to death, though, King Limhi makes the shocking discovery that these strange wanderers were the answer to their prayers!

“Now, I know of a surety that my brethren who were in the land of Zarahemla are yet alive. And now, I will rejoice.” (Mosiah 7:14)

He almost missed the answer to their prayers.

But he caught it just in time, and the reunion was joyful.

Are we missing any answered prayers in our lives?

Are we looking for dramatic fanfare?

For things that seem impossible?

Ordinary but still miraculous answers are all around us.

We have strength to get through the day. We drive safely. Our kid is comforted. We find an answer to a question. Our kids are kind to each other.

It’s so easy to miss them.

But so often, it’s how God answers prayers.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Ordinary answers  first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

I love coming up with really good plans.

Whether it’s been for callings at church, my next career move, or ideas for how to help my child, I think of a lot of stuff.

And sometimes, God says, “no” to my carefully crafted plans.

Paul experienced this, too.

Paul really wanted to travel to certain areas to share the gospel. ⁣

“After they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not.” (Acts 16:7)

His desire was perfectly righteous!

And it made logical sense for them to preach to the people in Bithynia as they travelled, too.

Maybe Paul had travel arrangements or contacts there to make it super convenient.

But he prayed, and the Spirit told him, “no.” ⁣

For me, “no” answers usually come with stupors of thought.

I feel like the next step is not available to me.

Or I feel “off” as I pray about it. ⁣

It takes a lot of faith to NOT go through with something we want to do.

And then the trickiest part of all?

Usually the promptings for what we should do instead do not come until we have shown the faith not to go down the first path. ⁣

I’ve known that an idea I was really excited about was no longer right.

But it wasn’t until I took actual steps away from that first idea that the much better, much more powerful second idea came into focus.

It took a LOT of humility.

But I think that’s the point.

Slowly removing that pride, layer by layer.

It takes faith to align our will with God and accept that His “no” will bring the greatest future imaginable.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Accepting a “no” from God  first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

I think that answer is actually pretty easy and obvious to most of us.

Right?

He had to sacrifice His physical body for us so that He could then overcome the grave.

He knew it had to be done to fulfill the whole plan. ⁣

And yet, the priests and others passing by Christ’s crucifixion said:

“He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.” (Matthew 27:42)

They put specific requirements on the miracle that Christ had to perform in order for them to “believe”. ⁣

Yet Jesus had spent His whole life performing miracles.

(Which they actually reference by saying “he saved others”.)

And He was about to perform the greatest miracle of all. ⁣

And STILL these onlookers decided that He only was a true Savior if He could get Himself off the cross.

Do we sometimes put our own requirements on the help we get from heaven? ⁣

“I haven’t received a yes or no answer yet.”⁣

“This terrible thing happened even though I followed a prompting.”⁣

“I keep praying for a way to help my daughter but I’m not getting an answer.”⁣

With our own limited viewpoint here, we think we know exactly what we need sometimes, right?

I need to know if I should do this or not.

I need to get inspiration for this.

I followed a prompting so nothing unsatisfactory should come from it. ⁣

And yet there is someone above who sees the whole big picture. ⁣

Sometimes the answer is no answer. ⁣

Sometimes the prompting is to do nothing.

Sometimes following the Spirit leads to terrible suffering. ⁣

What we or what others think the miracle “needs to be” is not always what it is. ⁣

God’s ways are not our ways. ⁣

And I’m so grateful for a Savior who understood this and knew that performing NO miracle in that moment is what would lead to the greatest outcome for all.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Why didn’t Jesus save Himself?  first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

Joshua, the new leader of the Israelites, approached the city of Jericho.

This was the climax of 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and now what?!

Well, the Lord tells Joshua:

“See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.” (Joshua 6:2)

The Lord then proceeded to tell Joshua exactly what to do– march around the city once a day for six days, and on the seventh day, march seven times more. The priests will then blow ram’s horns, the people will shout, and the walls of Jericho will come tumbling down.

The prophet Joshua told his people the plan, they followed the directions, and the city was theirs.

Easy peasy, right?

Asked and answered.

Sometimes, the Lord is ready to give us the exact answer that we need.

But the tricky part then becomes having enough faith to actually follow through on the plans.

Have you had an experience like this before?

Receiving direct answers to prayers is the best.

But then we have to trust and act.

Because receiving the answer is only the first half of the equation.

Whether that means to quit the job, have that conversation, or march around a city blowing horns and shouting, it takes a lot of faith to follow through on our answered prayers.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Answered prayers first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

As we worked through “what came next” on a series of different patterns, I noticed how many of the kids worked very differently.

Some of the kids would try and figure out the color patterns on their own.

(Sometimes they were right; other times they were very wrong.)

And other kids wanted to wait and see what the answer was before they colored in their pattern.

(“Wait, what’s the answer? What color should I use?”)

These two approaches are pretty universal, right?

Sometimes we have questions and problems, and we do our best to find a solution.

Other times, we have questions and problems, and we wait for the answer to come to us before we move forward.

As an educator, I’m very familiar with where the most learning happens:

When we do our best to do the work and find an answer, whether it is right or wrong, we learn infinitely more than when we just wait to be told the right answer.

Abraham’s servant is such a perfect and sweet example of this.

Tasked with finding a wife for Isaac, the servant came up with a plan and presented it to the Lord.

“And let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast shewed kindness unto my master.” (Genesis 24:14)

The servant came up with a possible solution!

And the Lord agreed with the plan!

Now, he could have been totally “wrong”, which would have then made it pretty easy for the Lord to tell him how he would actually give the sign of the right wife.

But either way, this servant chose to at least come up with the plan, which is where the most learning and growth happens.

It’s so tempting to want to sit around, waiting to be inspired or told to do the right things.

Who should I serve? How should I simplify my life? What can I do to teach my family the gospel?

It takes a lot of faith, and setting aside “perfectionism”, to take fully formed ideas to the Lord and see what you’ll be taught.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Patterns and preschool first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

Assuming you’ve been in a classroom in your life, I bet you know what would usually happen.

The two kids who always asked questions would raise their hands and ask a few questions, and everyone else would smile and look super confident…

But I knew some of them were confused.

I’m not sure why they didn’t raise their hands.

Maybe they were embarrassed to be confused. Maybe they were anxious to speak up. Maybe it just isn’t cool to raise your hand.

The Lord reminds us gently in D&C 1:26, “And inasmuch as they sought wisdom they might be instructed”.

This is one of the reasons I’m so psyched to be studying the Doctrine and Covenants this year:

Because virtually every revelation, or “section”, is the Lord’s response to a question.

The Doctrine and Covenants is NOT filled with moments where Joseph Smith was busy hanging out with a friend and then the Lord intruded into his thoughts with a powerful revelation.

It doesn’t have the Lord interrupting Joseph while he was completing a business transaction.

It doesn’t have Joseph Smith seeing heavenly beings while he was in the middle of completing a different project.

Time after time, the Lord responded to Joseph Smith’s questions.

So… we have to be “that kid” in class.

The one who asks the questions. The one who is okay with being confused. The one who is curious and ambitious in our spiritual progression.

We can’t be too cool to care.

We have to be curious, and we have to ask.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post “That kid” first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.