I wanted to do it right the first time and get her trained as quickly as possible!

To my surprise, all of the latest research said to NOT do rewards or sticker charts because that gets the kids dependent on the outside rewards, instead of getting them intrinsically motivated to use the toilet.

It made sense though, and I moved forward with training my daughter without any immediate rewards or prizes, other than my verbal praise.

To be honest, she trained herself very quickly and caught on like a champ, although there were certainly plenty of accidents along the way.

But I was filled with such pride for her that I wanted to get her a new stuffed animal as a reward.

I remembered the warning about extrinsic motivation, but I also felt that I really wanted to give this to her.

I gave her a gift, she was super excited, and it didn’t affect her bathroom journey at all.

Now to make the weird comparison between potty training and our gospel progression.

I know that God doesn’t want us dependent on immediate blessings in order to have us keep His loving commandments.

He doesn’t want us reading our scriptures and then assuming everything will go perfectly that day, or saying a prayer asking for more patience and then immediately getting it.

He wants us to obey out of our love and devotion to Him, to be intrinsically motivated.

Job certainly learned this lesson.

But Job also learned another important lesson about the nature of God.

In Job 42:12, we read:

“So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning”.

God still wants to bless us because He loves us so much.

We don’t need to be motivated only by the blessings, hoping we’ll get another sticker on the eternal sticker chart.

But our loving Heavenly Father will always give us more than enough blessings to make up for anything we have lost, even if it means waiting until the next life.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Blessings but not motivated by them first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

I had just graduated from BYU with my teaching degree, and now my husband was starting grad school.

So the plan was for me to work full time in order to put him through school.

But… the school year had already started and no one was hiring new teachers.

And so we sat with zero income coming in – watching our savings account get smaller and smaller.

That used car that we had bought? It was in desperate need of new tires. But we couldn’t bear to pull that money out of savings with nothing coming in.

And so I prayed to Heavenly Father. “Please help our tires last long enough until I get paid.”

I finally was able to get work as a substitute teacher.

My first check finally hit our bank account. We paid our tithing on it.

And our tire blew out on the freeway the next day, necessitating our purchase of new tires.

It was a super small miracle. Nothing like the much more dramatic stories that other people tell.

But the Spirit bore clear witness that our faithfulness in paying tithing when we had income coming in is what saved us from having to buy new tires out of only savings.

Because at the end of the day, we aren’t promised an outpouring of financial blessings when we pay our tithing.

But we are promised a blessing that we will not have enough room to receive.

And while I have my one story, I’ve learned that the true blessing of paying tithing has to do with my relationship with God.

When I willingly give up some of my money week after week, I root out my love of money.

And I learn to rely on God – a lesson that spills over into every aspect of my life.

My heart starts putting the love of God higher than my love of money, in the most literal way possible.

THAT is the biggest blessing of paying tithing for me.

Saying that I love God over everything else in my life…

And then putting my money where my mouth is.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post The love of God and money first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.