How to walk into a room and not worry about who you are going to sit by— just sitting down and knowing you’ll be fine no matter what.

How to make decisions and feel confident about them.

How to plan events and host.

And it’s not like these things aren’t important…

Being confident has blessed my life in many ways.

But I’ve recently been starting to get a glimpse of something much more important.

Love and service.

Walking into a room and looking for someone I could sit next to who might need a friend.

Not always making the most efficient decisions because they would leave some people out.

Hosting in a way that I’m still able to connect with others, and not in self-serving ways.

With this idea sitting in my mind a lot recently, I couldn’t help but see a new perspective to this pretty popular verse:

“For their salvation is necessary and essential to our salvation, as Paul says concerning the fathers—that they without us cannot be made perfect—neither can we without our dead be made perfect.” D&C 128:15

Why can’t we be perfect without performing proxy ordinances for every single person who has ever existed?

Because that is the loving and compassionate thing to do.

It isn’t enough to just be righteous and confident people who keep to ourselves.

It isn’t enough to just worry about ourselves.

Why?

Because Jesus isn’t just worried about Himself.

So if we are asked to become like Jesus…

Then we can’t just worry about “our own salvation”.

Because “our own salvation” requires us to become Christlike.

Which means we are filled with so much compassion and love that we HAVE to, no, we WANT to do the work for absolutely everyone else.

We would never be content with just our own perfection.

Because Christ isn’t content just with His.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Self-confidence and perfection first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

It was stake camp, so we had helped the girls create their banners, make gifts, create cheers, and pretty much every kind of crazy preparation you could think of.

And then the word came– wildfires in Arizona suddenly shut down the state land, including where our stake YW Camp was to be held.

Camp was canceled at a stake level and turned over to the ward level with less than 2 week’s notice in the middle of the summer.

Girls were disappointed. Leaders were disappointed. Parents were disappointed. No one was happy about having to create camp from scratch with basically no prep time.

A wise leader spoke to us at church that Sunday as frantic plans for a ward camp were being thrown together, and the message was one that we all needed to hear.

This had not surprised God.

This was not a wrench in the plan that He had no clue would happen.

As we wrote skits and painted posters and designed t-shirts, God knew it wouldn’t come to fruition.

And He would sanctify every sacrifice we thought we had been making for the stake camp to bolster our ward camp instead.

And it was 100% true. The ward camp came together in miraculous ways, and everyone was spiritually uplifted.

But that lesson has stuck with me.

God can’t be surprised.

Joseph even taught this about baptisms for the dead:

“The Lord ordained and prepared before the foundation of the world, for the salvation of the dead who should die without a knowledge of the gospel.” D&C 128:5

Baptisms for the dead wasn’t an ordinance of, “Whoops, a lot of people are missing out on essential ordinances! I guess we should come up for a way to kind of get the same blessings, too.”

Nope.

THIS WAS THE PLAN FROM BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD.

Proxy ordinances have always been the plan, because they are the only way we all make it back together.

God will not be surprised!

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post God will not be surprised first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.