Lesson 8 Preparation

Lesson 8 is concerning self-reliance and it is not just about how to be temporally self-reliant, it is also about how to be spiritually self-reliant and not rely on the testimony of others to keep you strong.

According to the pamphlet 'Providing In the Lord's Way', there are at least six elements, if not more, of self-reliance and they are education, health, spiritual strength, employment, finances, and home storage. I am sure there are many more, but we need to focus on these six so that not only can we be self-reliant, we can also help others to also become that way.

• Education helps us get temporal skills that we need to endure the temporal way of life.
• Health enables us to do all the things that we need to do in order to live well.
• Spiritual strength enables us to find value in both a constant temporal and spiritual education.
• Employment enables us to make money that is needed in order to meet temporal needs.
• Finances helps us to know how to budget our resources to make them last as long as they are needed.
• Home storage helps us to sustain ourselves when finances and/or employment are unavailable.

I then read a talk by Marion G. Romney titled 'The Nature of Self-Reliance' and it talked about how man is free to choose their way and that includes choosing to be self-reliant, as we are all invited to find our own way in mortality and how can we do that if we don't know how to care for ourselves and meet the needs that will come during our journey through mortality? We need to learn how to and actively take care of ourselves so that we can be in a position to care for others through the stewardships we will be given in the Church and also in our own families of creation.

There was mention of seagulls relying on that which would not require any work and giving nothing in return, thereby teaching their children that gratitude was unrequired of them. Even if we cannot work for whatever reason and must be on assistance, we still should do things for others and/or the community, such as volunteer work, to show our gratitude for what we have been given.

According to D&C 29:34-35, we MUST be responsible for ourselves and cannot rely on another's testimony to get us through trying times, as there may be times when we will have very little but the spiritual reserves we have been taught to build. If we have none, then we will feel the consequences.

The haves should teach the have-nots how to become haves by first showing them charity so that they can know what it feels like to be loved and then help them to know what it means to share that love through service, as they then can know that their contributions can benefit yet another in need and that they are worth something to God, so much so that Christ freed them from their burdens.

Following that, I turned my attention to a talk called 'Living the Principles of Self-Reliance' that was written by Larry Hiller and Kathryn Olson and was about how the Lord's laws, including self-reliance, are permanent and therefore, the responsibility we have to learn and actively take care of ourselves is also permanent, as it is an eternal teaching and will continue with us after death.

I find it interesting that these self-reliance principles are to begin at home and then go outward as we learn to take care of ourselves, as once we know how to help ourselves, we need to help others.

Even if we know and practice principles of self-reliance, we still need to be humble enough to not only give of our excess, but to receive from the excess of others when our resources have run dry even after all of our best effort has been put forward. By being willing to receive help, we are showing that we are willing to allow the Lord's love to benefit us and allow Him to bless others who take the time to care. By being willing to give, we are showing gratitude for what we receive.

I then visited providentliving.org and and looked at the principles that were listed: employment, finances, food storage, emergency preparedness, gardening, physical health, and education, in depth.

I then directed my attention to the quiz and got a couple wrong the first time, but took it again and still got one wrong, but it was confusing, as the answer in the notes is what I put and it was still wrong. I still got 93% and I'm proud of my score.

Discussion Board

The self-reliance topic that stood out to me in my extensive study of all the topics was physical health because without physical health, you can't have an accurate awareness of the other aspects of your health nor can you properly maintain them. If your physical health is impaired, you are so focused on trying to handle it that you impair your mental and emotional health by stressing over your physical needs and then not only are you physically sick, you are also emotionally down and mentally exhausted to the point where might not be able to function. When you are emotionally down and mentally exhausted, you often can't feel the presence of the Spirit because you've shut it out of the opportunity to try and prompt you to turn to the Atonement for healing. The Spirit respects the agency of people and if a person has shut the Spirit out, the Spirit won't force themselves on someone who doesn't want it.

The Spirit not only gives us promptings from God, but it also has the ability to calm us down enough that we can utilize the Atonement for healing, as the Atonement is for both sins and sorrows. The Atonement may not help us to become physically healthy, but it can help us calm our emotions and help to rest our minds enough that we can focus on utilizing resources that the Lord has provided so that we can restore ourselves to physical health through effort, patience, and time. When we are physically healthy and well-maintained, we are better able to keep our emotions in check, keep using our mental faculties at a steady level, and we also able to feel the Spirit's promptings that can help us to not only improve ourselves, but be able to go and be of help to others in their quests to become better individuals.