An Experiment

In Alma’s famous discourse on faith, he invited the Zoramites to have faith, telling them, “Awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words” (Alma 32:27).  The idea of experimenting upon the word of God is one that our mission president and his wife focused on often—we should test the Lord’s promises by living according to the words that He gives us and see if the promises He makes come to pass.  The Lord extended this kind of invitation in Malachi when He invited us to pay our tithes and offerings: “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it” (Malachi 3:10).  It’s essentially a challenge from the Lord: pay your tithing and try to prove Him wrong that blessings are poured out upon those who do it.  The simplest version of this kind of invitation came when Jesus taught at the temple at the feast of tabernacles: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself” (John 7:17).  In short, if we want to know if a doctrine of the gospel is really of God, then live it and you will know.  

                I thought of these scriptures today after watching online the message from President and Sister Nelson at the RootsTech from this weekend.  I thought they gave an incredible message, and I especially liked the final words and invitation from Sister Nelson.  She said this:

“What do you need in your life right now?  More love? More joy? More self-mastery?  More peace? More meaningful moments? More of a feeling that you are making a difference? More fun? Could you use more answers to your soul’s searching questions? More heart-to-heart connections with others? More understanding of what you are reading in the scriptures? More ability to love and to forgive? How about more ability to pray with power? More inspiration and creative ideas for your work and other projects? More time for what really matters? My dear brothers and sisters, I entreat you to make a sacrifice of time to the Lord by increasing the time you spend doing temple and family history work.  And then, watch what happens. It is my testimony that when we show the Lord we are serious about helping our ancestors, the heavens will open and we will receive all that we need.”  There are of course numerous ways in which we can participate in temple and family history work, and over the past while I have tried to do more to research my own family line and spend a little more time in the temple doing family names (mostly found by my mom and aunt).  But given the demands of daily life I have struggled to find consistency in my own participation in family history, so I am grateful for this invitation from Sister Nelson (and President Nelson likewise invited us to sacrifice more time for family history and temple work).  I have committed myself to doing an “experiment” on the word and to spend at least ten minutes each day working on family history.  Like most of us, I can answer yes to many of those questions from Sister Nelson, so I pray indeed that I might see that “the heavens will open” to help me in my own challenges as I try to make my own meager sacrifice to the Lord.