God's Goodness

I just wanted to share today about the goodness of God that I have seen in my life. I know many people who question whether God is good or if it is important or worthwhile to follow Him and heed His words that He has given us through His prophets, both in ancient times and now. I must say, based on my own experiences with God, that the answer is unequivocally, yes.

There have been so many times in my life when I have prayed and God has answered my prayers. What is even more amazing to me is all the times that I haven’t prayed, have not known I needed something, but God knew I needed it, and because He loves me He has helped guide me to things that will benefit me and prepared me to receive blessings He wanted to give me. His generosity in giving me gifts I wasn’t looking for or didn’t know were possible lets me know how much He cares for me and how much He really is on my side and wants me to succeed in achieving my divine potential. He hasn’t just left me on my own to blindly flounder about trying to become like Him and guess what He wants me to do, frowning down upon me when I make mistakes. He has taken great care to lead me over and over to the actions and experiences that will bless my life and the lives of those that are within my sphere of influence. He guides me to greater things than I would think to seek for myself.

I could give you so many examples from my life of what I’m talking about, but I wanted to share a recent experience with you. A couple weeks ago I was studying the lesson from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Sunday School manual, “Come Follow Me.” The lesson for the week was on Mosiah 18-24 in the Book of Mormon. One section in the manual about the reading for the week talked about how “God’s people should be united.” As I read that section of the manual and a related sermon by Henry B. Eyring, one of the current apostles of Christ’s Church, I was prompted by the Spirit to focus on having more unity in my family.

As I pondered what more unity in our family would look like, I thought about us all being united in working towards shared family goals, as well as supporting one another in our individual challenges and achievements. Additional pondering led to me creating four common goals we could work towards as a family, as well as coming up with practical, concrete ways for us to work towards those goals on a daily and weekly basis.

I counseled first with my husband about my inspiration and ideas. Then he and I held a family council with our children. We presented our new family goals and discussed our plans for carrying them out, allowing the children to share their own thoughts on each goal and how we could accomplish it. I also created some visual reminders of our goals and what we were going to do to work towards them each day/week, as you can see below.

Our first week of implementing our new system of working together to accomplish our family goals was a great success. The kids were excited and on board with doing their part to achieve our goals each day. They found pleasure in tracking their progress towards each daily goal. These new goals and system for tracking our efforts have been a huge blessing to our family, especially as we have made the transition from the school year to summer break.

Before studying from the “Come Follow Me” manual that day, I had not thought at all about the necessity of having some sort of plan to help us use our time wisely during the summer and had no intention of coming up with such a plan. However, my Heavenly Father knew that such a plan would benefit me and my family, so He took the opportunity during my gospel study to send a gentle prompting about focusing on unity in our family. This prompting led me to the pondering I needed to do to come up with plans to bring more goodness into our lives and give me new opportunities to teach my children important lessons on working together to accomplish good things as a family.

I’m so grateful for my Heavenly Father’s support in helping me find ways to create learning opportunities for my children as I so imperfectly try to accomplish this incredibly challenging task called parenting. I’m so grateful I don’t have to rely solely on my own wisdom to figure out what will be a blessing to my family. I’m so grateful to have a Heavenly Father who also loves my children and wants what’s best for them and is willing to give me inspiration for our mutual benefit. I know He wants me to succeed in being a blessing to my children, and that He will continue to inspire me to know how to do so. I find this knowledge so comforting. I am not alone, and I am not on trial. I am in partnership with a Divine Being, working together with Him to bring about my own salvation and the salvation of those who are dear to both of us. What an incredible blessing and privilege.

God is good, and as we seek Him and strive to know and follow Him, He will guide us to the things that will benefit both us and our loved ones, both when we ask and when we don’t know enough to know what we should be asking for. Following the Lord leads to a bounty of blessings from a loving and generous Heavenly Father. I know and testify of these things in the name of my Savior, Jesus Christ, amen.