I'm introducing something to my blog I'd like to call my Spiritual Sunday posts. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as most of you should know, and a lot of my strong opinions are centered around my religion. In general I try to gear my posts towards anyone of any religion (or as the case may be, lack thereof), but these posts are the exception to that. With that being said, I beg that if you disagree with my religion you be mature and respectful of these posts.
As another disclaimer, its been said time and again that the church is perfect but the members of it are not. Once again, these are my beliefs, and I try to establish my beliefs on scriptures and teachings of our living prophets, but I am in no way claiming to be perfect and you may not agree with what I say. I'd love to discuss such disagreements with anyone, and I do apologize in advance if I say something inappropriate in representation of my religion for whatever reason.
For today, I'd like to address the importance of God in relation to our intimate relationships. I'm somebody who would prefer to have logical back-up for my spiritual beliefs, which is the glory of the LDS religion, if you ask me. It makes sense on a logical level, if you do your research.
A few weeks ago I was sitting in Relief Society in my family ward, and our discussion was on prayer. Its been my belief for a while now that the vast majority of us treat prayer inappropriately, but the details of that I will save for another week. On that note though, I kept thinking to myself, when we pray we need to treat God as our best friend. He understands each and every one of us perfectly after all. He has even felt every bit of pain and anguish we've gone through and will go through, thanks to the gift of the atonement. As a fairly timid individual I never vocalized this in class, but another lady stood up at some point and said essentially the same thing I had been thinking.
I appreciate this woman more than she'll ever realize though, because as she vocalized these thoughts with her own voice, I had an epiphany. I realized that is exactly why God is a necessary part to a good relationship.
We had been taught in seminary at one point that God was a key part to any good relationship and we were shown a triangle regarding that, similar to the one pictured here.
We were then taught, as seen in the triangle, that the closer a couple is to God, the closer they are to each other. At the time I accepted this with an open heart and mind, but this epiphany hit me as to why this is the case.
As mentioned before, God understands each and every one of us perfectly. That being the case, he know of all our intentions, our desires, our strengths, our weaknesses. He likewise understands the best way to communicate with us to help us to grow to our full potential. That means he understands you that way as well as your significant other.
Take a moment to let that sink in.
On our own, it is impossible to understand our significant other perfectly. We simply don't have the capacity to do so. If we have a close relationship with God though, we can understand our significant so much better. God can take everything that our partner is thinking and feeling, desiring to communicate with us, and translate it for us into a way that we can understand perfectly. If our partner should so desire, God can do the same for them. That's is one of the big reasons a close relationship with God is vital to our intimate relationships.
It is my belief that, with this in mind, we could prevent conflict and contention in our relationships if we can just maintain a close relationship with our Father in Heaven and remember him when there is a threat of contention.
And the best part about this? This applies to all of our intimate relationships, including those with our children! By no means should we expect children to be able to grasp this concept immediately, but we can teach them and lead by example with our marriage, and it is necessary that we at least keep up our end of the deal! God will guide us as parents to know how to best teach our children, if we constantly turn to him regarding this matter, and he will help us to understand how they think and feel as well.
In conclusion, I suggest -- No, I challenge each and every one of you to take the time to turn to God next time there is a disagreement between you and the people you are closest to in your life. I really think it would be hugely beneficial to implement this in our lives.
And, perhaps its silly for me to request this, but if you have any experiences regarding implementing this (or failing to, as the case may be) please share! I'd love to hear how my theories do or don't work, seeing as I'm both single and have no living children.
Have a lovely rest of the day, and thank you for reading!
♥//Brittany
Brittany! I loved this post, especially because I literally just saw this work in my own home. Hubs and I have been really bad about reading our scriptures these past few weeks and today decided to make a goal together to do better. We read from the BOM introduction and as we shared our thoughts and feelings I already could feel a change in our relationship. I feel like it calmed both of us and put the Spirit back into our home. Even though we didn't read much and we have the week ahead to follow through on our goal, I already feel closer to Christ and feel more at peace with myself. I love Sundays! Thanks for sharing! (:
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