Teaching by the Spirit

This weekend was my "farewell" talk.  It was great to have family there and many friends that had come to support me.  I had been asked to speak on obedience and so I spent a lot of time the last few weeks researching and reading about that topic.  I had been told that I should speak for 15-20 minutes, and never having had an assignment to speak for so long before, I was naturally nervous.  My biggest fear was running out of material and then having to repeat myself to fill the time, so I studied a lot about obedience and the plan of salvation.  I read every talk I could find on the topic, every scripture, and I tried to come up with examples from my own life.

As it turned out, I had plenty of material.  In fact, I didn't even get to most of it.  There were things that I would have liked to have said more eloquently, and points that I had definitely wanted to mention but afterward realized I hadn't talked about at all.

I have tried to have an attitude of allowing the Spirit to guide me through my talks and lessons.  And I really do trust that Spirit led me to those points which were most important for me to share.

So while I prepared a lot more than I ended up needing, that's not what was important.  It was a lesson, I suppose, in allowing the Spirit to be the teacher, rather than myself.  It was a lesson in humility: a matter of realizing that no matter how well I think I can say something, my impressive choice of words will not convert someone to the Truth.

Only the Spirit can do that.