On Sunday I gave a talk in church. I didn’t know I would be giving a talk until Wednesday (I guess the original person canceled). I spent a big chunk of Friday and Saturday studying for it, but of course wasn’t able to pull everything together until I was abut to run out the door at 10:20 A.M., Sunday.
While I was studying I felt like a total mess and I wasn’t sure what I should focus on (which is why I kept studying), but once I had given the talk I felt pretty good about it. I realized that a big part of my feeling good has to do with the fact that I really burrowed into the scriptures and learned some new things as I studied my topic out of desperation. I haven’t been good at studying the scriptures lately (well, okay, for quite a long time). I guess it is much easier for me to be motivated in scripture study when I have a specific topic and a specific need to share or teach, rather than just studying out of a generic duty or curiosity or in the hope of getting some sort of abstract positive feeling just from words on a page. It turns out that the scriptures aren’t often very useful when not applied or shared, which is why I don’t get all fired up about them except when in my extremity.
So how can I change this? Can I motivate myself to stockpile knowledge and insights for some eventual teaching/sharing need? Can I fake the feeling? Am I intuiting that I am soon to be called to teach Sunday School or something of this nature as a motivation to study the scriptures? Maybe I need to have more faith that the scriptures can apply to my life and my situations right now. Maybe I need to learn what to study. Maybe I need to be putting myself in more situations and thinking and speaking more of the gospel in my life. Anyway, any thoughts? If anyone out there in bloggie land has any suggestions for scripture study motivators/methods, feel free to chime in. It would be much appreciated. Thanks for reading.
I too need to study more on scripture study…I really haven’t been very good at it lately. So did they give you a topic or did you have to choose your own topic. I hate it when they do that…to many things to choose from and not enough time. :)How are things going in the life of Instructional Technology? P.S. Windows Vista Sucks!
How about writing a book? On a gospel topic, that is.
Lindsay,They gave me a topic. It was “The Promised Land.” I ended up talking more about traveling through the “wilderness,” though. I may post my notes here on the blog, but I probably won’t get around to it.I didn’t go into the office at all this week, so I’m as out of it as you are. But I am going in next Monday through Wednesday (21-23). When do you go back?Sorry about Vista. You should install Linux instead. 🙂
Pete,I think writing a book might be the trick. I’ve never really allowed myself to think about writing a gospel-oriented book, because I don’t feel like I’m super spiritual or a great example or anything, and most of the books of that nature seem to be by GAs or religion professors, or else the cheesy motivational speaker types that I don’t like very much.Maybe trying to write a book about something scriptural and gospel- oriented would be a good exercise for me. It could be completely independent of trying to publish it or get other people to read it and like it.Thanks for the idea. How are Julie and the kids doing?
What you should do is make a list of 52 gospel topics, one for each week of the year. Then that week you study that topic and wright a blog post about that topic. If it is a big topic like the Atonement then break it up into sub topics and do one sup topic that week.Then at the end of the year if you wish to compile them into a book you can.
If you wanted you could even create a completely separate blog for it.