Top Five: Scriptures

Here are my favorite scriptures today. Does this selection tell you more about the scriptures, or about me?

5. 2 Timothy 2:6 "The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits."

I was in the Language Training Mission preparing for a mission in Germany when I read this. I understood this to mean that I as a missionary needed to experience the fruits of the Spirit and of testimony before I tried to teach it to others. It prompted my first explicit effort to gain a firm testimony of my own.

4. Doctrine and Covenants 6: 22-23 "If you desire a further witness, cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart, that you might know concerning the truth of these things. Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?"

I'd received a witness to my efforts to gain a testimony, but didn't know how to describe the experience. Nine months later, while sitting on a bus in Munich, I read these words and felt the rush of familiarity--God had spoken peace to my mind, as well as Oliver Cowdery's.

3. Matthew 20:25-28 "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his life..."
D&C 93:45-46 "I will call you friends, for you are my friends, and ye shall have an inheritance with me--I called you servants for the world's sake, and ye are their servants for my sake."

Companion scriptures, powerful messages on how to 'rule' in God's kingdom.

2. Ether 12:27 "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."

This gives me hope, even in the face of my own weakness and weaknesses. Humility and grace.

1. D&C 93:1 "Verily, thus saith the Lord: It shall come to pass that every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am."

The path and the reward.