Brent Cherrington-Follow Through

Devotional opened with a talk about judgments. John 8:7 if every one sins how can we judge, how can we exclude people from being in our social circles, how can we condemn anyone? with what judgement ye judge ye will be judge Matthew 7:2. We are expected to follow the spirits guidance in making good judgments. Only Jesus can judge us and others. We need to reach out to those who have fallen away, not judge them but help them come back to the gospel.

Brother Cherrington gave a remarkable talk. He was impressed to talk about the follow through to our decisions.

"Our goals are the same, but our paths are different... through the atonement we can be sanctified from sin."

He referenced 1 Nephi 8:20-25 talking about Lehi's vision of the tree of life. He explaining that there were 2 groups in the story, the first group wanted to go to the tree but got lost on their way to the tree of life. The second group found the path and partook of the fruit, but then were ashamed. "They lacked follow through" he said.

Following through is important in all aspects of life, if we didn't have to follow through life would be very different, things could be ignored, but the consequences would eventually mount up. "We need to follow through on our decisions."

He gave us 4 simple principles that we can do to improve our follow through to our decisions.

1. Gain Control of our time. "we need to control it, not it control us."


2. Control our thoughts "When the lord repeats himself, its because it is important."


3. Respond to impressions "The more often a person feels without acting, the less he will be ever able to act, and in the long run the less he will be ever able to feel."


4. Become what we want to be "Consistently be what we want to become each day"

Gain control of your time. We don't know how much time we have and that is why we must guard the time that we do have, he said not to mistake what he was saying as not to have fun in our lives he just wants us to control our time and not have it control us.
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy; all play and no work makes Jack a mere toy"- Irish proverb Brother Cherrington said we shouldn't do things to just pass the time. Remember your goals and work to reach them.

Gain control of your thoughts. Pondering can help us with our follow through. The results of pondering forms the basis opinions and later actions.

Do we make time for thoughts or are they just a result of our thinking? There can be others sources for our thoughts, negative thoughts come from a source of the advisory, and positive thoughts could be from the source of heaven.

D&C 42:61 "Revaluation upon Revaluation, Knowledge upon Knowledge"

Boyd k Packer "The world grows increasingly noise, clothing and grooming and conduct are looser and sloppier. Irreverence suits the purposes of the advisory, by obstructing the delicate channels of revelation in both mind and in spirit"

If we minimize the noise, improving our dress, and conduct, we will be able to do a better job of following through with our commitments and know gods will for us. We need to take time to interact with each other. We can learn so much from each other. We should take the time to recreate with your peers.

Listen to your feelings. "Active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened" The more often a person feels without acting, the less he will be ever able to act, and in th long run the less he will be ever able to feel.

if we respond to the impressions of the spirit the lord will trust us with more impressions. The lord will be as involved in our lives as let him be. We are the lords hands and often the answer to other peoples prayers.

Our feelings are given us to excite to action, and when they end in themselves they are cherished to no good purpose.

Become what we want to be. "Be what the lord wants us to be." We each have a vision of ourselves that is our ideal selves, it is the "natural man" that gets in the way of that vision. It is easy to procrastinate what we want to become. Set goals both long and short term.

"The road to our ideal self is not a short trip, Its a life long journey."

We must learn to overcome the natural man. Decide who you want to be, and then sail off in that direction, taking the time to make mid course corrections if necessary.

Mosiah 3:19