Make Your Home A Haven Away From The Wicked World

Book of Mormon Marriage And Family Study

"Wilt thou deliver me out of the hands of mine enemies?"

We can’t take any chances! This is especially true if we are married with children. Children are a sacred honor and responsibility. In the context of making your home a haven away from the wicked world, the enemy would be anything that makes the home vulnerable and weak. Anything that draws in the wicked world is an enemy. Often, that is the media.

President Eyring said;

“So, as much as we have already built faith and courage in our hearts, the Lord expects more from us- and from the generations after us. They will need to be stronger and braver because they will do even greater and harder things that we have done. And they will face increasing opposition from the enemy of our souls.”

We Need To Be Examples And Role Models For Our Children

As parents we need to be strong and brave and have the powers of faith and the signs that follow faith. Then we must mentor and teach our children to match us and even exceed us in power and faith.

Hopefully we can be powerful parents so our children can be as strong as we are at a much younger age, and then far surpass us.

The Book of Mormon is key?

The Book of Mormon is how our children will develop the courage and bravery. President Eyring also said this;

“Faithful Latter-day Saints have increased their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Book of Mormon as the word of God, and in the restoration of priesthood keys in His true Church. That increased testimony has given us a greater courage and concern for others of God’s children. But the challenges and the opportunities ahead will require even more.”

We Are Taught To Make Our Homes Like The Temple

That doesn’t mean we must wear white shirts all the time and whisper everywhere in the home. The temple is a holy place and so should our homes. For example, the temple has a gatekeeper who makes sure only qualified people enter.

Families also need a gatekeeper to keep the bad out. That is a conversation that couples should have frequently. Is our target soft? How much has Satan infiltrated our home? We should frequently discuss how we can harden the target.

Elder Holland said;

“Now, we live in an age when that cleanliness is more and more difficult to preserve. With modern technology even your youngest brothers and sisters can be carried virtually around the world before they are old enough to ride a tricycle safely across the street. What were in my generation carefree moments of movie going, TV watching, and magazine reading have now, with the additional availability of VCRs, the Internet, and personal computers, become amusements fraught with genuine moral danger. I put the word amusements in italics. Did you know that the original Latin meaning of the word amusement is “a diversion of the mind intended to deceive”? Unfortunately that is largely what “amusements” in our day have again become in the hands of the arch deceiver.”

“Recently I read an author who said: “Our leisure, even our play, is a matter of serious concern. [That is because] there is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.” I believe that to be absolutely true, and no such claiming and counterclaiming anywhere is more crucial and conspicuous than that being waged for the minds and morals, the personal purity of the young.”

“Brethren, part of my warning voice tonight is that this will only get worse. It seems the door to permissiveness, the door to lewdness and vulgarity and obscenity swings only one way. It only opens farther and farther; it never seems to swing back. Individuals can choose to close it, but it is certain, historically speaking, that public appetite and public policy will not close it. No, in the moral realm the only real control you have is self-control.”

If you live in the Salt Lake City valley, I invite you to join us at church on Sunday's at 1 p.m. We are a mid-singles ward; however, if you have a family please don't let that stop you. Please, join us for for our first meeting which is Sacrament meeting, and make sure you ask someone to introduce you to our ward mission leader. Our address is 6770 South 500 East, Midvale Utah, 84047.