September Visiting Teaching Message

Strengthening Families by Increasing Spirituality

Study this material and, as appropriate, discuss it with the sisters you visit. Use the questions to help you strengthen your sisters and to make Relief Society an active part of your own life.

Strengthening Families by Increasing Spirituality

Julie B. Beck, Relief Society general president, said: “There has grown in me an overwhelming testimony of the value of daughters of God. … I have felt that there has never been a greater need for increased faith and personal righteousness. There has never been a greater need for strong families and homes.”

Sisters can help create strong homes and families as they act on personal revelation. “The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life,” Sister Beck continued. “Qualifying for the Lord’s Spirit begins with a desire for that Spirit and implies a certain degree of worthiness. Keeping the commandments, repenting, and renewing covenants made at baptism lead to the blessing of always having the Lord’s Spirit with us. Making and keeping temple covenants also adds spiritual strength and power to a woman’s life. Many answers to difficult questions are found by reading the scriptures because the scriptures are an aid to revelation. … Daily prayer is essential to having the Lord’s Spirit with us.”1

We also strengthen our family members spiritually as we help them understand Heavenly Father’s eternal plan. “What can we do to better prepare our children spiritually for their eternal roles?” asked ElderM. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. “Perhaps the most inclusive answer is: Teach them how to live the principles of the gospel.” This teaching comes through daily prayer, scripture study, and family mealtimes as well as weekly family home evening and Church attendance. Elder Ballard explains: “We prepare each day, right now, for eternal life. If we are not preparing for eternal life, we are preparing for something less, perhaps something far less.”2

From the Scriptures

Proverbs 22:6; 1 John 3:22; Doctrine and Covenants 11:13–14; 19:38;68:25

From Our History

The Prophet Joseph Smith taught the sisters in an April 1842 Relief Society meeting that they had a solemn obligation to seek their own salvation. He said, “After [my] instruction, you will be responsible for your own sins; it is a desirable honor that you should so walk before our heavenly Father as to save yourselves; we are all responsible to God for the manner we improve the light and wisdom given by our Lord to enable us to save ourselves.”3 He taught them to be righteous individuals, to become a holy people, and to prepare for temple ordinances and covenants.

What Can I Do?

How can I help my sisters increase in spiritual self-reliance?

How can I improve my own ability to recognize and respond to the Holy Spirit?

For more information, go to www.reliefsociety.lds.org.

Eternal Marriage Quotes

These quotes are from the lesson taught by Suzanne Borquist on Eternal marriage.

#1 Elder F. Burton Howard April 2005 General Conference

“If you want something to last forever, you treat it differently…. It becomes special because you have made it so.

#2 W.Douglas Shumway Daily Gems 25 March 2008

“Marriage is meant to be and must be a loving, binding, harmonious relationship between a man and a woman. When a husband and a wife understand that the family is ordained of God and that marriage can be filled with promises and blessings extending into the eternities, separation and divorce would seldom be a consideration in the Latter-day Saint home. Couples would realize that the sacred ordinances and covenants made in the house of the Lord provide that means whereby they can return to the presence of God.”

#3 Ezra Taft Benson, Ensign July 1992

“Marriage itself must be regarded as a sacred covenant before God. A married couple have an obligation not only to each other, but to God. He has promised blessings to those who honor that covenant… “Husbands and wives who love each other will find that love and loyalty are reciprocated. This love will provide a nurturing atmosphere for the emotional growth of children. “Restraint and self-control must be ruling principles in the marriage relationship.”

#4 Russell M. Nelson Ensign Nov 2011

“Brethren and sisters, material possessions and honors of the world do not endure. But your union as wife, husband, and family can. The only duration of family life that satisfies the loftiest longings of the human soul is forever. No sacrifice is too great to have the blessings of an eternal marriage. To qualify, one needs only to deny oneself of ungodliness and honor the ordinances of the temple. By making and keeping sacred temple covenants, we evidence our love for God, for our companion, and our real regard for our posterity-even those yet unborn. Our family is the focus of our greatest work and joy in this life.”

#5 Bruce Hafen, Ensign August 2007

“Temple marriage covenants do not magically bring equality to a partnership. Those covenants commit us to a developmental process of learning a growing together-by practice. “Equal partnerships are not made in heaven-they are made on earth, one choice at a time, on conversation at a time, one threshold crossing at a time. And getting there is hard work.”

# 6 Dallin H. Oaks April 2007 General Conference

“A good marriage does not require a perfect man or perfect woman. It only requires a man and woman committed to strive together toward perfection.”

#7 Dallin H. Oaks Ensign May 2007

“Don’t treasure up past wrongs, reprocessing them again and again. In a marriage relationship, festering is destructive; forgiving is divine. Plead for the guidance of the Spirit of the Lord to forgive wrongs… to overcome faults, and to strengthen relationships.

#8 Henry B. Eyring Ensign 2009

“I give counsel to husbands and wives. Pray for the love, which allows you to see the good in your companion. Pray for the love that makes weaknesses and mistakes seem small. Pray for the love to make your companion’s joy your own. Pray for the love to want to lessen the load and soften the sorrows of your companion.”

#9 Spencer W. Kimball, Teachings of Presidents of the Church 2006.

“Marriage is perhaps the most vital of all the decisions and has the most far-reaching effects, for it has to do not only with immediate happiness, but also their families and particularly their children and their children’s children down through the many generations. In selecting a companion for life and for eternity, certainly the most careful planning and thinking and praying and fasting should be done to be sure that of all the decisions, this one must not be wrong”

#10 Elder Bednar Ensign June 2006

“As a husband and wife are each drawn to the Lord, as they learn to serve and cherish one another, as they share life experiences and grow together and become one, and as they are blessed through the uniting of their distinctive natures, they begin to realize the fulfillment that our Heavenly Father desires for His children. Ultimate happiness, which is the very object of the Father’s plan, is received through the making and honoring of eternal marriage covenants.”