What are the topics that never get old for you? What are the topics you must enjoy hearing about when you go to church? Of course of this list, cuz... well, I think there are some pretty obvious ones that I've purposefully left off the list...
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I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
How about, "Follow the Prophet" or "Effective teaching via the Holy Ghost"
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no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing... the truth of God will go forth till it has penetrated every website, sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done
I voted Repentance, because it is closest to what I would have really voted for, Christ/atonement.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
I like the signs of the second coming. That topic has always interested me since I went to the evangelical Christain elementary school and was told that I would be left behind when the rapture came if I didn't accept Christ into my heart.
Sheesh, ray, you're so astonishingly BIASED! Where's the food storage/guns topic on THIS list, HUH??? Yeah, didn't think so.
If I have to choose, I'd say last days/prep. Also like motherhood and education topics. And anything remotely similar to what Neal A. Maxwell would say.
-- Edited by Cocobeem at 14:22, 2007-11-01
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Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid. -John Wayne
I voted for Repentance, mostly because I have an idea about repentance I want to explore, but I probably won't make the effort to organize my thoughts unless I had to give a talk on it.
Here's the idea in a nutshell. Usually, when I've heard talks about repentance, the speaker is speaking about the "big" sins, i.e., the sins that keep you from having a temple recommend. For many years, I tuned out those talks because I didn't feel like I needed to repent because I could answer all the questions right in the temple recommend interview.
But what if we think about repentance as closing the distance between ourselves and God? Then repentance is applicable to any situation or attitude that creates distance between us and God, whether or not it's due to "temple recommend sins" or not. For example, if I pray for a blessing that is denied, and I think, "God should have answered my prayer the way I wanted," then I've put distance between myself and God. It's not a talk-to-the-bishop sort of sin that requires the formal steps of repentance, but I do need to repent from it and close the distance I created by questioning God's wisdom. Same thing with how I treat other people. If I'm gossipy or petty or vengeful, I have put distance between myself and God because I have failed to treat one of his children as he/she deserves to be treated. I need to close that distance by repenting.
It's just a way of thinking about repentance that makes it more relevant for a goody-two-shoes such as myself. I need to repent as much as anyone else, and I think I went for years without really realizing that.
We have an organist in our stake that won't allow ANY hymn to be a dirge.
She speeds stuff up so fast it can make your head twirl.
My kids love it when she's playing the CLOSING hymn.
M
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no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing... the truth of God will go forth till it has penetrated every website, sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done
Worshipping through music. We LDS pretty much don't get it--nobody else would sing "Oh What Songs of the Heart" as a dirge.
My mom was big on this Roper. She was a very good pianist and organist and had a huge repertoire of music. She felt pre-lude and post-lude music was just as important as the rest of the meeting and took great care and choosing music that was reverent and spiritually uplifting. She tried very hard to set the tone of a meeting (a tough thing to do sometimes). So because of that, she didn't always just play LDS hymns. I remember her saying that there was a whole slew of spiritually uplifting music outside of the LDS culture that people don't know about. She even had people complement her on the music she chose.
But, there were one or two people who felt that all music played should be only LDS hymns. So someone complained and she was asked to not play any other music anymore other than hymns. It really upset her, and I could understand why. LDS people don't have a corner on worshipping through music.
cat- I've seen posts with freakin' fetchin' flippin' and friggin' and have never seen you moderate any one of them except this one. Is it because it's addressed to ray?
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Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid. -John Wayne
I had to vote Repentance (aka Atonement) because we are such a Christ centered church, but when it comes down to a pure lesson on the Atonement I always feel so much closer to the Lord than from any other lesson.
Second I would say we need to understand that the power of music is amazing, and so many people are missing out!
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Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
— Oscar Wilde