Claim the Exceeding Great and Precious Promises

Claim the Exceeding Great and Precious Promises - Elder Spencer J. Condie
http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-775-6,00.html

While reading elder's Condie talk, a story came to my mind. During my first years of college I was really scared about failing and I was really trying to do my best to succeed. One day one of my young women told me "Well are you going and doing your home work for your institute religion class? If you do, you won't have to worry about succeeding at college..." I looked at her, not understanding what she meant (she was 14 years old at that time, which makes the situation even more weird...) And then she said straight to me, " The prophet said to the youth that if we go and do our seminary we will be fine at school (if we do our work, of course), if it works for seminary and school it should be the same for institute and college...". What that young told me left a real impression on me... I understood D&C 130:21 better (“when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated”). Blessings are related to specific commandments... If we want a specific blessing we have to obey the law upon which it lies...

When I came back from my mission I started to mark in my scriptures each time I read a promised blessing and what commandment was related to it... There are tons of promises in the scriptures. Doing that exercise helped me to realize how much I was missing. Sadly I didn't do it through the whole scriptures. So my commitment today is to start doing that exercise again and try to seek through the spirit what commandment I should work on (what blessing I need in my life now, to help me to progress).

One more thing that touch me in this talk is when he tells us to see the promises afar off. It was a real comfort to think about the story of Sarah and also Rachel, who didn't see the promised blessing coming... But who were eventually blessed. What I like about Sarah, for example, is that she was really old and she didn't think it could be possible for her to bear a child... it was humanely not likely to happen, but for God nothing is impossible. We should trust him and not look to things with our human eyes, but we have to look with the eyes of faith.