Hey friends! Welcome back to Primarily Scripture! This is a beginner's guide to scripture study, and I am so glad you are here! I'm trying to  share tips and tricks for how to easily make your scripture study just a little bit more effective.  

I have free worksheets for you guys.  They're available on the website, PrimarilyScripture.com, and they follow the Come Follow Me schedule.   We've got study pages, and we've got journal pages...  

Let's dive in.  Let's look at 2 Nephi chapter 26, verse 27. It says this. Are you ready? Open up your scriptures and read along.  

"Hath he commanded any that they should not partake of his salvation?  Behold, I say unto you, Nay,  but he hath  given it free for all men.  And he hath commanded his people  that they should persuade all men to repentance."   

All right, so what does that mean? If you break it down and go one phrase at a time, you can figure it out. You can also look at the worksheet. The worksheet, puts it in layman's terms and says, "Has Jesus ever said that salvation was not for certain people? Of course not! He gives it to anyone who wants it. That's why he commands us to do missionary work and teach everyone about repentance."    So do you see how the worksheet takes the verse from Book of Mormon and then puts it in easier to understand words?

 Let's talk about this verse a little bit. If you look at the bottom square on this worksheet page, there's an activity titled,  📍 Look for Commandments. Let's look at that.  It says, "what commandment can you find in verse 27?" We just read it. Did you hear it? If you don't remember it, then pause the video and go back and look. What commandment was in verse 27?   Here, I'll read it again to you. "He hath commanded his people that they should persuade all men to repentance."

 The first thing is to be sure you 📍understand what that means. Okay? What does it mean to persuade? It means you're asking, you're trying to convince, it's always lovingly inviting. And what is repentance?  Some people will say repentance is saying I'm sorry. Some people will say that repentance means not doing it anymore, and those are super important parts of repentance,  but in the very simplest terms, repentance means turning to Jesus Christ.

If we turn towards Him, we will automatically feel, Oh, I want to do better. I want to say I'm sorry. I want to stop doing the bad thing...  And so when the scriptures tell us that we've been commanded to persuade all men to repentance, it doesn't mean that we have to go out and tell every single person we come across, hey, you make mistakes in your life and you need to repent right now. That's not what this is saying.

 Would we ever convince anybody if that's how we approached it? Is that persuading?  Of course not.   Persuading people to come unto Christ means being a good example. Showing them how happy the gospel makes us. Giving them opportunities to come with us. It's always about loving and sharing and inviting and being the best follower and disciple of Jesus Christ that we possibly can be.

 Let's 📍 mark this verse in our scriptures, okay?  When there's a commandment,  I like to mark it and be sure that I remember that this is for me.

And then I'm even going to 📍 write in my margin five words. HOW CAN I DO THIS? 

 So I can write the question right now and stop and think about it, and then next time because I've marked it, I'll remember to think about it.

There might even be a time in the future   when this is actually the answer to my prayer, and if it's marked, then I can find it that much easier.    Then our activity here on the worksheet says pick one of these ideas to   📍 ponder and there are three ideas here.

  Number one, 📍 How  would you turn your own heart to Jesus more?  Because of course you can't help other people come to Jesus if you haven't done it for yourself.  Number two,📍 who is in your life?

 Make a list and pray about who could benefit from your testimony.  Now, this doesn't always mean that you're going to bear your testimony formally to people in your life.   President Uchtdorf said this in general conference in April of 2019.   He said, "I am asking that you stand as a witness of the power of the gospel at all times and when necessary, use words." Isn't that a fantastic idea that you can share the gospel with other people?

And you don't even have to use your words. Your example can teach them and persuade them and help them. You can lift other people and you can share the light of Jesus Christ just by being a good person. Just by being you.  Isn't that fantastic? The world needs you and your light. And through your light, you can share the light of Jesus Christ. 

I love, love that truth. It just, oh, makes me feel so happy!  

 The third idea to ponder is how could you fulfill this commandment to persuade all men to repentance in the future?  Tell family or friends what your plans are.  Now you might be planning to be more friendly with somebody at school or at work,  you might be planning to serve a full time mission,   you might be planning to give a copy of the Book of Mormon to somebody.

 There's so many different ways.  And I can't even come up with all the ideas. You have to do that.  Do you see how spending the time on one verse gives us all these different ideas about the gospel?  We could have just read,  but 📍thinking about it is where the power comes in, that's where the Spirit can come in and help guide you and help you know which way to go.

You are opening the door and inviting the Holy Ghost in. And it takes time and effort.   

 President Nelson has used the term, 📍"Do the spiritual work," and he's asking us, he's pleading with us.  So the prophet has asked us to do the spiritual work to build and strengthen our testimonies. Yes, there are easy ways to do this. Of course there are. You can do powerful things in small amounts of time.  But, make no mistake, the amount of effort that you put into your study will greatly affect how much you get out of it.

It definitely does. Now I'm not telling you that you need to spend an hour studying one verse of scripture. It's not so much about the quantity of time that you spend studying, it's the quality.

Focus on the scriptures and put your heart into it. So put in that time, put in the effort, search, ponder, and pray, and see what the Lord can do for you. Amazing blessings will come. I promise they will.

And actually, I don't even have to promise because the prophet already has. Go do that spiritual work and I'll see you next time. Bye guys! 

  📍  Thanks for tuning in to Primarily Scripture with Cindy Young. Don't forget you can subscribe to the newsletter and download free worksheets on the website PrimarilyScripture. com. And if you like the channel, be sure to subscribe, like, share, and leave a review. See you next time!