Welcome to part three of my tips to better understand the scriptures. I'm Cindy Young, and this is Primarily Scripture. Here on Primarily Scripture, we follow the Come Follow Me schedule, which means this week we are studying Genesis chapters 37 through 41. My first tip for you this week is one that the Come Follow Me manual follows. And they don't come right out and tell you that they're doing this, but if you're paying attention, you'll figure it out. So let me show you what I mean. Let's start by looking at the manual and checking the chapters that we read last week. Last week we were in Genesis chapters 24 through 33. Okay, now let's look at this week and this week we are in chapters 37 to 41. Did you see what happened there? We skip chapters 34, 35 and 36 entirely. They're not part of the reading at all. So what's my tip? The first tip for today is to skip the less important chapters. Now, am I telling you that there are parts of the Bible that are entirely unimportant? Absolutely not! I do not have the authority to make that call. That is way above my pay grade! But I can tell you that there are some parts that teach more important doctrines or that will be more relevant to you and your life. Which just means that you should try to focus on those! This is especially true if you are working hard to understand what you're reading. If you feel like you're a beginner in any way, then absolutely skip those less important parts. And then once you're at a point where you don't feel overwhelmed or confused by the language of the scriptures, absolutely go back and read those chapters and those verses and get what you can out of them. But unless your goal is to read every word of the Old Testament, you 100% do not need to read every word of the Old Testament, and the Come Follow Me manual is proof that this is true. There are much smarter people than I who have put this manual together, and that includes apostles, and even the prophet has approved this manual. Now, if the prophet wasn't okay with you skipping parts of the Bible, he would not have approved this manual. Even in the weekly readings, you'll find that some verses get skipped. If you follow the manual, you'll see that it's grouped into different study topics. And each one has its own verses to study. This week, if you read every single verse for each of those study topics, you would end up missing the end of chapter 37 and even all of 38. Even though it's technically listed in the reading, it's not part of the specific study guides. So choose which verses you read wisely and be sure you're following the manual, because it will automatically help you to find the very most valuable verses for you to study. And then you can skip the other ones. In fact, I feel pretty confident that, your life this week is not gonna change one bit whether or not you read all the names of Esau's great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren and great, great, great grandchildren and great, great, great, great, great grandchildren. You just don't need that- it's not relevant to you. The only thing that you might be interested to know in these skipped chapters this week is that in chapter 35, Jacob's true love, Rachel, dies in childbirth, and Benjamin is born. And that brings the number of Jacob's sons up to 12. Other than that, there's nothing super relevant, so don't be afraid to skip something. All right, let's talk about tip number two. This is something that people get pretty good at doing, and often they forget that this is part of understanding the scriptures. It is to look for a lesson in the story that you're reading. So let's use this week's worksheet to do the study activity. If you look in column three, you can follow along. Now, sometimes there is a truth in the scriptures that is stated very, very clearly, like when a prophet is teaching the people. But then other gospel truths can be found as you think about the lessons of a story. Let's look at a verse and I'll show you what I mean. Turn with me to Genesis chapter 39, Now the backstory here is that Joseph was hated by his brothers, so sad! And they sold him to be a slave in Egypt, but then he became the head slave in Potiphar's house. Then Potiphar's wife tried to get Joseph to sleep with her. Not a good look for Potiphar's wife. So let's open up to verse nine and we'll read part of Joseph's response. He says to her, "there is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back anything from me but thee, because thou are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" Joseph tells her, look, your husband trusts me, but you are his wife, and this is wrong. So the worksheet asks us to identify the sin that he is talking about, and that is the sin to sleep with somebody that you're not married to. This sin is called, there's an official word for it, and it's called adultery. It's a big word, and it just means cheating on your spouse- your husband, or your wife. This kind of sin also includes things like pornography, and unclean thoughts and actions. Now, the opposite of adultery is to be sexually pure or virtuous, and have clean thoughts and actions. So on the worksheet, we can write in ADULTERY. And right there, we have found one of God's commandments hidden in this story. In fact, the 10 Commandments hadn't even come out yet. This story is that old! There are a few other questions here for you to identify different parts of the story. But now if you look down at the next study activity on the worksheet. It asks you to apply this teaching by asking yourself if adultery and unclean thoughts are bad, then what can I do to keep my thoughts and actions pure? And I want to remind you that there is no wrong answer here. Think about your own life, your own temptations, and about ways that you personally could avoid those. One good way to do that is to intentionally put good thoughts in your head, in place of the bad things. Just trying to push it out often doesn't work- you need to replace it with something good. So think about that and write down a few of your thoughts. Now, you are not going to understand every part of every verse that you read, but if you zone in on the parts that you do understand and then you really look for a lesson and ponder ways to apply it to your own life, then you can count your scripture study as successful. No matter how much or how little you read, and how much or how little you understand, if you understand part of it and find a lesson and apply it, that's what the scriptures are for! And my very last tip today comes from the title of this week's Come Follow me lesson, which is "The Lord was with Joseph." So the master's wife was very mad at Joseph when he refused to sin with her. So she lied about Joseph and had him thrown in jail for something that he didn't even do. Poor guy. While he was in prison, he interpreted the dreams of some other prisoners. And then a few years go by and he was called out of prison to interpret the dream of Pharaoh. Now, both times that he interpreted dreams, the people who had dreamed the dreams were confused about what they had seen. They were like, there's a message in here somewhere. I just don't know what it is! Now Joseph's response is very important. Are you paying attention? He said, "interpretations belong to God," and he also said, "God shall give [you] an answer." So we know that the answers to these dreams came from the Lord, but do you remember what it said the Lord was with Joseph? That phrase is actually repeated several times in these chapters. And so because the Lord was with Joseph, those answers to their dreams came through Joseph and he was able to tell them what it meant. So let's use the skill that we just talked about and find a lesson in this story. The most important thing for you to remember when you're trying to figure out what something means in the scriptures, is that you need to invite the Lord to help you. The Holy Ghost can teach us the truth of all things, and that includes the scriptures, things that you don't understand. So if you're not trying to feel the spirit when you're studying the scriptures, then you probably won't understand much or learn very much. Keep in mind that there are many ways to invite the Holy Ghost into your study session. You can pray for his help. You can stop to ponder often. You can stay worthy all through the day of the Holy Ghost so he's not pushed away. Because if you're pushing him away all day and then you sit down to read and say, okay, Holy Ghost, now I'm ready for you... mmm... It's not gonna work out that way. You can use primary songs or hymns to invite the spirit before you read. Really anything that helps you to think about Jesus Christ can help you to invite the Holy Ghost to be with you. And just as there are dozens of ways to invite the spirit, there are even more ways to hear and to feel him. You might have a feeling of peace or warmth. You might have great ideas come to you. In fact, this is something that is sometimes overlooked. When you understand what you read and you have an aha moment, you feel like, "ah, I get it now!" that is one way that the spirit is teaching you. You also might find it easier to come up with questions when the Holy Ghost is helping you, because the questions that you ask will help you to find certain answers, and the Holy Ghost loves walking you through things so that you can find the answers. So even more than skipping the hard parts or looking for lessons in the stories, please be sure that you are inviting the Holy Ghost to be with you. And then just as Joseph was able to understand the dreams, you will learn to better understand the scriptures. I'm Cindy Young. Come back next week and I'll give you even more tips to help in your journey to understanding the scriptures better! Thanks for tuning into primarily Scripture with Cindy Young. Don't forget you can subscribe to the newsletter and download free worksheets on the website, primarily scripture.com. And if you like the channel, be sure to subscribe, like, share, and leave a review. See you next time.