I have been in Montana for two months now and up until this week I was enjoying the most wonderful weather. As a native New Mexican I really enjoyed the dead looking 50 degree weather. Quite frankly it felt like home. I began to be lulled into a false sense of security. Oh I knew that this is Montana and that it would get really cold. As the days got longer and the weather maintained its warm atmosphere, however, I found myself thinking less and less about how a cold front could hit any day. Well this last week it did hit. And I am cold! Suddenly I am rushing to find the warmth I previously enjoyed.

I hear that cold is just an absence of heat which makes sense. It was so easy to float along with a jacket and the occasional glove when there was no snow. With the snow though, I suddenly have to remember a heavy coat, gloves, scarf, hat, and hand warmers. I have to create the heat, or find ways to maintain it.

I think that the gospel can be this way as well. So often we have times in our lives when we feel like we can just float along with a scripture and the occasional prayer. Maybe that is all we "have time for". Then we notice that it becomes a habit to not be consistent about searching out the words of Christ and we enter a spiritual sense of security, until we crash. Then, like I was in the Montana cold, we have to scramble for the spiritual upliftment and guidance we need by holding on to any of the spirit we have and trying to make it stronger. Suddenly that full scripture study becomes important, suddenly we attend all of our meetings at church and we are doing everything that we should have been doing before in order to feel that absent warmth.

2 Nephi 28:30 says:
"For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have."

The Lord gives us the knowledge and spiritual growth that we can handle and promises to add to it. He promises that for every measure we receive, we can have more. However, when we are foolish and neglect what we have, we lose it and are left with that absence of heat. I am going to pledge today to be the kind of person the Lord is adding to, not taking away.