Elder Jose A.Teixeira of the Presidency of the Seventy spoke at a BYU devotional February 9, 2021 on:
Choosing to Be Spiritually Minded
For a moment, I invite you to consider these words of the apostle Paul to the Romans: “To be spiritually minded is life and peace.”4
Choosing to be spiritually minded by living a life worthy of the Holy Ghost’s gentle persuasions will provide you guidance in your decisions and protection from both physical and spiritual danger. Through the Holy Ghost, you can receive gifts of the Spirit for your benefit and for the benefit of those you love and serve. His communication to your spirit carries far more certainty than any communication you can receive through your natural senses.
How can you live a spiritually minded life and have more abundant guidance from the Holy Ghost?
To be in tune with our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior is being spiritually minded. The scriptures teach us that all things are spiritual unto the Lord: “Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal.”5 When we are in harmony with Heavenly Father, we have the companionship of His Spirit. As we place that harmony as a priority in our lives, we draw near unto Him and unto His Son, Jesus Christ, whom He has sent, and not unto the world.
To love God is to be spiritually minded. Cultivating a relationship with your Heavenly Father in prayer will keep Him in your mind and in your heart.
The apostle John, one of the original Twelve and accredited author of the first book of John in the New Testament, addressed false beliefs amongst the people of the time that salvation was achieved by means other than through faith in Jesus Christ. John refuted these false beliefs with his testimony of the love of God for us and with his personal witness of Jesus Christ, and John invited his readers to experience the joy of being in harmony with the Father and the Son.6 He said, “And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.”7
John also said:
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.8
In this life, we can feel the love of God with the companionship of His Spirit. When we do the will of our Father in Heaven and strive to stay on the path that leads us to Him, the Holy Ghost can guide us.9
We are spiritually minded when we understand that the purpose of the sacrament is to remember the Savior and what He did for us. The promise in both the prayers of the bread and the water contain the phrase “that they [who partake] may . . . have his Spirit to be with them.”10 We endeavor to take the sacrament every week because we want to preserve and nurture our spirituality. ~Elder José Teixeira’s
