From Larry W. Tippets and his book “Receiving Personal Revelation”:
I want to caution you that it is possible to do all the right things—study, pray, attend church meetings, and so forth—and still find yourself becoming worn out, discouraged, and perhaps cynical. My father taught me an important lesson as a young boy of seven or eight years old. We had an old garage detached from our home that hadn’t been cleaned in some time. Dad asked me to take a broom and clean up while he worked on a project in the yard. It was not what I wanted to do. I wandered around the garage twiddling my thumbs, looking for interesting things to play with. After some time Dad poked his head in to see how I was doing. When he asked why I was not working, I came up with several excuses: it’s too hard, I didn’t know where to begin.
Dad said, “Larry, your problem is you really don’t want to do this job. You haven’t got your heart in it.”He walked to the corner, moved a few boxes and a few tires, swept the dust and debris toward the middle of the garage, and replaced the boxes. “Now, Larry, ” he said with a knowing smile, “the hardest part has been done. You’re going to find that work can be really fun once you put your heart in it,” and he left me with the broom. Now that the job was started, I saw that it was relatively easy, and I got into the spirit of it. Even before Dad came to check on me, I was really pleased at the difference my work was making and I couldn’t wait to show him. When he came back and saw the clean garage, Dad complimented me on a job well done and then asked, “Did it become even easier—once you decided to dig in and do it?” I had to admit he was right. Now I love to organize the garage, clean the yard and most any other job.
I did not realize at the time, but my father’s lesson about physical work also shaped my approach to spiritual work. Engaging in spiritual exercises, living the gospel, or serving in callings—if done half-heartedly, all can become boring, tedious or burdensome. Nephi taught his people that “if they would follow the Son with full purpose of heart, acting no hypocrisy and no deception before God, but with real intent, . . .behold, then shall ye receive the Holy Ghost; yea, then cometh the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost; and then can ye speak with the tongue or angels, and shout praises unto the Holy One of Israel” (2 Nephi 31;13). I find great joy in spiritual work—and make no mistake about it, it is work. It is joining with the Savior in His work to bring about our immortality and eternal life (see Moses 1:39).
Having laid a foundation for the importance of spiritual exercise, I now turn to what I consider the three foundational exercises—personal prayer, personal scripture study, and a personal journal writing— with emphasis on journal writing as a means to help us recognize the personal revelation that flows through prayer and scripture study .~Larry W. Tippets: Receiving Personal Revelation (American Fork, Utah, Covenant Communications Inc., 2017) p.54-55 (This is the end of chapter 8, Chapter 9 is titled: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Exercise).
