Tips for Living: 'Recognizing God's Abundant Blessings in Our Lives'

Many feel the challenges of daily life and need some encouraging words. Here are a few simple tips which can buoy us up and give hope from Kim Nelson’s talk on CD, "Love Beyond Measure: Recognizing God’s Abundant Blessing in our Lives" (Covenant Communications, $11.99).

• Know God’s intention. Many times, people will judge themselves too harshly and need to consciously choose to move toward thoughts that they are good people and can live with abundance. Choose the abundance of God’s blessings.
• Look for bread and fish instead of stones and serpents. From Matthew 7:9-11, Jesus tells the story of the son asking for bread or fish and the father giving him that which he asks instead of stones or serpents. God wants his children to have bread and fish instead of stones or serpents. Look for the richness of life to find abundance.
• Seek good gifts — there are plenty. Each person has diamonds within them. When seeing others using their good gifts, we shouldn’t feel that our gifts are just as sand but theirs are diamonds. Seek for those gifts in abundance, as they are of great worth.
• Continue in good faith instead of enduring to the end. Enduring to the end is sitting in a dentist chair waiting for it to be over. Continuing in good faith is choosing to move toward abundance. Consciously look for understanding of the richness of our life even through difficult times.

When the adversary deals with people it is always about him. When God deals with us it is always about us. We must move from darkness to the light, from scarcity to abundance, from fear to love. Life has a great abundance for us if we just seek it.

Valerie Steimle is the mother of nine children who lives on the Gulf Coast of Alabama and is the author of four books, including "Of One Heart: Being Single in the LDS World."