I thought I would share my Sacrament meeting talk on Personal Revelation.

During this past year, I have felt an urgency to strengthen my personal relationship with my Savior. The best way to know Him is to obey Him by demonstrating our faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, kindness, charity, diligence, and humility. (This is according to 2 Peter 1:5-10)

There are accounts of amazing manifestations as a result of strengthening these attributes in our lives.

Melvin J. Ballard recorded:

I saw … the most glorious being I have ever conceived of and was taken forward to be introduced to Him. As I approached, He smiled, called my name, and stretched out His hands towards me. If I live to be a million years old, I shall never forget that smile. He put His arms around me and kissed me, as He took me into His bosom, and He blessed me until my whole being was thrilled. … Oh! If I could live worthy … so that in the end when I have finished, I could go into His presence and receive the feeling that I then had in His presence, I would give everything that I am or ever hope to be! (Melvin J. Ballard—Crusader for Righteousness, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966, p. 65–66.)

Emmeline B. Wells shared an experience where she was preparing to go to the temple the following day. She felt a compulsion to press her clothes, so she could look her very best. When she entered the temple the next morning and was dressed in her white dress, she saw the Savior. He spoke to her saying, “Emmeline, how beautiful you are in your beautiful dress.” (Emmeline was interviewed by Ethel C. Lund when she shared this experience, The Witness of Women, p. 21).

Joseph Smith said of his vision:

It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him! (JS-H 1:17).

I believe Heavenly Father and Jesus will call us by our names when we prove to them our strength in obedience and desire to know Them.

Pres. Nelson asked us, in the Women’s session, to “Seek to know more, to understand more, to feel more.” I believe that all of us, women in particular, don’t realize the power we can access through priesthood power, by strengthening divine attributes.

I testify that Relief Society is an inspired organization that has been given power to bring people to Jesus Christ.

At one of the first meetings, after being organized, Joseph Smith said, “I now turn the key to you in the name of God and this Society shall rejoice and knowledge and intelligence shall flow down from this time.”

I believe this blessing allows women the ability to access Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in more ways than we may realize. As a sisterhood, we need to work together to discover all that is granted to us.

He also said, “If you live up to your privileges, the angels cannot be restrain’d from being your associates.”

When Emmeline B. Wells became the fifth Relief Society General President, she “expressed the fear that (Relief Society) was getting too far away from the spiritual side of our great work, and from the thought that inspired the first organization of the Relief Society. ‘The Society stands first for spirituality and then for charity and mercy’” (Women of Covenant, p. 189).

When Belle Spafford (another RS Pres.) and her board were set apart, George Albert Smith gave them an explicit charge “to spiritualize the homes of the Latter-day Saints” (Women of Covenant, p. 307).

In our Relief Society history there are countless stories of miracles and spiritual manifestations. Things we don’t normally see today.

Heber J. Grant recorded a time as a little boy when he went with his mother to a Relief Society meeting. He said, “‘Aunt Em’ Wells was there, Eliza R. Snow, Zina D. Young, and many others. After the meeting was over Sister Eliza R. Snow, by the gift of tongues, gave a blessing to each and every one of those good sisters and Sister Zina D. Young gave the interpretation” (The Witness of Women, 103).

Is that something we might experience in Relief Society again?

Amanda Barnes Smith’s diary records the miraculous healing performed on her son as Christ was the physician and she was His nurse.

I discovered my son and knelt by his side and prayed, “Oh my Heavenly Father, what shall I do? Thou seest my poor wounded boy and knowest my inexperience. Oh, Heavenly Father, direct me what to do!”

And then I was directed as by a voice speaking to me.

“Alma, my child,” I said, “the Lord can make something there in the place of your hip, don’t you believe he can?

“Do you think that the Lord can, mother?”

“Yes, my son,” I replied, “he has showed it all to me in a vision”

(The Witness of Women, p. 41-42).

That little boy believed his mother because he must have seen her demonstrate her faith before.

Pres. Nelson has challenged us to

“unleash the power of families, as each family follows through conscientiously and carefully to transform their home into a sanctuary of faith. … Then I invite you to worship in the temple and pray to feel deeply the Savior’s infinite love for you, that each of you may gain your own testimony that He directs this sacred and ageless work.”   

How can we do this?

Alma 32:27 tells us, “But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.”

The Lord wants us to put Him to the test and if we are sincere, He will show us His hand in our lives. We have all been commanded to bring spiritual power into our own lives, our families lives, and in our Relief Society and Quorums. May we do so by experimenting upon His words. He is waiting to share His power with us, I so testify.