Pres. Russell M. Nelson (Oct. '22): Overcome the World and Find Rest

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 Every line of this talk is drenched in prophetic insight.  When I marked it during my study, there was probably more marked than unmarked.  What a blessing it is to have a living prophet who is sharing with us God's will for us today.  

The Activity:

  1. Divide the class into five groups
  2. Five each group a slip of paper with one sentence from par. 21
    1. "It means overcoming . . . things of God."
    2. "It means trusting . . . philosophies of men."
    3. "It means delighting . . . followers of Christ."
    4. "It means choosing . . . the Spirit away."
    5. "It means being . . . our favorite sins."
  3. Explain that each of these is a sentence that Pres. Nelson uses to answer the question, "What does it mean to overcome the world?" (par. 21)
  4. Ask each group to read their sentence and then discuss the following questions:
    1. In very practical terms, how can we do this?  What practices will help us do this?  What practices have helped you to make this change in your life?
    2. What blessings have you seen as you have pursued these goals/practices in your life?
    3. How do all of these things connect to finding rest in today's world?
  5. Allow the groups a few minutes to discuss these questions
  6. As the discussions wind down, bring the class back together and discuss the highlights of each group's discussion.

Using the Activity:

In all honesty, it would be hard to come up with a bad activity for this talk.  So, this activity here may be more of a catalyst for you to do something different.  

The activity itself is designed to help us 1) to apply the prophet's words in our lives and 2) to remember those moments in which we have done these things and the results of those actions.  Applying and remembering are two of the ways that we are asked to think about God's word in the scriptures.  So, this activity hopefully will help these particular words to sink deep into the hearts of our class members and teach them a pattern for how to think about God's word.  

As always, thank you for visiting my site.  I hope that you have found it helpful.  Please feel free to leave a comment telling me how this idea worked for you or to share other ideas you have for teaching this talk-- a talk that will surely feature prominently in Relief Society and Elders' Quorum meetings throughout the Church.  

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