I'm just putting the finishing touches on lesson 32, Personal Purity Through Self-Control. Isn't it so cool how things catch your attention and the Lord really helps you when you're not expecting it. In the past week, I "coincidentally" came across three things that reinforced the lesson. (VT message, Conference talk, and Education Week.)

This month's Visiting Teaching Message is on the same topic. Also, I've been listening to the Conference talks from April 2000. President Faust has a wonderful talk to the Priesthood members titled "The Power of Self-Mastery".

President Faust talks about using your own personal moral filters. "In its simplest terms, self-mastery is doing those things we should do and not doing those things we should not do. It requires strength, willpower, and honesty. As the traffic on the communications highway becomes a parking lot, we must depend more and more on our own personal moral filters to separate the good from the bad."

Then, I was in an Education Week class last week taught by Matthew Richardson. We were meeting in a chemistry room, and he talked about using a filter to clean out unclean particles. He gave the example to take a Solution, then put it through a Filter. It takes out the Unclean Particles and you are left with a Pure Solution. (A friend of mine is a chemist and I hope to do a demonstration of how this actually works.)

This is what happens when we remove sin from our life. Paul said in his letter to Corinthians in 2 Cor. 5:17 "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

When we remove sin from our life, we become a new creature. And in 1 Thes 4:10 the Lord guarantees you will become a better person. You'll be More.

Now we get to put the principles to the test. 1 Thes. 5 helps us to understand that when you:

1. Remove the bad (old), they you will:
2. Add something (the new you).

It is not only the absence of evil but the presence of Godliness that is essential.  We might use the excuse that, "I'm just that way," as to why we are impatient, grouchy, use foul language, etc. We can't do that any more.

When we temper who we are, we become sanctified and justified. We do this NOT because we're supposed to (that's what good members do). The Added Part is that we do it because we want to be good. That's the added part - I'm NEW - something is added to my life - which is a miracle.

President Hinckley, speaking at Rick's College Devotional in Oct. 1995 said "I could not wish for you anything more than that happiness which comes of being at peace in our hearts and at peace with the Lord." TGBH p. 426

Then Bro. Richardson ended with this. If we won't be responsible for the things we do wrong, we'll always be bound to not be able to enjoy the compliment of what we do right. There are no more excuses. (After we repent) the filtering miracle of justification and sanctification cleanse like nothing else.

I'm going to challenge the girls to become new creatures. Then I'll tie it in somehow to President Hinckley's Four B's quote I'd sent to the list earlier. I want to be a bee! Bee fair, bee smart, bee clean, bee true.

Contributed by Carla: LVMOM98@aol.com

As an object lesson/handout for this lesson, I gave each of the girls a couple of plain Vanilla wafers at the beginning of class - I told them if they wanted to, they could eat the cookies, but they would be "rewarded" if they didn't eat them (none of them ate them) At the end of the lesson I handed each girl a big heart sugar cookie that I had frosted with pink frosting, and wrapped in saran wrap - I had a tag attached with a ribbon which read "when we exercise self control, we will receive "sweet" rewards"

The girls LOVED this (they would love anything that was food related actually - lol) but this was a successful object lesson and handout. Hope this helps!