New Year Resolutions.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS: 1) I will work daily to become a better example of humility and charity. I am a child of God, and the power is in me to become like him if I do my part.
"One day the small meadow animals were standing around talking about who was the smallest, tallest, smartest. The subject came up as to which was the most beautiful and just on queue over the meadow there arose the peacock. He came to the top of the hill, spread his feathers, and the sun caught every single color of his plumage. The animals gasped in wonder and said, 'surely this is one of the Lord's most beautiful creatures.' The peacock came down the hill, and the animals parted making a pathway for him. He walked through, and you could see every single color of the rainbow captured in his plumage. As he came to the edge of the crown, he stood next to a little sparrow and said unto the sparrow, 'Is it not true that I am one of the Lord's most beautiful creatures' The sparrow has his eyes near the ground and said, 'Oh yes, brother peacock, you are one of the Lord's most beautiful creatures.' As the little sparrow had his eyes to the ground, he happened to look at the feet of the peacock. He noticed the color. It was a very ugly blue gray--sort of the color of a bruise. He noticed the legs were rather stick like, and the claws were grotesque and ugly. So the sparrow said, 'Have you noticed your feet?' The peacock said 'whatever are you talking about?' Your claws, your feet, have you ever noticed them. The peacock looked down at these ugly feet and claws and screamed. My grandfather says to this day this is why the peacock screams. When the peacock screamed, the little sparrow rose up and flew away leaving the land locked peacock to his own horror. Sometimes we feel like a single sparrow in a flock of peacocks. People seem to radiate with talent, ability, articulation, and we start to compare their beauty, talents, and strengths to our own inadequacies. Sometimes, we let that be the core of what we believe about ourselves.
2) I will desire to know truth, ponder, read scriptures, ask the Lord, and listen to receive from God early in the morning of everyday.
"...President McKay sometime ago in talking to the Presidency and the twelve, urged us to give time for more meditation so that we could tune in with spiritual forces that we had a right to and should expect to direct us in our work. He said, 'The best time for me is early in the morning when my mind and body are rested. But when the inspiration comes, and it can come just as clearly as though you were taking down a telephone and dialing in for information; when the Lord tells you what to do, you have to have the courage to do what he instructs you.'" (Harold B. Lee)
3) I will be bold and share the "Good News" of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, so others may have the joys that I have experienced. I will share my testimony with others of the most precious of all gifts, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A gift offered to me while in my youth, and which changes my life to one of greater happiness as I apply its truths.
"'So little done, and so much that lies yet ahead.' We must expect opposition, and sometimes that opposition may come from inside, but remember what the Prophet Joseph Smith our early leader said: 'The nearer a person approaches the Lord, the greater the power will be manifested by the Adversary to prevent the accomplishment of his purposes.' One of the brethren President John Taylor, said he heard the Prophet say, 'You have all kinds of trials to pass through, and it is quite as necessary for you to be tried even as Abraham, and other men of God,' and said he, 'God will feel after you, he will take hold of you and wrench your very heartstrings, and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the kingdom of God.' (Harold B. Lee)
4) I will make a journal entry daily, and I will strive to do the following:
"But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine: That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise, that [they be] in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; that they may teach the Young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, [to be] discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. Young men like wise exhort to be sober minded. In all things shewing thyself a pattern of good works: in doctrine [shewing] uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you." (Titus)