Increase in Faith and Personal Righteousness

Remember when I wrote about the new purposes of the Relief Society here.

1. Increase in faith and personal righteousness.
2. Strengthen families and homes.
3. Provide relief by serving the Lord and His children.

The thing I found most interesting about these 3 purposes is that they are in the order they are for a reason. In order to do the 2nd and 3rd purpose you really need to be working on the first and it’s hard to do the third if you aren’t doing the first or second.  Agree?
For the next 3 days I am going to talk about each of them.  The first one is to Increase in faith and personal righteousness.
I love that they chose to use the word “Increase”. To increase means to make greater, as in number, size, strength, or quality.  So it’s not something we have to be perfect at, but something that we are working at to make greater.  Faith and Personal Righteousness are not something that you can develop over night.  It is something we have to work on on a daily basis.  Sometimes we may struggle and lose faith or feel like our personal righteousness is lacking. 
This is something we need to work on daily.  How? 
Here is a list of things I think of when it comes to increasing my faith and personal righteousness

• Am I reading my Scriptures daily, and not just reading them, but trying to learn from them?
• Am I saying my personal prayers night and day asking the spirit to be with me throughout my day?
• Am I helping to have peace in my home, or am I getting distracted by other things?
• Am I attending the temple at least once a month?
• Am I going to church?
• Am I willingly doing my visiting teaching?
• Am I exercising my faith instead of thinking all is hopeless?
• Am I trusting God and his plan for my life?
• Am I being a good friend?
• Am I teaching my kids gospel principles on a daily basis?
• Am I working each day to be a better person.

I don’t do these perfectly.  I should, but don’t.  But the good thing about the gospel is we can try harder the next day.  God wants us to be better he wants us to work harder and he is there to help us each day if we ask!  We can daily increase in our personal righteousness by trying harder each day to be better. 

Elder Keith B. McMullin says, “The more we cleave unto righteousness, the more we enjoy the protecting care of our Savior. He is the Creator and Lord of the universe. He will calm the winds and the waves. His teachings and Atonement will heal the repentant soul….”

Any thoughts?  I’d love to hear from you!