December 22, 2025
Hey everybody! How's life going. Christmas might actually be something all the way over here. Enjoy all the decorations for me. We're on week 18 and the new transfers are through. Let's get right into it.
Spiritual thought: today's spiritual thought comes from a question an elder had in our new apartment. Its about the Sabbath.
He said, how strict is God's law when it comes to being exalted. Like where does good draw the line on the little things. For example; is watching football on Sunday gonna stop me from getting the highest degree of glory in the celestial kingdom?
Probably not, but the interesting thing is this. If you really, and I mean REALLY, want to be exalted, where is your mind going to go first of all? Of course, we're going to use Jesus as the perfect example. What did he do? What did he always do that everyone else finds impossible to do.
He turned outward, and NEVER turned inward.
Well what does that mean. Let me give you an example. Let's imagine that you're walking down the street and someone pulls your wallet full of cash out of your pocket. What's your first reaction? I'll give you a few that I'd probably think.
1. Hopelessly call the dude names in my head and think about how angry I feel.
2. Hopelessly chase after him, then follow step 1.
3. Call out to him to guilt trip him like this;
"If you're Christian, you know that your sinning!" To see if he'll turn back.
Everyone in Côte D'ivoire believes in God so the 3rd one may work. But then I had the question. What would Jesus do? Would he guilt trip them? Would he chase them out of anger? Would he curse them? None of those sounds very christ-like.
He'd bless them, FROM THE VERY FIRST THOUGHT. Do you know and understand just how IMPOSSIBLE that sounds? The moment he feels his pocket move, he moves outward, away from himself. Asking God, GENUINELY, to bless this person.
So what would God do about the Sunday football. We'll first of all, we know that Christ turns outward. Watching football turns us where??? Inward. Exactly. Again, do you understand how impossible that sounds?? Jesus tells us in his sermon on the mount to LOVE OUR ENEMIES. He says
"But I say unto you, LOVE your enemies, BLESS them that curse you, DO GOOD to them that hate you, and PRAY for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;" (Matthew 5:44)
Do you understand how hard it is to do that? Notice how I said hard this time. It can be done. But how?
Christ-like attributes. I know that if we can matter these attributes one by one, we take one step closer to God. I invite you to try and shift your perspective. When things are hard, look for Christ's perspective. And really think, how would he handle this.
Love you guys, thanks for reading. Sorry that the emails were a little long lately. But next week will be different hopefully.
Some quick events of the last week.
I'm staying in Ayamé with an Elder named Elder Bunker. He's pretty dope and we've been working hard lately.
We found a dude that reminds me so much of a black pop-eye from the cartoon. He's such a character.
Thanks again and have a good week! Keep that christ-like perspective!
- Elder Hill 🇨🇮
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