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In this episode, we'll go over some more teaching tips for the Young Women and Young Men's lessons, specifically ideas for “How Can I Improve My Worship of God?” typically taught on the second Sunday in February (February 12). Worship is such a big, huge word. It covers so many different things that sometimes I think we forget to understand what it really means. Let’s dive in!

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When Adam and Eve were first placed on the earth, the Lord gave them commandments “that they should love and serve him, the only living and true God, and that he should be the only being whom they should worship” (D&C 20:19). True worship leads us to salvation and lets us commune with God.

Recipe for True Worship

There are some key ingredients to true worship. Help demonstrate some important aspects with a recipe example. If you add all the ingredients to your bowl, you can go bake yourself some quick bread (I used the Cinnamon Swirl Quick Bread recipe from Persnickety Plates). Print out some simple quotes from the resources mentioned in the Come Follow Me manual, as well as some additional articles on the Church's website, churchofJesusChrist.org.

For example, the quote on the salt says, “True worship begins when our hearts are right before the Father and the Son. What is our heart condition today?” by Sister Neill F. Marriot. The ingredient then is a broken heart. Read the quote, discuss it a little, then dump it into the bowl. After you add all the ingredients, you get to do your grand reveal of …ta-da …quick bread (bring a baked loaf and make it magical). As we come to truly worship God, we're not simply eating bread. We're partaking of the living bread and never have to hunger again.

Print Recipe Quotes

Bishop Dean M. Davies of the Presiding Bishopric said, “Worshiping God is such an essential element in the life of the disciple of Jesus Christ that if we fail to receive Him in our hearts, we will seek for Him in vain in our councils, churches, and temples.” Those key ingredients that we went over are to help us to receive him in our hearts and not just worship in vain, but as Elder Bruce R. McConkie stated there are “10,000 times 10,000 ways” that you can worship God.

While there are some great key ingredients in my recipe for the bread, there are more ways that we can worship God and more things that can help us in our true worship. What is important to your class? What are some things that they would add to the recipe? Continue to discuss as you eat some of your bread or pass it out at the end of class. At the very least, you get to take the dough home and make it yourself.

We Can Worship Anywhere, Anytime

We can worship anytime, anywhere, doing anything. In the Book of Mormon, Alma is teaching and being a missionary. He goes to the synagogues of the Nephites and they won't listen to him. They kick him out so he goes and he finds the poor. In Alma 32:9-11 he says,

“Behold thy brother hath said, What shall we do?—for we are cast out of our synagogues, that we cannot worship our God.

“Behold I say unto you, do ye suppose that ye cannot worship God save it be in your synagogues only?

“And moreover, I would ask, do ye suppose that ye must not worship God only once in a week?”

We can worship him more than that, right? We don't have to just be in our churches once a week on a Sunday and that's the only time we worship him. We can do it all the time. The woman at the well, which is where this lesson really comes from in John chapter four, she was worried that it was unacceptable to worship God in Samaria because that's what the Jews at that time were claiming. It must be done in Jerusalem. Christ teaches her that no, it is possible to worship elsewhere, and she ends up doing so.

Hand out little scrap pieces of paper to your class and invite them to write down something that they typically do during their week. It could be something spiritual, it could be something more worldly. Whatever they want to focus on is fine. Something that is important to them. Write it down on a piece of paper, fold it up, and toss them all into a bowl. Mix them up and invite your class to pick one piece of paper. If they get their own, they can choose whether they keep it or if they want to pass it back and get a new one. Each person will read that paper, ponder for a minute, then present to the class one way that they could do that thing without worshiping God and then a way that they could do that thing while worshiping God.

Because it's not really about the place or the time or the how. It's about what's in our hearts. If we change what's in our hearts, how can that thing be something that we can worship God. Then you can ask your class, “Why in the world would we want to do that? Why would we change everything that we do in order to worship God? What was the point of that? And how does that bless us?”

There are a whole lot of blessings! You can read some of the scriptures in the manual or Bishop Davies' talk, but there are a whole lot! Here’s just a few:

We invite light and truth into our souls.
We strengthen our faith.
We get to commune with God.
We become more understanding, more forgiving, more loving, more charitable.
We become more like God.
We develop an unwavering determination to walk the covenant path of discipleship.
We receive Christ as our Savior.
Doubt leaves and knowledge enters.
We are refined.
Our hearts are open to the healing power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
We are forgiven.
Church meetings become spiritual feasts.

And that’s just the beginning! There are so many wonderful blessings. As we come to worship God, we will be filled.

Personal, Family, and Public Worship

There is personal, family, and public worship that we participate in. We go to church; we go to the temple. We have family prayer and family scripture study. We do our personal ponderings and studies and prayers. There are all sorts of things that we can do.

Our meeting houses are churches. They're dedicated as houses of worship. All who enter our church buildings with pure intent get nearer to the presence of the Lord. Think about that! As you enter into the church on Sunday, you are becoming closer to God. As we partake of the sacrament, the most sacred part of our worship services, we have an opportunity to commune with God. It is a sacred and holy setting.

How then might we want to treat our houses of worship? How should we prepare to attend church? President David O. McKay stated, “When you enter a church building, you are coming into the presence of our Father in heaven; and that thought should be sufficient incentive for you to prepare your hearts, your minds, and even your attire, that you might appropriately and properly sit in his presence.”

Are we being full participants in our public worship every single week? If not, what can we change? Elder Donald l Holstrom stated, “Are our minds and our hearts there, or are they somewhere else? Are our smartphones off, or do we text and tweet (or for us older people, email) during the ordinance or during any part of the meeting? When the speakers speak, especially if they are less-polished orators, do we arrogantly disconnect, thinking, ‘I’ve heard it all before’?” I think we've all been guilty of that. At one point or another, we get distracted we're not truly worshiping as we should be.

Do we, during sacrament meeting, worship God or are we worshiping something else like our phones? Or when we go home from church, do we immediately focus our worship on something else? How are we treating the Sabbath day? How are we treating our meetings? This is a great moment for quiet, reflection time.

This is also a great opportunity to brainstorm as a class, some goals that you have in regard to how we treat our church building during Sunday services as well as during our activities. How do we want to treat a place of worship, a place where we come to commune with God? If you are the last word, you probably have some additional responsibilities to clean up after church. We also take turns to come and clean our church buildings. How might we reframe the way that we think about those things when we remember what a special place that church building really is and what it can be for people each week?

Personal Worship Can Include Meditation

Personal worship also includes meditation. President David O. McKay was a huge fan of this. He said, “We pay too little attention to the value of meditation… Meditation is the language of the soul. It is defined as ‘a form of private devotion, or spiritual exercise, consisting in deep, continued reflection on some religious theme.’ Meditation is a form of prayer.” He continues, “Meditation is one of the most secret, most sacred doors through which we pass into the presence of the Lord.”

Can you think of when our greatest example Jesus Christ took time to meditate? President McKay called the place where Christ went to fast for 40 days and to talk with God the Mount of Meditation. Look for any time the Lord goes to be alone for a while. Those are meditation moments! Before Christ teaches the Sermon on the Mount, after feeding the 5,000. Christ takes that time to meditate, to think, and to ponder about those things that are most sacred.

Try a meditation exercise in your class. If you've never done it before, don't worry. There are some helps for you. Something important to remember is that meditation includes reflection on a religious theme. It is not an empty mind. It is a focused mind on those things of God.

Brooke Snow is a great resource and has some free meditations you can use if your ward is okay with that. Search for Brooke Snow on your favorite podcast platform and look for the episodes with “Meditation in Motion” in their titles. They are shorter episodes where she walks you through a guided meditation experience. A great one to start with that's under five minutes is “Yahweh- Breathe the Name of God.” It might be a little awkward at first as you get used to being still and quiet and just thinking about those things yourself, but it's a great exercise and a great way to bring in the Spirit as we focus our minds on the sacred.

I didn't even touch upon worshiping through music. It's probably going to come up organically because we think of music all the time when we think of worship. But if you need another idea, it's definitely one that you could focus on: play some music, read a hymn, or listen to the new youth theme music. How does music help you worship? How can it help us worship throughout the week?

Those are some ideas for you to get going and teaching this wonderful lesson. As we recommit to worship, truly worship, in our meeting houses and in our homes, we will notice such a significant difference in our lives.

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