BYU-Idaho’s Workday governance officer delivered today’s devotional, teaching about the power of recognizing patterns and truths in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Alicia Willis titled her devotional, “The Gospel of Jesus Christ: A Powerful Pattern for Life.”
Willis began her devotional talking about her family’s daily scripture study. She said it wasn’t always picture perfect, but the consistency helped her to recognize gospel patterns.
“Something magical has taken place through the regular practice of dragging ourselves out of bed early in the morning and opening our scriptures,” Willis said. “And through much patient effort, and a good number of impatient mom-lectures, we have created a pattern in our family that, while not perfect, has brought significant blessings into our lives. For me, one of those blessings has been to recognize patterns within the scriptures.”
In an interview with BYU-Idaho Radio, Willis said she was inspired by her family’s scripture study and the reoccurring messages she saw over the years.
“There were these principles that just popped out at me again and again,” Willis said. "But I think in preparing for this talk specifically the one that kind of touched my heart most was reading about Elijah and his experience with learning to recognize what the Holy Spirit feels like. I felt that was a really powerful experience, one that resonated with me.”
Willis said the topic of gospel patterns was on her mind the most. She said that as she has worked with young women in her ward and watched her own children growing up in the last few years, she felt it is easy for them to over complicate the gospel of Jesus Christ. She wanted to help the young adults at BYU-Idaho know how to ground their beliefs.
“I just have come to have this really strong feeling and excitement about the fact that the gospel is simple and so it’s important for us to understand those basic things,” Willis said. “Of course, there’s many gospel principles and Christlike attributes we want to develop in our lives, but if we don’t have that core foundation, we don’t have something to pin it to.”
To learn more about Alicia Willis’s devotional, listen to the full interview on BYU-Idaho Radio’s podcast on Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to Willis’s devotional, you can visit BYU-Idaho Radio’s Podcast or visit BYU-I’s Speech’s page and select “Devotionals.”