How can parents and leaders help youth develop spiritual resilience? What is parental success? What do our youth want most, and how can we help them make the connection between what they want most and how Christ can help them get it?

Sharla Goettl, in her new book Spiritual Resilience, presents some inspired insights to help answer these questions, using Nephi in the Book of Mormon as a model. I am excited to be part of the blog tour for this amazing book!

I could tell this book was written through the influence of the Spirit, because as I read certain questions and phrases, my mind became filled with thoughts and inspiration for how I can help myself and my children develop spiritual resilience. I think every reader will get something different out of the book—even ideas that aren’t necessarily within the book! This is exactly what the author intended.

For me, I was particularly struck by the author’s observation that “not recognizing one’s personal place in God’s plan of salvation can be the first stumbling block to developing spiritual resilience” (pg 42).

I thought about this quote in the context of my own experience as a youth. When I was about twelve years old, I was very depressed and discouraged. I had a testimony, but the real issue was that I felt useless. In other words, I didn’t know how to fit in or contribute to God’s plan of salvation. 

Around the age of thirteen, I decided I would one day serve a mission. This decision helped pull me out of my depression because it gave me a place in God’s plan, and a goal to work toward. I’m glad I served a mission, but my mission was harder than it needed to be because whenever I fell short of being an ideal missionary, all my usefulness to God’s plan seemed to crumble, and my self esteem would crumble with it. My confidence and spiritual resilience would have been less precarious, and my teenage years more joyful, if I could have expanded my vision of my personal place in God’s plan of salvation.

My children are still very young, but as they grow older I hope to help them understand that there are infinite ways to be useful in God’s plan. Yes, God’s path is straight and narrow, but that doesn’t mean there is just one series of landmarks. I love the metaphor in Spiritual Resilience about how “instead of seeing the covenant path as a single, crowded road leading up a mountainside, we can imagine many paths starting from several places around the base of the same mountain. All of them are straight and narrow, and all lead upward, but each starts from a different location” (pg 46).

The Spirit can lead us and our youth to live our covenants in many different ways, and to be instruments in God’s plan to bless the world. That’s partly why, in my recent and upcoming posts, I’ve been so obsessed with understanding the Abrahamic covenant and the significance of the house of Israel and what the gathering of Israel entails. Because, as I’ve learned from Brad Wilcox, it’s not enough for the youth to know that they are children of God and that they have been saved for the last days—those two things aren’t enough to help the youth of the Church understand why they are so special; the youth also need to know what it means to be of the house of Israel and to be children of the birthright. (“Birthright” is a topic I hope to cover in my next post.)

I’m indebted to Sharla Goettl, author of Spiritual Resilience, for reminding me of the importance of praying before every writing session, and thus avoid getting stuck and having to start over. I hope to emulate her example, and I hope my readers will receive the ideas they need most right now, as we work together to develop spiritual resilience.

Visit www.SharlaGoettl.com to learn more about the book and to receive a free gift. Also, win prizes (free books and online courses) here on a Rafflecopter giveaway. See below for the blog tour schedule for Spiritual Resilience so you can see other insights readers gained from this uplifting book.

April Blog Tour Sites for Spiritual Resilience:

• April 12: http://christymonson.blogspot.com/
• April 13: http://www.rachelkirkaldie.blogspot.com
• April 14: http://journeyinthejoy.com
• April 15: http://www.shannonsymonds.com
• April 16: https://theheroinsideme.com/
• April 17: http://www.unwillingchild.wordpress.com
• April 18: https://bookofmormonconsensus.blogspot.com/
• May 1: http://www.the-exponent.com
• May 2: http://www.maryannjohnsoncoach.com
• May 3: http://www.mybookaday.com
• May 4: https://granteagar.blogspot.com
• May 5: https://bewarethebookwyrm.wordpress.com
• May 6: https://singinglibrarianbooks.com
• May 7: http://lisaisabookworm.blogspot.com
• May 8: http://www.bonnieharris.blogspot.com