I was rereading the talks from the general women’s session in the Ensign and one of the talks impressing me more than it had at the time when I had heard it.  It is Rosemary Wixom’s talk“Discovering the Divinity Within.”

“We come to this earth to nurture and discover the seeds of divine nature that are within us.”

I’ve known that we have a divine nature because we are children of God, but it hadn’t occurred to me that we can nurture that divine nature.  Somehow I hadn’t thought of it that way before. 

“Our divine nature has nothing to do with our personal accomplishments, the status we achieve, the number of marathons we run, or our popularity and self-esteem. Our divine nature comes from God. It was established in an existence that preceded our birth and will continue on into eternity.”

There are things we associate with our identities that are temporal, not necessarily eternal.  It is good to remember the difference. 

I also think personal accomplishments are good when we practice righteous principles and build righteous character traits, but some accomplishments are going to be more important eternally than others.   There are accomplishments that the world lauds, but which won’t help us in the eternities.  There are also personal accomplishments that will be passed over, sneered at, or ignored by the world. 

I noticed that her talk contained a number of different ways that we can nurture our divine nature.

"We identify with our divine nature as we feel and give the love of our Father in Heaven. We have the agency to nurture it, let it flourish, and help it grow."

Love is clearly part of divine nature. 

"We naturally turn to Him in prayer, and we are eager to read His words and to do His will. We are able to take our validation vertically from Him, not horizontally from the world around us or from those on Facebook or Instagram."

The impulse to pray and read the scriptures is from our divine nature.  This reminds me of the scripture that says the Spirit teaches man to pray.  I suppose then that not only the Holy Ghost teaches us to pray, but also our own divine nature.  That is neat.

"Divine nature breathes into us the desire to know these eternal truths for ourselves."

So the desire to gain a testimony is from our divine nature and that will lead us to do all the experimenting upon the word that will help us come to know every eternal principle. 

"Divine nature breathes into us the desire to serve others. . . .

The divine nature within us ignites our desire to reach out to others and prompts us to act. . . .

I’m getting the feeling that every good thing that we want to do will be part of our divine nature.  And this makes me realize that of course there will be a war between our divine nature and our natural man or woman.  So we’ll have to make decisions to choose which one we nurture. 

Today, let’s focus on doing those things that will nurture the divine nature within us.