Family Home Evening: Conversion

The thought for Family Home Evening is about conversion. In our Sunday School class yesterday we talked about Paul and his conversion to the gospel.

Stephen is one of the first martyrs of the New Testament times and is the first we have record of who proclaimed that the law of Moses was fulfilled in Christ and ought not to be continued in the Church.

He foreshadowed the great work of Paul. In Stephen's speech before the Sanhedrin he justified his position by an appeal to Israelite history, showing that acceptable worship was offered to God before the law was given, and also pointing out that Israelites who lived under the law had persecuted the prophets whom God had sent.

Paul was present when this speech as made (Acts 8:1;22:20) and was probably influenced by it, though at that moment he was a consenting party to Stephen's death when he was stoned. After Paul's conversion, he went on with the work that Stephen had introduced to him.

Our teacher pointed out the definition of conversion in the Bible Dictionary:

Conversion denotes changing one's views, in a conscious acceptance of the will of God (Acts 3:19). If followed by continued faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism in water for the remission of sins, and the reception of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, conversion will become complete, and will change a natural man into a sanctified, born again, purified person--a new creature in Christ Jesus (see 2 Cor. 5:17). Complete conversion comes after many trials and much testing. (see Luke 22:32; D&C 112:12-13)

Conversion is often a quiet, gradual experience, but in Paul's experience it was sudden and miraculous. At that time Paul asked, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" President Ezra Taft Benson said that is the most important question we can ask in this life.

It's a question we can ask every day of our life.
Love, Mom and Dad (Robert and Shauna Valentine)