Learn to pray. Pray often. Pray in your mind, in your heart. Pray on your knees. Prayer is your personal key to heaven. The lock is on your side of the veil. And I have learned to conclude all my prayers with ‘Thy will be done’ (Matthew 6:10; see also Luke 11:2; 3 Nephi 13:10).
I counsel you, in the words of Jesus Christ, to "watch and pray I always lest ye enter into temptation; for Satan desireth to have you, that he may sift you as wheat" (3 Nephi 18:18). If you will earnestly seek guidance from your Heavenly Father, morning and evening, you will be given the strength to shun any temptation.
And thus we see that by small means the Lord can bring about great things" - 1 Nephi 16:29
The muscularity in my paintings is only an expression of the spirit within. When I paint Nephi, I'm painting the interior, the greatness, the largeness of spirit. Who knows what he looked like? I'm painting a man who looks like he could actually do what Nephi did.
Nephi taught that by clinging to the word of God, as though it be a handrail, we would be able to avoid temptations and not lose our way in darkness. Thus, we would remain on the narrow path.
There were no pre-adamic men in the line of Adam. I am not a scientist. I do not profess to know anything but Jesus Christ, and him crucified, and the principles of his gospel. If, however, there are some things in the strata of the earth indicating there were men before Adam, they were not the ancestors of Adam. Adam was the son of God. . . . He did not come up through an unbroken line of organic evolution. There had to be a fall. 'Adam fell that men might be. ' (2 Nephi 2:25. ).
