Instruments in the Hands of God Through Prayer

The Joseph Millett Story is one of my all-time favorites. (Ask my children how many times they have watched the video. 🙂 ) I think of it often. Simply viewing this video and then asking questions  of ourselves and our children will help us to see where we stand before the Lord. Hopefully, we will get closer to our Heavenly Father by following its teachings.

Link: Joseph Millet Story

(the video is found on churchofjesuschrist.org)

Here are some possible questions:

• Why did the Lord send Brother Hall to Joseph Millett?
• What made Joseph Millett usable by the Lord? (Notice that Joseph Millett didn’t have very much flour and he had a large family.)
• What circumstances has the Lord used you in?
• What do you think the Lord is preparing to use you for in the future?
• What are you doing to be close to the Lord?
• How has the Lord answered your prayers?
• When has the Lord met your needs through another person?

I know Heavenly Father knows us. I also know that it is usually through other people that He meets our needs and answers our prayers. I hope we will all be willing to be His instruments and answer prayers.

Other information on this topic:
“God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs. Therefore, it is vital that we serve each other…” Spencer W. Kimball, Ensign, Dec. 1974

Boyd K. Packer stated:

Let me quote from the diary of Joseph Millett, a little-known missionary of an earlier time. Called on a mission to Canada, he went alone and on foot. In Canada, during the wintertime, he said:

“I felt my weakness. A poor, ill-clothed, ignorant boy in my teens, thousands of miles from home among strangers.

“The promise in my blessing and the encouraging words of President Young to me, with the faith I had in the gospel, kept me up.

“Many times I would turn into the woods … in some desolate place with a heart full, wet eyes, to call on my master for strength or aid.

“I believed the Gospel of Christ. I had never preached it. I knew not where to find it in the scriptures.”

That didn’t matter so much, for, “I had to give my Bible to the boatman at Digby for passage across the sound.”

Years later, Joseph Millett, with his large family, was suffering through very, very difficult times. He wrote in his journal:
“One of my children came in and said that Brother Newton Hall’s folks was out of bread, had none that day.
“I divided our flour in a sack to send up to Brother Hall. Just then Brother Hall came.
“Says I, ‘Brother Hall, are you out of flour?’
“‘Brother Millett, we have none.’
“‘Well, Brother Hall, there is some in that sack. I have divided and was going to send it to you. Your children told mine that you was out.’
“Brother Hall began to cry. He said he had tried others, but could not get any. He went to the cedars and prayed to the Lord, and the Lord told him to go to Joseph Millett.
“‘Well Brother Hall, you needn’t bring this back. If the Lord sent you for it you don’t owe me for it.’”
That night Joseph Millett recorded a remarkable sentence in his journal:
“You can’t tell me how good it made me feel to know that the Lord knew there was such a person as Joseph Millett” (Diary of Joseph Millett, holograph, Archives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City).
The Lord knew Joseph Millett. And He knows all those men and women like him, and they are many.”

found in Boyd K. Packer, A Tribute to the Rank and File of the Church, April 1980.

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(the picture of the hand holding the flower is from pixabay.com)