"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye."
Matthew 7:5
This is a good reminder that we sometimes get things out of order. When we're considering the gospel, we often mentally jump to other people and what they are doing and apply the gospel to them, but a wiser course is to apply the gospel to ourselves first. God said something similar to Hyrum Smith in Doctrine and Covenants 11:21: "Seek not to declare my word, but first seek to obtain my word." It is like the oxygen mask rule on planes... first we have to make sure our own masks are secure, then we can help others.
Today, let's reduce the hypocrisy in our lives and make sure we're applying the gospel to our own potentially bigger problems first. Once we get our own lives squared away, we'll have plenty of time to help others to improve in a certain principle. Meanwhile, it is good mental exercise as we read, study, attend church, watch conference, etc. to figure out how the current lesson applies to ourselves and how much we can learn from it rather than letting our minds wander to how much all those other people need to hear it. :)
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