President Nelson's Scripture Challenge

Hey all! So this is actually my first time making a blog post ever in my life (my sister made this one for me to post my mission emails on).

I wanted to share something with you that I've been working on for the last monthish. Kind of a self-appointed project.

I've spent countless hours compiling lists of over 2,000 scriptures about Jesus Christ that cover the Standard Works. I did this to make it easier to complete President Nelson's challenge from his January 2017 CES Devotional for us all to study ALL of the scriptures about Christ. He refers to this challenge in his talk from this past General Conference (and shares a little bit about his own experience with completing the challenge), and Sister Rosemary Wixom actually also referred to it in her BYUI devotional from last week as well.

Here's is the challenge from President Nelson's Devotional talk:

How can you increase in your discipleship? I have an invitation for you that will help—it’s an assignment, actually—if you choose to accept it. Commence tonight to consecrate a portion of your time each week to studying everything Jesus said and did as recorded in the Old Testament, for He is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. Study His laws as recorded in the New Testament, for He is its Christ. Study His doctrine as recorded in the Book of Mormon, for there is no book of scripture in which His mission and His ministry are more clearly revealed. And study His words as recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants, for He continues to teach His people in this dispensation. 

This may seem like a large assignment, but I encourage you to accept it. If you proceed to learn all you can about Jesus Christ, I promise you that your love for Him, and for God’s laws, will grow beyond what you currently imagine. I promise you also that your ability to turn away from sin will increase. Your desire to keep the commandments will soar. You will find yourself better able to walk away from the entertainment and entanglements of those who mock the followers of Jesus Christ. To assist you, refer to the Topical Guide for references under the topic “Jesus Christ.” 

Study everything Jesus Christ is by prayerfully and vigorously seeking to understand what each of His various titles and names means personally for you. For example, He really is your Advocate with the Father. He will take your side. He will stand up for you. He will speak on your behalf, every time, as you choose to be more like Him.

So I made two lists. One list has all of the scriptures in sorted by topic (basically just copied and pasted from the Topical Guide and then sorted). The second list has all of the scriptures sorted by book (so all of the ones in Genesis and then all of the ones in Exodus, etc.)

I really started this project because I'm a lazy bum and didn't want to have to keep flipping back and forth in my scriptures. I'd much rather have a physical list that I can just keep next to me as I study and mark off as I go along. I did a Google search to see if lists like this had already been made and there was one, but it was a bajillion pages (I didn't want to print out that many) and it seemed that it didn't actually have all of the scriptures referenced in the Topical Guide. So I decided to make my own list instead that I could then share with everyone else so that no one ever has to make them ever again (it took many, many hours).

But I need your help. I'm asking you to please share this post whether you yourself are going to actually use the lists or not so that as many people as possible can benefit from my work.

*Disclaimer* I'm not perfect so there very well could be mistakes in the Book list especially. So please forgive me in advance is any of the scriptures don't seem like they apply to the challenge because it's possible that I mis-recorded it. It also may not be the most pleasing formatting because I'm not really a tech person. I tried to make it as user friendly as possible though!

Thanks for your help guys! Let's get as many people studying about Christ as we can! <3

Access the lists HERE