"Important as is the body, it serves as a tabernacle for one's eternal spirit. Our spirits existed in the premortal realm and will continue to live after the body dies. The spirit supernal provides the body with animation and personality. In this life and in the next, spirit and body, when joined together, become a living soul of worth.
"Because one's spirit is so important, its development is of eternal consequence. It is strengthened as we communicate in humble prayer with our loving Heavenly Father.
"The attributes by which we shall be judged one day are all spiritual. These include love, virtue, integrity, compassion, and service to others. Your spirit, coupled with and housed in your body, is able to develop and manifest these attributes in ways that are vital to your eternal progression. Spiritual progress is attained through the steps of faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end, including the endowment and sealing ordinances of the holy temple.
"Just as the body requires daily food for survival, the spirit needs nourishment as well. The spirit is nurtured by eternal truth."
- Russell M. Nelson, "Thanks Be to God," Ensign, May 2012, pp. 77-79
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President Nelson has much insight into the body and its development, based on his many years of training and professional service as a surgeon. But he also has great sensitivity to the corresponding spiritual nature of our being, and in this excerpt he shows some parallels between the two, and remind us of the eternal, critical nature of spiritual development and awareness.
The majority of people seem much more aware of nurturing, feeding, and caring for their physical body than they are doing the same for their spirit. President Nelson reminds us that "the spirit needs nourishment as well. The spirit is nourished by eternal truth."
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