Overcoming Costs Efforts (counsels to a family)—You can be a happy family if you will do what God has given you to do and has enjoined upon you as a duty. But the Lord will not do for you that which He has left for you to do. Brother C deserves pity. He has so long felt unhappy that life has become a burden to him. It need not be thus. His imagination is diseased, and he has so long kept his eyes on the dark picture that if he meets with adversity or disappointment, he imagines that everything is going to ruin, that he will come to want, that everything is against him, that he has the hardest time of anyone; and thus his life is made wretched. The more he thinks thus, the more miserable he makes his life and the lives of all around him. {2MCP 488.3}

Få bugt med omkostningerne (råd til en familie) — I kan være en lykkelig familie hvis I vil gøre det som Gud har sat jer til at gøre og har påbudt jer som en pligt. Men Herren vil ikke gøre det for jer, som han har pålagt jer at gøre. Bror C fortjener medlidenhed. Han har i lang tid følt sig ulykkelig over at livet har været ham en byrde. Sådan behøver det ikke at være. Hans indbildning er sygelig og han har så længe holdt sine øjne på det mørke billede, at hvis han møder modgang eller skuffelse, forestiller han sig at alt bliver ødelagt, at han vil komme i nød, at alt er imod ham, at han har det sværest af alle; og således vil hans liv blive ulykkeligt. Jo mere han tænker sådan, jo mere forfærdeligt gør han det for sig selv og for dem omkring ham.