Elder Rasband’s Conference address is found here.

The “helps” suggested in the Ensign are:

To encourage discussion about Elder Rasband’s message, it might be helpful to invite a few members to bring a sewing pattern, a blueprint, or a recipe and talk about why these are helpful. What examples or teachings from Elder Rasband’s message inspire members to recognize God’s design for their lives? Perhaps class members could share experiences in which they saw that the Lord was directing their lives. What have they done to show God that they ‘treasure’ His direction? Why is it important to recognize God’s “divine design”?

In her guest post about teaching John C. Pingree’s conference message, Alison wrote, “When I’m assigned a conference talk to present as a lesson in Relief Society, as soon as I see it’s divided into 3 or more subheadings, I cheer/sigh with relief.” Me, too. Whether that’s because, like Alison, you split the class into groups to discuss and then share ideas about each subheading, or, like me, you divide your teaching time into sections focusing on each subheading, a talk that is already organized for you (“The components of my topic are 1…, 2…, and 3…”) is easier to organize as a lesson.

What do you do, though, when a conference message does not have such a formal structure?

That is largely the case with Elder Rasband’s talk, “By Divine Design,” which concerns those events in our lives which appear to be “mere coincidence,” but which Elder Rasband wants us to recognize are evidences of “His hand in our lives.” It is possible for you, as a reader or teacher, to discern subtle shifts in the talk which you can use as “teaching points,” but they are not obviously marked out for us in the text.

As always, I would suggest beginning by identifying a purpose for your lesson – something class members will learn, or do, or take with them as a result of their discussion, so that their time is not merely spent talking but results in some actual life progress. What would be the purpose of this talk, if you were teaching it? “Class members will …”

– identify some point in their lives where, looking back, they can see God’s guiding hand where they did not recognize it at the time? or maybe

– consider that some disappointment they are facing now might really be God’s redirection in their lives? or perhaps

– take encouragement from the “little” signs (Elder Bednar’s “tender mercies,” again) that God is with us?

Whatever you settle on as a guiding purpose for your lesson will shape your questions and your summaries, which will lend cohesion to your lesson even if you don’t explicitly announce to the class your purpose.

So once you have your purpose to guide your thoughts, what are the nuts and bolts of planning a lesson?

The “helps” suggested in the Ensign begin with an object lesson: “Invite a few members to bring a sewing pattern, a blueprint, or a recipe and talk about why these are helpful.” Consider whether such an approach would be useful for your class – would it engage their interest, or would they find the answer so obvious that they refuse to discuss it? (If you don’t think such refusal is a real possibility, pay attention when you or another teacher asks a rhetorical question, or a “reading comprehension” question, and then waits for the class to respond, or even insists on an answer. In my experience, people sit there in stony silence rather than willingly respond.) But if this attention activity sparks your interest, you will likely be enthusiastic enough to pull it off.

Also, consider whether this or any other suggested object lesson is actually relevant to the lesson. In this example, the sewing pattern, blueprint, or recipe are all tools for a user to follow: they show you where you’re going to end up before you even start, and give you the detailed directions to arrive at the goal. But that’s not what Elder Rasband’s talk is about. He discusses the nudges we get from God as pointing us in directions where we had not intended to go. His talk is less about planning our lives in advance with a blueprint, than it is about looking back and recognizing that God had a design for our lives that we did not guess at the time. Perhaps a more relevant object lesson would involve a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces – until you’ve started to put them together and can begin to see the picture they make, you have no idea what to expect. What else can you think of that illustrates not knowing the end from the beginning?

Even though Elder Rasband’s talk is not organized into neat little chunks, each with its own boldfaced heading, you can still discern shifts in his emphasis that could make good discussion points. Eliminating the stories that he tells for illustration, some key passages in his talk are these:

•  “Our lives are like a chessboard, and the Lord moves us from one place to another – if we are responsive to spiritual promptings. Looking back, we can see His hand in our lives.”
•  “Significant events unfold in the gospel and in the Church that further the kingdom of God on earth. They are not by accident but by God’s plan.”
•  “Events and associations unfold in each of our lives that further God’s work on earth.”
•  “What should you be looking for in your own life? What are God’s miracles that remind you that He is close, saying, ‘I am right here’?”
•  “Each of us is precious and loved by the Lord, who cares, who whispers, and who watches over us in ways unique to each of us.”
•  “Where does our agency fit in a ‘divine design’? We have a choice to follow or to not follow our Savior and His chosen leaders.”
•  “When we are righteous, willing, and able, when we are striving to be worthy and qualified, we progress to places we never imagined and become part of heavenly Father’s ‘divine design.’”
•  “The Lord’s hand is guiding you. by ‘divine design,’ He is in the small details of your life as well as the major milestones.”

Some of those points are “informational” – Elder Rasband wants us to learn or accept certain ideas about God’s presence in our lives.

Others of those points are “actional” – Elder Rasband wants us to do something – look for something, choose to do something – that is more than just hearing something.

Which of these points, or others you might pull from his talk, best suit your lesson purpose? Those two or three or four points become the ideas you will have your class discuss, perhaps using Elder Rasband’s illustrations, and perhaps soliciting illustrations from class members.

I have one caution about soliciting illustrations from class members: Recognizing that what seems like a coincidence but may really be the guiding hand of the Lord is not subject to objective proof. It is a matter of pure testimony, and what looks to me like God’s hand may still look to you like a coincidence. Accept illustrations from the lives of class members as long as those illustrations seem to you to be expressions of testimony. Beware of the tendency of some classes for each commenter to want to tell a better story than the one before. I’ve seen such a spirit of competition take hold of a class; nip it early, because it’s never a good thing – you don’t want people to start telling whoppers from their own missions or ones they have heard about a son’s companion’s brother’s mission in order to tell a more extraordinary story than the one Elder Rasband tells about his granddaughter’s unexpected meeting with her missionary brother. Be prepared to move on, or to take control of the discussion by giving your own well-thought-out illustration, or by shifting the discussion from class members’ lives to scriptural or historical illustrations.

If I were teaching this message, I think I would designate a purpose, and choose talking points, that would tend to encourage class members who might be struggling with purpose or direction in their lives, or with the failure of much anticipated plans. My wrap-up would reiterate Elder Rasband’s reassurance (and add my testimony) that God is “in the small details of your life as well as the major milestones,” inviting class members to take some quiet time this week to examine their recent and current lives for signs of that guidance.

Whatever the purpose and course of your lesson, you’ll want to save a minute or two for such a wrap-up of your own, to tie together the ideas discussed by the class, and to leave them with something to do or to think about after leaving class.