Week 34 is scheduled for study August 19-25, 2024. The power of Christ is demonstrated in the lives of the 2,060 young men led by Helaman. How can we each draw upon that power as well?
Day 1
Alma 53:10-22; 56:43-49, 55-56; 57:20-27; 58:39-40 – Having faith in God helps me overcome fear.
Forgive me today. I am at the edge of my own comprehension and I am struggling to find the words that are in my heart. I don’t know yet if I can do it, so here goes.
President Russell M. Nelson gave a talk in April of 2017. You can read or watch it here: Drawing the Power of Jesus Christ into Our Lives. The following quotes are from this talk and I use them to make my points.
There is no amorphous entity called “the Atonement” upon which we may call for succor, healing, forgiveness, or power. Jesus Christ is the source. Sacred terms such as Atonement and Resurrection describe what the Savior did … The Savior’s atoning sacrifice—the central act of all human history—is best understood and appreciated when we expressly and clearly connect it to Him.
Since I need to understand this process of turning to the Savior for myself, I will only refer to me in what follows. If you already know how to do this then you are far ahead of me in your understanding.
I know that Jesus, as the Messiah or the Christ, the Savior of mankind, performed the atoning sacrifice for me. But I am guilty of giving the power of his sacrifice a life of its own in the form of the term Atonement. The atoning sacrifice was something Jesus did. It belongs to Jesus, because he and he alone could accomplish that payment for my sins. The act of atonement has no life of its own. This is why President Nelson says I need to “expressly and clearly connect it to Him.” When I want to repent of a sin I don’t turn to the atonement for my forgiveness. I turn to Jesus for that forgiveness. It was he who paid the price, and only he can decide when he needs to intercede for me at our Father’s throne to ask God to forgive me for that sin. When God forgives me for what I have done wrong it is only because Jesus asked the Father to do so. My forgiveness comes not because I am worthy of forgiveness, for I am always unworthy. Only Jesus is worthy. That is why God forgives me, because His only worthy child asked that He forgive me. Refer to Week 31 of CFM in the Personal Study section for a discussion of why Jesus is the only worthy child of God, and I can never be worthy.
As you look at the stripling soldiers who were unafraid of death, and consider what qualities they possessed that allowed them to have such confidence in their mother’s teachings, think about this quote.
There is nothing easy or automatic about becoming such powerful disciples. Our focus must be riveted on the Savior and His gospel. It is mentally rigorous to strive to look unto Him in every thought. But when we do, our doubts and fears flee.
Jesus is all powerful
It almost seems trite for me to make a statement like the title of this section, even though it is true. What does Jesus being all powerful have to do with me? Great question, because drawing upon his power is exactly what President Nelson is challenging us to do in his talk. How do I take the power of an all powerful being and make it mine? First of all, I don’t. He does. It is his power, not mine, so I must do things that exercise my faith in him and his abilities. When I do that Jesus grants me power that is his alone to help me in my weakness. When we talk about how being obedient to the whisperings of the Spirit we can have our heart changed, or our disposition to do evil changed, this is where that change comes from. The change comes from Christ.
Faith that motivates us to action gives us more access to His power.
We also increase the Savior’s power in our lives when we make sacred covenants and keep those covenants with precision.
Remember President Nelson’s statement about how “mentally rigorous” it is “to strive to look unto Him in every thought”? This is how Helaman described his stripling soldiers. He said that they performed everything they were told to do with exactness. Am I exact in the keeping of my covenants? Am I exact or a little lax in what I try to get away with? How rigorous am I willing to be about my obedience? These 2,060 young men were able to fight with the “strength of God” because they were so obedient to what they knew to be right that they had no doubts about whether God would support them and bring them through to the other side of the fight.
Think back to Ammon and his fellow missionaries who went to teach the Lamanites. Consider how much confidence it must have given them that God had promised King Mosiah that He would bring them all home alive. They all knew it would be difficult and sometimes very painful, but they need not fear for their lives, for God had promised to return them home safely. This was something they could exercise their faith in on a daily basis. And each day they proved to themselves that God was living up to His end of the promise. They came home with fourteen years worth of proof that God honors His promises.
What are the promises I have been given by God? There are promises in every covenant I have made. There are promises in my Patriarchal blessing. And what about all the promises made to us in the scriptures and by the living prophets? The more I learn about Christ, the more I learn about his promises to care for me and watch over me. When I place my faith and trust in him in specific ways, (and I choose those ways) he verifies his promises to me. Do I acknowledge to him that I recognize that he is living up to his promises? Too often I don’t verbally acknowledge his part in my successes. I am too often ready and willing to allow myself to feel abandoned, when I am, in fact, never left completely alone. God is always there, ready to uphold His end of our covenantal relationship. It is me who allows myself to feel that He needs to do more than He is ready to do that day. I need to put more faith in Him than I have allowed myself to give Him in the past.
When you reach up for the Lord’s power in your life with the same intensity that a drowning person has when grasping and gasping for air, power from Jesus Christ will be yours. When the Savior knows you truly want to reach up to Him—when He can feel that the greatest desire of your heart is to draw His power into your life—you will be led by the Holy Ghost to know exactly what you should do. (emphasis added)
I have to ask myself if experiencing Christ’s power in my life is a convenience or a necessity? The key to President Nelson’s promise is that the Spirit isn’t going to lead us to find Christ’s power until that power becomes the greatest desire of our heart. Does that happen overnight? I don’t think so. I believe that the kind of drive for Christ’s power in my life will come as I make choices each day to keep my covenants and commitments to him. When I remember Christ and all he has done for me, and all he is currently doing for me, sustaining me in my efforts to be good and become better than I have been in the past, that is part of the process of gaining the desire that increasingly becomes the focus of my life. Over time I will learn that there is nothing more important to me than his ability to make me into a celestial person. I can’t do that on my own, but he can.
The young men who are the topic of today’s lesson were not common. Nor were they ordinary. They were unique. Why? Because even at an early age they were devoted to doing what their mothers had taught them to do, and that was to rely upon Christ for their support and safety. I don’t believe that their belief in Jesus was just that he would bring them all home safely. I believe that they fully believed that even if they died Jesus would bring them safely to God and would speak up in their behalf, because of their exacting obedience.
Day 2
Alma 58:1-12, 31-37; 61 – Followers of Jesus Christ are not easily offended.
My comments here don’t contradict Elder Bednar’s comments about Pahoran. I believe Pahoran was all that Elder Bednar says he was. I just want to point out something we don’t normally think about.
We live in a world of instant communication. We text each other and receive that message in real time. We call each other and that call can travel the globe in a matter of a second. We can hear their voice and respond and have a conversation in real time. Anything that needs to be discussed or clarified can be done on the spot. There is no waiting involved in our normal conversations. But this wasn’t the norm until about a hundred years ago when the phone was invented.
For most of history, the letter was written, sent, and a long period of time elapsed between the time it was written and the time it arrived and was read by its intended recipient. Then you had to wait for that person to think about what was written and write a reply, which then had to travel across land and possibly oceans to be taken to the intended person to see what you had to say about what was originally written. This was a tedious and long process.
When Moroni and Pahoran wrote back and forth to each other they were in different lands. In Mormon’s account their letters are side by side, so it appears that there was almost instant communication. In reality there were probably weeks or months between the writing of the first letter and the reading of the second letter. This made how they wrote problematic.
Notice that Moroni is casting about in his letter to Pahoran. He doesn’t know what is going on in the capitol city. He doesn’t know if Pahoran and the rest of the government are patriotic or part of the problem. There is no way for him to tell from where he is if the government is happy with the starvation of the army or if they are not able to do anything about it. This means that Moroni must address different scenarios and give his opinion to each one of them. He doesn’t have the time to simply ask what is going on then wait for weeks or months for an answer. The army was starving and under sized. They needed help right away. So Moroni poses several possible things that might be going on in the head of the government and expresses his feelings about each thing.
Pahoran is not offended by the assumed possibilities put forward by Moroni. He understands the necessity of Moroni to bring all these possibilities up at one time. Pahoran was actually pleased. He not only was assured that there was still an army fighting for their freedom, something that was woefully lacking in the capitol city, but that his question about the validity of going against his own people was verified by this righteous man who was commanded by God to do just that if that is what is needed to save the people.
These two letters demonstrate Moroni’s humility, for he never accuses Pahoran of any one thing, he only asks Pahoran which of the following scenarios best describes what is going on in the government? And Pahoran is meek in that he doesn’t take offense with the possibilities laid out by Moroni. He knows Moroni can’t possibly know what is going on, and just needs to be filled in on the latest political developments. Both men were sorry they didn’t have something wonderful to relay to the other, but both were willing to be honest and up front about their communication.
Day 3
Alma 60:7-14 – I have a responsibility to lift people around me.
We can read these verses and learn lessons on several levels. First is the level of the responsibility of the government to protect its people from harm. Second is the basic human need to care for the welfare of others. Third is the individual need to be aware of and to do something about those around us who are in need of something important, like food, shelter, or work.
Nowhere in the scriptures does the Lord command us to put ourselves in poverty giving all we have to those who don’t have the necessities. But everywhere in the scriptures we are commanded to do what we can to help those who are in need to find relief from their state of want. (That is want, meaning the lack of necessities, not want as in desires for more.) God has never excused any person from their responsibility to care for the needs of their fellow passengers in life. We are all going to be held accountable for our opportunities to relieve need and suffering wherever and whenever we had the opportunity to do so.
Day 4
Alma 62:39-51 – If I am humble, life’s challenges can turn my heart to God.
I want to make a point about the example from the manual about boiling an egg and a potato. God made eggs to harden in hot water and potatoes to soften in hot water. That is their nature. But they are still instructive to us, because we have a choice as to what happens when we pass through hard times. Whether our heart softens or hardens is a choice we each make independent of the situation we pass through. This lesson encourages us to choose to be more humble and submissive to the Spirit, and not hardened just because we experience hardships in our life.
We have probably all seen examples of those who have suffered greatly in their life. Some are more humble, tender, empathetic, etc., while others have chosen to become sceptics, cynical, resentful, and unbelieving. We see this second half in people who make such statements as “a loving God would never allow such and such to happen.” Instead of looking for ways to help others or seeking to understand why God may have done something, they become judgmental and spiteful. The choice is ours. The first way leads to peace and inner tranquility and strength, while the second way leads to misery and resentment. Hard to imagine why anyone would choose the misery side, but it happens.
Personal Study
This week I am giving you a reprieve on the personal study subject. The manual offers nothing, and I am blank. Fill this in with your own study project. <wink>
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