Thursday, March 15, 2018

Alma 41:6-9 -- On Choosing Our Own Destiny

"And so it is on the other hand. If he hath repented of his sins, and desired righteousness until the end of his days, even so he shall be rewarded unto righteousness.
These are they that are redeemed of the Lord; yea, these are they that are taken out, that are delivered from that endless night of darkness; and thus they stand or fall; for behold, they are their own judges, whether to do good or do evil.
Now, the decrees of God are unalterable; therefore, the way is prepared that whosoever will may walk therein and be saved.
And now behold, my son, do not risk one more offense against your God upon those points of doctrine, which ye have hitherto risked to commit sin."
Alma 41:6-9


I like the idea that we are our "own judges" as these verses say and that we have our destiny in our own hands.  God prepares the way, and we choose whether to walk in it.  ... And I believe strongly that the way is prepared for each of us as individuals, not just some generic heavenly assessment test that some people will obviously do better on than others.  God loves us all, and wants us all to succeed, and he will give us every chance.

There are a couple of large things standing in the way of our awesome destiny though, and both of them are within us.  The first is pride.  We want to be better and cooler than others, and we want to fit in. We want our opinions and our countries to win, and it's fun to mock things that we don't like.  We *want* the world to revolve around us, and we don't really care about that guy who cut us off in traffic.  Bad day or not, he was being a jerk, right?

Except, of course, that those things aren't compatible with the gospel.  To really embrace God's plan and repent, and understand on some level how to love others, we have to be humble.  We have to admit our mistakes.  We have to be willing to change.  Which brings us to the second impediment.  We have to learn to *want* to do the good things, not just do them.  That's huge, and hard.  It isn't just resisting saying what we really mean to that guy that cut us off, it is actually not thinking that thing in the first place.  Learning to not be angry.  Learning to want to be kind, even in stressful situations.  How is that even possible?  Often it seems that it is all we can do to resist temptation.  How do we take it off the table entirely?

Not saying it is easy, or that we need to overcome either of these impediments quickly.  These are lessons that we learn over time, sometimes painfully.  I, personally, cringe if my prayers get around to humility... it's tough to anticipate ego-deflation, even when it is entirely necessary.  Not fun, but I think it is a lot of the answer.  When we run into things that seem to be a part of who we are and we keep running into them over and over again because they are between us and God, they need to go.  The way is prayer, and hope, and trust, and faith.  We are asked in Alma 5 "have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?"

God *can* help us change our hearts, but we have to ask.  Today, let's ask, and maybe also ask God to teach us a little at a time so that it isn't as painful as it was for Alma's father. :)

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