Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Alma 13:27 -- On Procrastination and Repentance

"And now, my brethren, I wish from the inmost part of my heart, yea, with great anxiety even unto pain, that ye would hearken unto my words, and cast off your sins, and not procrastinate the day of your repentance;"
Alma 13:27


We procrastinate our repentance a lot, and we rarely feel a lot of anxiety over it, at least in the day to day living part of things--we push it off even when it bothers us and kind of build up a tolerance by kind of desensitizing ourselves to the messages from the spirit.  It's understandable that we don't want to feel guilty all the time, of course, but a better way to solve that problem would be repentance.  Numbing ourselves to God's influence can harm us a lot and distance us from help that we may later find very necessary to our well-being.

Alma here feels "great anxiety," not for himself, but for the well-being of his people, and that is an extension of how God feels.  He knows that these things *are* urgent and time-sensitive in our lives, because if we put them off then we tend to keep putting them off, over and over again until it is too late.  If we stop listening to God, we become less and less able to tune in and hear him, and the more we forget the messages that we have already heard from him.

Today, let's work on tuning into God and feeling that urgency in cleaning up our lives and getting back on track.  That way, instead of getting more and more lost, we suddenly have a foundation to build on and we can accomplish so much more--learning to get to know God, and improving things rather than wandering around in the dark.

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