1 Nephi 4:6 -- On Improvisation versus Spiritual Preparation

"And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do."
1 Nephi 4:6


God is a fan of preparation. He tells us in D&C 38:30 "if ye are prepared ye shall not fear." And yet here is Nephi walking into a situation with seemingly no preparation. In fact, the plans they had made previously all fell apart. Although on the surface it might seem like improvising, I think the key here is that the kind of preparation the Lord wants and the kind of preparations we think to make are often different. Nephi didn't know what was coming, but God did, and had everything ready. God thinks much, much more long term than we do.

One reason that God asks us to read the scriptures every day is so that we can "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh [us] a reason of the hope that is in [us]" (1 Peter 3:15). This worked in a much more immediate way when I was on my mission. There, often whatever scriptures I read that morning I would find being directly applicable to the discussions that we would get into with people later in the day. But even beyond full-time missionary work, we need those scriptures in our brains to help us in every situation that we get into... to offer hope, to help us think of good solutions, etc. It is the Word of the Lord, downloaded into our brains in that slow, plodding way of reading every day... but that way works, and that is a preparation that the Lord suggests that will help us face future trials.

Another significant preparation that Nephi had here is his ability to be led by the Spirit. That comes through daily practice too... learning to recognize the spirit first, then following promptings, and then trusting the guidance of God over our own less-wise inclinations. :) It took guts to not give up after repeated failure, and to walk into this situation when Nephi knew that Laban would probably order them murdered on sight. And yet, he had the preparation that he needed spiritually to not balk and to trust that the Lord would see him through the obvious dangers of the situation. The previous failures might even have been part of the preparation here, because to do what came next it was probably much easier on Nephi knowing that Laban was a thief and at least an attempted murderer.

I'm definitely not knocking other forms of preparation, but today let's think about how Nephi was prepared for this moment, and take some time to think about our own spiritual preparation, and what we have going for us if we have the word of the Lord in our heads all the time. Let's up our scripture study game and be more prepared for all the things that we don't know about yet. :)