I can't help myself, need to elaborate a bit more on something I wrote in the past about believing that God not only is who He claims to be, but also that He can and will do what he has claimed to be able to do.
1 Ne. 11 has some interesting versus that touch on this subject. RIght off the bat in verse 1 he says he "believed that the Lord could make [the things Lehi saw] made known unto me". Nephi is teaching two things there in that one short phrase that are critically important for each of us to understand. First, he believed that God could and would come up with a way to show Nephi what he wished to see. He didn't doubt God's ability to accomplish whatever design he wanted to accomplish.
Then, he didn't just say that he knew the Lord could do it, he says he knows the Lord can do it FOR HIM. That's a whole new level. It's not just believing that God can and will do amazing stuff, but it's believing that he'll do that stuff JUST FOR ME. It's amazing. It's no wonder that when we get into subsequent verses when Nephi is caught up in the Spirit unto a high mountain, The first words out of my mouth would be something akin to "Holy Chickens this is AWESOME!". But not Nephi, when the Spirit communicated to him, he wasn't freaking out and trying to make sense of anything, he simply asked his question . . . because he knew all along that the Lord could make things known unto him.
Really reminiscent of Joseph Smith - in none of his accounts of the first vision do we get any chance of being speechless or dumbfounded. He just asked his question. It was an extraordinary event, but his faith was such that he did what he'd prayed for.
Great chapter to read when thinking about real faith in God's power to love and deliver each of us individually.
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
October 3, 2020 General Conference
Something so comforting about starting conference with President Nelson opening up the conference. There's a confirming spirit when the...
-
1 Ne: 17. I really enjoy the ideas in verse 14. It is a message about hindsight, retrospect. "After you have arrived you shall know ...
-
Reading in 1 Nephi 16 and of course thought a bit about all the things I think about in this chapter. "Guilty despise truth", how...
-
Reading chapter 15 tonight and I'm pretty tired, and as such my brain is not gathering up a lot of the wheat from this particular chapte...
No comments:
Post a Comment