Helaman 12

(November 14, 2015)

                I have, reluctantly, seen some of the things that Mormon condemns in this chapter in my own life.  I have seen, when things were easy, that my attention to the Lord and willingness to give my heart and will over to Him diminished.  On the other hand, I have seen (particularly recently) when He is all that I have to hold on to that I have been greatly increased in my ability to consecrate my life to Him.  In this way, adversity is a huge blessing.

                The struggle, of course, is that the Lord doesn’t want us to live in eternal adversity of the sort we experience in mortality.  He wants us to inherit all He has inherited from His Father.  But we need to not just turn to the Lord when things are bad enough that we have no choice, but to stay focused on the Lord when things are good enough that our mortal minds desire to tell us we have no need for Him.  If we can reach that point – the point where both adversity and prosperity turn us towards the Lord – we will have taken significant steps towards reaching our eternal destiny.