Posting on my blog honestly isn’t so much about you as it is about me - and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Sometimes I just need to say something that’s been bothering me or share something I learned recently - and I usually don’t care if you find it interesting or not, because I just like to write!
So you can put that in your juice box and suck it!
All that being said, I really haven’t been on here in a long time. I think it’s high time I share some insight! Do you want to hear some insights? Psh, do you think I even care if you want to? I’mma tell you anyway.
Leaving Jerusalem was probably a really hard experience for Lehi and his family. I don’t think we give Laman and Lemuel the credit they deserve - I mean, they did leave their home in one night! And lived on raw meat for eight years. And their wives sound like they were more buff than they were.
As Jews, they believed in God. They lived the law of Moses. There are instances of Laman and Lemuel praying, repenting, offering thanks, pondering the scriptures, seeing angels, and yes - following the prophet! They risked their lives to get their genealogy and the equivalent of the Conference edition of the Ensign. So why did they turn out so drastically different from Nephi?
Because they never let go of Jerusalem. They left it, yes - but they did not let it go.
They are a Book of Mormon equivalent of Lot’s wife, who was blasted into table salt for looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah.
The problem was that, in never letting go of what they were leaving, they clearly didn’t believe that God’s plan for their future was better than what they already had going on. The problem was that they didn’t think that God’s warnings about Jerusalem were possible. “They knew not the dealings of that God who created them” (1 Nephi 2:12).
In other words, they didn’t believe in God’s all-knowing, all-loving, or all-powerful nature.
In other words, they didn’t believe in God’s all-knowing, all-loving, or all-powerful nature.
Joseph Smith taught that one of the fundamental principles of faith is knowing and believing in God’s character. If you do not believe that God has power to destroy Jerusalem and bring you to the promised land (and that you’ll be happy there), then eventually you will not believe in a God at all.
I've been there.
All of us are commanded to leave Jerusalem at some point. The promised land is our destination - but whether or not we get there has nothing to do with whether or not we leave Jerusalem; it depends on whether we let go of it.
No doubt at some point God has commanded you to quit doing something, quit going somewhere, quit seeing someone, or even quit being a certain way. And did you? More importantly, how did you go about doing it?
Attitude is everything because it determines our level of faith. Faith cannot produce salvation unless it is faith in a true and living God; if your faith lives in a false God (or false attributes of God), then it cannot produce salvation. This applies to all of His attributes: love, mercy, patience, justness, meekness, omniscience, omnipotence, and so on. If we doubt God's perfect possession of these qualities, what kind of God do we believe in? A false one; eventually (and I can't emphasize this enough), none at all.
When we keep commandments and follow spiritual promptings, we have to do more than just follow the Savior - we have to trust Him too! It’s like that cute saying you always hear: Believe in Christ…but Believe Christ too.
If the Lord asks me to change, then I need to stop looking back on what I’m leaving behind, wondering if He was right about it! I need to look myself in the mirror, abolish my own beliefs about the situation, and recognize these things:
- God is filled with a perfect love, and therefore, He only wants what is best for me.
- God is all-powerful, and therefore, He has the power to lead me along and fulfill His promises.
- God is all knowing, and therefore, He knows me better than I do. He knows the situation better than I do. He knows what will make me the most happy. He knows where I will be the most happy. He knows who will make me the most happy.
It’s not enough to leave! I have to stop wishing, dreaming, and imagining.
Until we believe in the true character of our Father in Heaven, we will doubt His directions. The more we doubt His character, the further from the path we pull ourselves, until God is nothing more than the world’s oldest storybook figure.
May we all leave Jerusalem with the utmost assurance in God and His character, that we may know the dealings of the God who created us, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Thanks for reading, whoever you are, and God be with you till we meet again!
Sincerely,
Taylor, a dead missionary
