Wednesday, January 30, 2013

The Book of Mormon: 1 Nephi 9

We’re looking at 1 Nephi 9 today.

This chapter is actually pretty short and fairly simple, so this entry is also likely to be pretty short.  Nephi mentions that he’s keeping his record on plates and tells us that some of these plates are just general history and some are specifically for his “ministry” which I take to mean the results of his work as a prophet of the Lord.  Nephi says specifically that the Lord has commanded him to do things this way for some reason that Nephi doesn’t know.  However, he notes that the Lord knows everything from the very start.  He has all knowledge and all power and is able to fulfill all his words.

Applying the Scriptures to My Own Life

I got a lot more out of this passage of scripture than I got out of the others so far.  I’m given to understand from this that it’s okay, even desirable, to keep more than one journal during your lifetime.  One of these should be for your personal history; the “this happened and then this happened” of life’s day to day round.  The other should be to collect spiritual happenings, such as impressions obtained from the scriptures, church meetings and/or casual reading and conversation, prayers answered and blessings obtained.  Then, in kind of a strange way, you have your own volume of highly personal scripture; something you can pass on to your children so that they can see how the gospel has effected your life, how much it’s meant to you, and even what kinds of spiritual things turned out to be important to you.  As Nephi mentioned, this volume or even series of volumes can even show your future generations your testimony of God and how He really does have all power and all knowledge in making his purposes known and getting them fulfilled.  The Lord loves us.  He is looking for every possible way to make that plain to us.  The journals of our ancestors is one of those ways in which he does this.  We can help contribute to that by faithfully keeping journals of our own, if not for their sakes, for ours.

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