Wherefore, I, Nephi, did strive to
keep the commandments of the Lord, and I did exhort my brethren to faithfulness
and diligence. (1 Nephi 17:15)
This verse caught my eye recently. It comes a few verses
after Nephi gets the command to build a ship. The word that caught my attention
was “strive.”
“Strive” means much much more than “try”; it means “fight or
contend.”
So Nephi is saying that he fought to keep the commandments. Interestingly, this verse also
comes before Nephi’s brothers realize
he’s going to start building a ship, so he hasn’t even begun to preach to them
about their murmuring yet. They haven’t begun to murmur; they don’t know a
ship-building operation is about to begin.
So the question that came to me next was, “Who was Nephi
striving against to keep the commandments in this verse?”
I realized he was fighting himself and his own inclinations.
At some level Nephi was reluctant to build the ship. Even though he got busy
collecting ore and made a bellows, he still had a part of him that hung back
and didn’t want to do it. So he had to fight to be obedient first. And because
he fought and won that battle, he was prepared to work to convince his
brothers.
I find this realization inspiring and comforting. Throughout
Nephi’s story you get the idea that he had little to no internal conflict with
himself about doing what the Lord asked him to do. (We see it with killing
Laban, but elsewhere hardly at all.)
So it helps me to see that Nephi also had to fight internal
battles with himself to be obedient, and it helps to see that in this case he
even had to fight them after he’d already begun
to be obedient. It shows that
along with having to overcome the temptation of disobedience, we also have to
overcome the temptation to slack off once we’ve begun a big hard task to keep
the Lord’s commandments. (I
can think of a number of times I’ve been stopped in my tracks a ways in from
starting something because the temptation to slack off got to me.)
I think that realizing that tendency can help us overcome it
when we’re faced with it. Instead of saying to ourselves, Ugh, I don’t want to do this; this is such a big job, we can say
instead, Ah yes, this is the temptation
to quit after having gotten a good start.
Have you noticed this problem affecting you? What do you do
to overcome it?
3 comments:
He wasn't just fighting against himself, the natural man, he was fighting against Satan who wants us to fail and be in his power. I love the Psalm of Nephi, it lets me know he wasn't so different from me; he struggled with sin his whole life. I look forward to meeting him and thanking him for his obedience and faithfulness.
I really liked this one. I think that so often we think that we're failing because we don't *want* to do the right thing, when actually that is just part of the process. The more we put God first, the more we learn how much better life is *his* way rather than our way, and we start learning, ever so slowly, to actually want what God wants.
Rozy Lass, good point bringing up the Psalm of Nephi.
Suzanne, I loved what you said: "The more we put God first, the more we learn how much better life is *his* way rather than our way, and we start learning, ever so slowly, to actually want what God wants."
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