I apologise to you, my readers and especially too, to M. Catherine Thomas, who I quoted yesterday. Unfortunately, I didn’t share enough so you, my readers now are short on total perspective that she so masterfully has put together in her book ‘Light In the Wilderness’ (other books followed). I hope with this post to clarify by simply sharing more of what follows in the chapter… k. Thus Sister Thomas continues:
On another occasion, Brigham commented on the price of freedom from consternating darkness of the mortal probation, on the kind of mental and emotional adjustments we might make to enjoy the living Light in our soul. He spoke on the degree of submission we must achieve to things as they are, to What Is:
It is said that if we do right we shall overcome. I will tell you one mark you have got to come to in order to do right. If you can bring yourselves, in your affections, your feelings, your passions, your desires, and all that you have in your organization, to submit to the hand of the Lord, to his providences, and acknowledge his hand in all things, and always be willing that he should dictate, though it should take your houses, your property, your wives and children, your parents, your lives or anything else you have upon the earth, then you will be exactly right; and until you come to that point, you cannot be entirely right. That is what we have to come to; we have to learn to submit ourselves to the Lord with all our hearts, with all our affections, wishes, desires, passions, and let him reign and rule over us and within us, the God of every motion; then he will lead us to victory and glory; otherwise he will not. (JD 5:532-52)
This passage provides additional details about what we would have to do to feel free:
- We would have to acknowledge the Lord’s hand in all things—to give up the idea that things happen randomly to us. “And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments….But learn that he who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come” (D&C 59:21,23) Job understood this principle of submission to What Is: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither; the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not , nor charged God Foolishly” (Job 1:21-22)
- We would have to submit to the Lord’s hand in his testing of our level of consecration. The Lord’s purpose seems to be from time to time to make it hard to stick with Him, so that if we do stick, we gain something indispensable. Truman Madsen comments on the meaning of the call to sacrifice:
We are called upon to love God first and overall. The moment that pattern is followed he seeks in us the one thing that we do not really want to give up. Many of us will say that we do not have that kind of faith. But I submit to you that you do not have that kind of faith until you pass the test [of giving up what you don’t want to and putting God first]…. It is the love of God that cries out for us to prove our love for Him. He cannot bless us until we have been proved, cannot even pull out of us the giant spirit in us unless we let him.13
3. (there is a third point… and more)
….And, dear readers, much more insight is available not only within the first 30 pages as given here, but in the 320 pages that follow. When tasting the ‘meat’ becomes too strong, it’s time to leave it alone and rejoice in the less ‘intense’ milk principles of the gospel? k
13. “Power from Abrahamic Tests”, Meridian Magazine, , www.meridianmagazine.com/articles/030902abraham.html, 2005.
