After quoting Alma 7:23-25, Henry B. Eyring wrote: “Being submissive, gentle, easy to be entreated, and patient are all attributes. But the actions Alma commends to us are to ask for what we need and to return thanks. Please don’t think of that as a routine command to say your prayers. Oh, it is much more than that. If you pray, if you talk to God, if you plead for the help you need, and if you thank him not only for help but for the patience and gentleness that come from not receiving all you desire right away—or perhaps ever—I promise you that you will draw closer to him. And then you will become diligent and long-suffering.
Let me tell you another way you can bring down on you the powers of heaven. Just as you sometimes feel the great need to have heaven’s help in your service, you must often sense a need for help to resist evil. Just as prayer is a simple choice, there is another simple choice you can make that you might live clean in a wicked world.
. . .President George Albert Smith. . . said “there is a division line well defined that separates the Lord’s territory from Lucifer’s.” You can decide to move towards the Savior and live on His side of the line. Every person is faced with different alternatives, but the choice is always clear. You remember that Mormon told his son, Moroni, exactly what marks the line and why it is so clear. Think about this when you decide what video to watch, what magazine you might pick up, or whatever you might do. Mormon said: “For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God. But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels: neither do they who subject themselves unto him.” (Moroni 7:16-17.)
I plead with you to take that seriously. The world will become more wicked. You will need the help of heaven to keep the commandments. You will need it more and more as the days go on. Satan will expand the space that is not safe. He will try every way that he can to persuade you that there is no danger in trying to come as close as you can to that dividing line. At the same time,he is trying to persuade people that there is no dividing line at all. Because he knows that you know it is there, he will say to you, “Come closer to the line.”. . . continued
From Elder Henry B. Eyring’s book ‘To Draw Closer to God’ Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997), 97-98
