Alma 34:18-43

34:18-27 – Amulek now circles around to the topic of prayer, the same topic that Alma spent so much time on, and this must be because of the manner in which the Zoramites had been praying. Ignoring the incorrect doctrine that they spouted in their prayers, there are a few principles that are wrong that Amulek addresses here. First is that Christ is mighty to save and this to counter their ideology that there is no Christ. Second, he says that they must be humble, which is in direct opposition to their profession of superiority over others. Third they should “cry unto him when ye are in your fields, yea, over all your flocks,” disputing the idea that the only prayers that can be uttered is on top of the Rameumptum. Fourth, he tells them that they should “cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid-day, and evening,” disputing their belief that they can only pray on the Sabbath. The also teaches them to “pour out your souls in your closets, and your secret places, and in your wilderness,” which is opposite of the “Holy Stand,” where only one can pray at a time and be seen of all men. Again, prayer is a very difficult concept for me to understand, but I’ve found a lesson helpful from the manual The LDS Woman, lesson 34, “Individual and Family Prayer.” In it there is a quote by Bishop H. Burke Peterson teaching, “As you feel the need to confide in the Lord or to improve the quality of your visits with him… may I suggest a process to follow: go where you can be alone, go where you can think, go where you can kneel, go where you can speak out loud to him… Now picture him in your mind’s eye. Think to whom you are speaking, control your thoughts- don’t let them wander, address him as your Father and your friend. Now tell him things you really feel to tell him- not trite phrases that have little meaning, but have a sincere, heartfelt conversation with him. Confide in him, ask him for forgiveness, plead with him, enjoy him, thank him, express your love to him, and then listen for his answers. Listening is an essential part of praying. Answers from the Lord come quietly- ever so quietly. In fact, few hear his answers audibly with their ears. We must be listening so carefully or we will never recognize them. Most answers from the Lord are felt in our heart as a warm comfortable expression, or they may come as thoughts to our mind. They come to those who are prepared and who are patient.” I love the concept of talking to Heavenly Father as a friend, I’ve never really had a “father-figure” that I turned to when I was upset, or when I needed guidance, or when I just wanted to talk, so sometimes it’s kind of foreign to me to turn to someone in an authoritative role for support. One concept that I struggle with is that of “vain repetitions” because, yes, I say the same things over and over, but every time I mean them, every time I say them they are true and the desires of my heart. So coming up with different things to say, different things to pray for is a little bit weird to me. I have a friend, I think I’ve mentioned this before, that has helped me understand the concept of praying by the Spirit, being led in prayer by the Spirit, and when I’ve done that I’ve felt like my prayers were very successful, I’ve felt guided and inspired and comforted. Teachings from the continuation of the lesson reaffirms this by saying, “We should pray to know what to talk about in our prayers. During the Savior’s visit to the American continent, the Nephite people were inspired in their prayers. ‘It was given unto them what they should pray.’ When we pray with the Holy ghost as our guide, He brings many thoughts and feelings to us. Heavenly Father knows our real needs better than we know them. He knows what is for our good and what we need to overcome. As we seek Him, He helps us know how to meet our needs.” I loved that the guidance given to me by my friend and that was so helpful to me, was validated here.

34:28-43 – Amulek continues that while prayer is important, vital even, “if ye turn away the needy, and the naked, and visit not the sick and afflicted, and impart of your substance, if ye have, to those who stand in need- I say unto you, if ye do not any of these things, behold, your prayer is in vain, and availeth you nothing, and ye are as hypocrites who do deny the faith.” When I first heard this when we were reading as a family today, I thought that that would make sense, since petitioning God for our welfare and protection, is exceptionally selfish, and we know that God doesn’t work like that. We also know that our prayers and the prayers of others are many times answered by us and other people, through service. Service and loving others is part of the repentance process, I thought about how this would go into Amulek’s teaching about faith unto repentance, and interestingly enough, I heard a part of an Ensign article today entitled “The Lord’s Standard of Morality,” by Elder Tad R. Callister which teaches “if we have made moral mistakes in our lives, we can repent because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The first and foundational step to living a morally clean life for the future is to repent of past transgressions, to exchange a foundation of sand for a foundation of rock. Often that commences with confession. Repentance, however, is not just a matter of time or forsaking a sin or making a confession. Most of all, repentance is an honest change of heart, a burning resolve to live a morally clean life- not because we have to but because we want to.” This is the essence of repentance, if we have faith enough to repent, then we will serve others, embrace the needy and naked, the sick and afflicted, we would freely give of our substance, be charitable, and we would do it because we are grateful for what the Lord has done for us and we wish to do that for others and because we love Him. Amulek continues that “after ye have received so many witnesses, seeing that the holy scriptures testify of these things, ye come forth and bring fruit unto repentance.” We don’t need some wild show of power, an over the top miracle performed, or a burning bush to be presented to us in order for us to have enough evidence to convince us to repent. The testimonies of the holy prophets in the scriptures are enough of a testimony for us to be able to believe, enough to grow faith unto repentance. It’s interesting because if we think about the promise that Moroni makes in the end of the Book of Mormon, those words, are all it takes to show us what we need to do in order to gain a testimony, we need to pray, believing that we will be given the answer, and ask if the scriptures are true. Given the easiness of the way, Amulek moves on the people with a sense of urgency, he knows that the longer they wallow in their sins or unbelief the more unhappy they will be and the more difficult it will be for them to repent. He’s not interested in them repenting so that he can add another notch on his belt, or grow the ward, or get his activity percentages up, he genuinely wants them to be happy and find joy and peace in the gospel, that’s why he wants them to “repent and harden not your hearts, immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you.” We don’t have to wait for some grand gesture on our part, we don’t have to wait until all the stars are lined up, we can be forgiven and happy NOW. In an October 1999 general conference address entitled “Do Not Delay,” President Henry B. Eyring told of a man who had been ordained a deacon at the age of 12 but had come “to feel uncomfortable in church. He left his little town, not finishing high school, to begin a life following construction jobs across the United States. He was a heavy-equipment operator. He married, they had children. The marriage ended in a bitter divorce. He lost his children. He lost an eye in an accident. He lived alone in boardinghouses. He lost everything he owned except what he could carry in a trunk. One night, as he prepared to move yet again, he decided to lighten the load of that trunk. Beneath the junk of years, he found a book. He never knew how it got there. It was the Book of Mormon. He read it through, and the Spirit told him it was true. He knew then that all those years ago he had walked away from the true Church of Jesus Christ and from the happiness which could have been his. Later, he was my more-than-70-year-old district missionary companion. I asked the people we were teaching, as I testified of the power of the Savior’s Atonement, to look at him. He had been washed clean and given a new heart, and I knew they would see that in his face. I told the people that what they saw was evidence that the Atonement of Jesus Christ could wash away all the corrosive effects of sin. That was the only time he ever rebuked me. He told me in the darkness outside the trailer where we had been teaching that I should have told the people that while God was able to give him a new heart, He had not been able to give him back his wife and his children and what he might have done for them. But he had not looked back in sorrow and regret for what might have been. He moved forward, lifted by faith, to what yet might be.” How tragic, the sorrow and heart ache that this man and his family experienced because he left the gospel. Imagine how happy they might have been, imagine the good that they could have done in the world. But it’s not only the lost opportunity for happiness that suffers at the hands of procrastination, but also the increasingly difficult task of repentance beyond the grave. The IM quotes Elder Melvin J. Ballard as teaching “This life is the time in which men are to repent. Do not let any of us imagine that we can go down to the grace not having overcome the corruptions of the flesh and then lose in the grave all our sins and evil tendencies. They will be with us. They will be with the spirit when separated from the body…. (Mortality) is the time when men are more pliable and susceptible.” If repentance in mortality is easier, and considering how difficult and painful it is in this life, just imagine how much worse it’s going to be if we wait until the next life. n the March 2014 Ensign article “Faithful Parents and Wayward Children,” Elder David A. Bednar teaches “A principle… that is often overlooked is that they must fully repent and ‘suffer for their sins’ and ‘pay their debt to justice.’ I recognize that now is the time ‘to prepare to meet God.’ If the repentance of the wayward children does not happen in this life, is it still possible for the cords of the sealing to be strong enough for them yet to work out their repentance? In the Doctrine and Covenants we are told, ‘The dead who repent will be redeemed, through obedience to the ordinances of the house of God, and after they have paid the penalty of their transgressions, and are washed clean, shall receive a reward according to their works, for they are heirs of salvation.’ We remember that the prodigal son wasted his inheritance, and when it was all gone he came back to his father’s house. There he was welcomed back into the family, but his inheritance was spent. Mercy will not rob justice, and the sealing power of faithful parents will only claim wayward children upon the condition of their repentance and Christ’s Atonement. Repentant wayward children will enjoy salvation and all the blessings that go with it, but exaltation is much more. It must be fully earned.” There are a lot of factors that go into our existence here in this life, that make or taint our experiences here, we know that God is loving and that each of us is precious to Him, but like we learned the other day in Alma 32, “how much more cursed is he that knoweth the will of God and doeth it not, than he that only believeth, or only hath cause to believe, and falleth into transgression?” The more light of truth that we ignore, the longer we resist the Spirit and calls for repentance, the further into the hole of darkness and despair we fig ourselves into and the harder it is to get out. Is it not easier to stay clean and remain that way, or to filthy ourselves and then try to wash ourselves clean eventually? Scrubbing off the dirt caked onto our skin, getting ourselves out of the mud hole in the first place, all of that is infinitely more difficult than just staying out of the dirt in the first place and washing frequently, through the atonement and repentance. And transferring out status from this world to the next won’t make any difference in our tendencies or our need to repent, because here Amulek teaches us that we will indeed be the same people on the other side of the veil. I’m sure some people think that once we die and get to “heaven” then suddenly the urge to work evil will disappear and we will all be filled with love and the desire to do righteously, but that is not the case at all. The IM teaches, “Amulek made it clear that we are, by our daily choices, ultimately giving ourselves over to the control or influence of either the Spirit of the Lord or the spirit of the devil. President Harold B. Lee gave the following explanation of Alma 34:35: ‘To those who die in their wicked state, not having repented, the scriptures say the devil shall seal them as his own, which means that until they have paid the uttermost farthing for what they have done, they shall not be redeemed from his grasp. When they shall have been subjected to the buffetings of Satan sufficient to have satisfied justice, then they shall be brought forth out of the grasp of Satan and shall be assigned to that place in the Father’s celestial, terrestrial, or telestial world merited by their life here upon this earth.” God doesn’t want for us to suffer needlessly, he is the master psychologist and he knows how to motivate human beings. He wants us to be happy and have peace and to grow spiritually and to come home to him. That’s the motivation behind his pleas for us to repent, our happiness, and it is with this understanding that would should “contend no more against the Holy Ghost, but that ye receive it, and take upon you the name of Christ; that ye humble yourselves even to the dust, and worship God in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that ye live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you.”