A Mighty Change of Heart

Have you ever have a Thanksgiving feast that was so massive you almost felt full just from looking at it? And then as you set to eating with gusto, to your disappointment you realize that you are getting full and you haven't even sampled everything yet? That is how I feel today trying to tackle Alma 5 in just one blog post.

Alma chapter 5 is a true feast of the word of Christ and there is absolutely no way that I can do the chapter justice in just one post. I would need at least 5 to talk about everything that impressed me about it today as I read it.

So I will not even attempt to do that but instead I will focus on verse 14 which talks about a mighty change of heart which is the underlying theme of the rest of the chapter I think. This is not the first time that the Book of Mormon has brought up the concept of a change of heart. Nephi talked about it, as did King Benjamin. A change of heart is a total change of desire, to no longer desire to do that which is wrong in the sight of God. And sadly it is impossible to achieve on our own, we need His help to change us.

Now we can most certainly work towards a change of heart and resist our temptations and do everything we can in our limited power to ignore it and not give in, but the fact of the matter is that there is no way to change our nature so that we no longer even desire to do those things on our own. We don't have that ability. Now I think we do have the ability to change ourselves. I think we can develop habits, patterns and change our mental attitude about things so that eventually one day we wake up and find that we want to be doing whatever it is.

However that changing of the mental attitude I still think is done by God. Just as we cannot change our height, the color of our eyes or hair, we cannot change our nature. My father once told me about an article he read once that said people recovering from pornography addiction generally say that they remain tempted by it for a long, LONG time and it is a daily struggle to resist it. But the longer they do the easier it is to resist and eventually they wake up one day and find that they are no longer tempted by it. If they continue to resist it even then eventually they find they are repulsed by it.

This is just one example of how God helps us in our needs. He will not change our hearts for us overnight except in the most rare of circumstances because we need to learn from it and grow from it. Ether 12:27 states that we are given weaknesses in order to humble us so that we will turn to God. Each one of us has at least one, some of us have many, true weaknesses that we CANNOT get through without God's help, and according to the scriptures that is be design. Now some may decry that such an action is reprehensible, however, man by his/her very nature is an enemy to God and God needs us to turn to Him otherwise we cannot grow. We would be damned, or halted in our progression. Sure we can be a good person and we can grow spiritually, but only to a point. We would reach a definite glass ceiling and not be able to grow any farther on our own.

I could talk about this all day because I have personal experience with it as do a lot of people. Like 90% of the world, I made mistakes as a teenager and a young adult that caused me sore repentance and damaged my spirituality that caused me much heartache and Godly sorrow. I had to work at getting the Spirit back in my life and doing what is right. The thing that made the most difference for me was reading the Book of Mormon on a daily basis. There is power and strength to be found in reading the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon.

I think that is where I will leave this discussion today. Never fall into the trap that repentance is a bad thing. Repentance is a gift from God that allows us to humble ourselves and start over. And as we repent little by little we change and find that one day we wake up a new person spiritually speaking and no more desire to do that thing that used to plague us. We find the Spirit is once again our companion and the world seems a little brighter and we feel God smiling down on us. I will end by saying that we should always follow the promptings of the Spirit no matter what it tells us to do, and we will never be sorry we did. Until tomorrow.