Take Your Problems to the Lord

Today I read Exodus 18 and I have to say that the very first thing I thought when reading this chapter is that people are prideful.  While reading this chapter I could just see in my minds eye a line of people stretched as far as the eye could see waiting to see Moses with the most trivial of matters.  I'm sure a few of the people might actually have had issues that would interrupt most people's days, but I'm quite confident in saying that the vast majority of them were probably making a mountain out of a mole hill, or making a big deal out of nothing. 

I work for a call center as a Supervisor and on any given week I take anywhere from 5 - 50 phone calls from customers who wish to speak to a Supervisor.  Of those phone calls that I take, probably only 1 of them genuinely needs to speak to a Supervisor, and even that one person, if they would call themselves down and let the representative who answered the phone talk and help them, would not need to talk to a Supervisor in a call center.  The reason people ask to speak to a Supervisor is pride.  They think that their issue is too important for some lowly person who only makes $10 an hour to fix.  But the bottom line is, these people are not telling us anything new, anything we haven't already heard and all they are really doing is wasting their time and the Supervisor's time.  It is pride.  And it is exactly what happened to Moses and why Jethro helped him organize a system of judges if you will, to alleviate his burden.

Everyone has challenges in life.  We all need to talk about them and in some instances we even need advice about them.  This is why we were born into family units and why we have friends.  This is our built in support system.  They are the people who will listen to us gripe and complain and once we have said our piece, will give us advice on what we can do to fix our problems.  We don't need to involve strangers.  It is the same way with Spiritual matters.  We have an open conduit right to the source of all truth.  We can talk to Heavenly Father anytime we want to.  We don't need to go to the Bishop or Branch President or Stake President or even the Prophet with our challenges.  We can ask the Lord directly and He will answer us in one His normal methods.  He may direct us to a scripture.  We may hear a voice while praying one night.  A thought may enter into our minds.  He has all kinds of methods whereby He can answer us and we don't need to bother His selected servants with our challenges. 

There are of course some instances that need to be brought before an appropriate Priesthood leader to resolve, but they are few and far between.  If we sufficiently humble ourselves and take our problems to the Lord, we can gain answers to our challenges on our own and can learn the will of the Lord for ourselves and for our families.  The key is we have to be humble.  We have to be teachable.  I promise you that if you receive an answer from Heavenly Father and you don't like it so you take it to your Priesthood leader, if they are in tune with the Spirit at all, you will get the exact same answer!  We have to be humble and we will be led to the right conclusions.  There generally is not a need to involve anyone other than a loved one for a sympathetic, listening ear.  Until tomorrow.