Wednesday, July 25, 2012

To Please God

Today I read Deuteronomy 8 where God reminds the children of Israel of all the blessings they have enjoyed during their sojourn in the wilderness these past forty years.  He reminds them that they ate manna for forty years.  That their clothes did not wear out.  That their feet never got sore.  Those are some huge blessings really, I mean not having to replace clothing for forty years, that's amazing.  Not to mention being fed miraculously every day by bread from heaven.

It just reminds me that God is always looking out for us.  He takes care of us in so many ways.  This chapter also has the famous verse that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God.  The same verse that Jesus uses to confound the devil when he tries to tempt the Savior to use His Priesthood to turn rocks into bread after fasting for forty days in the wilderness.  And it is a good lesson to learn.  Yes we can physically survive on food, our bodies will not die, but we need more than just physical sustenance.  We need to please our Heavenly Father. 

Joseph Smith taught that without a true understanding of His character, it is impossible to please God. That means in order to do what is right, we have to first understand God and what He desires from us.  This is not hard to do as He has given us several volumes of scripture to help us in that endeavor.  If we will take the time to read them and study them and pray about them, then we will have a good solid understanding of who God is.  Once we know that, we are able to do what we can to please Him.  We will know what it is He desires of us and can do it.  And that is when the real spiritual growth can occur and amazing things will happen.  Until tomorrow.

No comments:

Post a Comment