1 Nephi 15:1-5 “Opposition after illuminatrion”
“Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence”
By Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
From a devotional
address given at Brigham Young University on 2 March 1999.
I wish to encourage every one of us regarding the opposition that
so often comes after enlightened decisions have been made, after moments of
revelation and conviction have given us a peace and an assurance we thought we
would never lose. In his letter to the Hebrews, the Apostle Paul was trying to
encourage new members who had just joined the Church, who undoubtedly had had
spiritual experiences and received the pure light of testimony, only to
discover that their troubles had not ended but that some of them had just
begun.
Paul pleaded with those new members in much the same way President
Gordon B. Hinckley is pleading with new members today. The reminder is that we
cannot sign on for a battle of such eternal significance and everlasting
consequence without knowing it will be a fight—a good fight and a winning
fight, but a fight nevertheless. Paul says to those who thought a new
testimony, a personal conversion, a spiritual baptismal experience would put
them beyond trouble—to these he says, “Call to remembrance the former days, in
which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions.”
Then this tremendous counsel, which is at the heart of my counsel to you: “Cast
not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward.
“For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will
of God, ye might receive the promise. …
“… If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.
“… We are not of them who draw back unto perdition.” 5
In Latter-day Saint talk that is to say, Sure it is tough—before
you join the Church, while you are trying to join, and after you have joined.
That is the way it has always been, Paul says, but don’t draw back. Don’t panic
and retreat. Don’t lose your confidence. Don’t forget how you once felt. Don’t
distrust the experience you had. That tenacity is what saved Moses and Joseph
Smith when the adversary confronted them, and it is what will save you.
1 Nephi 15:21-22 “What meaneth the tree”
Tree, fruit=The love of God, which He showed
by giving His Son to be our Savior (see 11:21–25; called “the tree of life” in
15:22) (Chapter 3: 1 Nephi 6–11)
1 Nephi 8:10–12; 11:8–25. The Tree of Life as
a Symbol of Jesus Christ and His Atonement
•Elder Jeffrey R.
Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught that the tree of life
represents the Savior and His Atonement: “The Spirit made explicit that the
Tree of Life and its precious fruit are symbols of Christ’s redemption” (Christ
and the New Covenant: The Messianic Message of the Book of Mormon [1997], 160).
What does the tree of life and fruit
represent?
How does one “partake” of the love of God?
Listen for how Elder Maxwell answers that question.
“The tree of life … is the love of God (see 1
Ne.11:25). The love of God for His children is most profoundly expressed in His
gift of Jesus as our Redeemer: ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his
only begotten Son’ (John 3:16). To partake of the love of God is to partake of
Jesus’ Atonement and the emancipations and joys which it can bring” (“Lessons
from Laman and Lemuel,” Ensign, Nov. 1999, 8).
When people in Lehi’s vision partook of the
fruit of the tree of life, it meant that they were partaking of the blessings
of the Atonement.
Emancipation means liberation or freedom. How
does the Atonement of Jesus Christ free us from bondage and bring us joy?
Share your testimony that coming unto Jesus
Christ and partaking of the Atonement brings happiness and joy.
When has the Savior’s Atonement brought happiness and joy to your
life?
1 Nephi 15:24
President Boyd K. Packer, Worthy Music, Worthy
Thoughts, New Era, April 2008.
When I was a boy, we lived in a home
surrounded by an orchard. There never seemed to be enough water for the trees.
The ditches, always freshly plowed in the spring, would soon fill with weeds.
One day, in charge of the irrigation turn, I found myself in trouble. As the
water moved down the rows choked with weeds, it would flood in every direction.
I worked in the puddles trying to build up the bank. As soon as I had one break
patched up, there would be another. A neighbor came through the orchard. He
watched for a moment, and then with a few vigorous strokes of the shovel, he
cleared the ditch and allowed the water to course through the channel he had
made. He said, “If you want the water to stay in its course, you’ll have to
make a place for it to go.”
I have come to know that thoughts, like water,
will stay on course if we make a place for them to go. Otherwise, our thoughts
follow the course of least resistance, always seeking the lower levels.
Probably the greatest challenge and the most difficult thing you will face in
mortal life is to learn to control your thoughts. In the Bible it
says, as a man “thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). Those who can
control their thoughts have conquered themselves.
As you learn to control your thoughts, you can
overcome habits, even degrading personal habits. You can gain courage, conquer
fear, and have a happy life. I had been told a hundred times or more as I grew
up that thoughts must be controlled, but no one told me how. I’ve thought about
this over the years and have decided that the mind is like a stage. During
every waking moment the curtain is up. There is always some act being performed
on that stage. It may be a comedy, a tragedy, interesting or dull, good or bad;
but always there is some act playing on the stage of your mind.
Have you noticed that shady little thoughts
may creep in from the wings and attract your attention in the middle of almost
any performance and without any real intent on your part? These delinquent
thoughts will try to upstage everybody. If you permit them to go on, all
thoughts of any virtue will leave the stage. You will be left, because you
consented to it, to the influence of unrighteous thoughts. If you yield to
them, they will enact for you on the stage of your mind anything to the limits
of your toleration. They may enact themes of bitterness, jealousy, or hatred.
They may be vulgar, immoral, even depraved. When they have the stage, if you
let them, they will devise the most clever persuasions to hold your attention.
They can make it interesting all right, even convince you that they are
innocent, for they are but thoughts. What do you do at a time like that, when
the stage of your mind is commandeered by the imps of unclean thinking, whether
they be the gray ones that seem almost clean or the filthy ones that leave no
room for doubt? If you can fill your mind with clean and constructive thoughts,
then there will be no room for these persistent imps, and they will leave.
… As you involve yourself with righteous and
worthwhile things, keep your mind filled with worthy thoughts, and you will
have the ability to accomplish those things that will bring fulfillment to your
life.
