The following is the text to a series of videos I produced to expand upon the meaning of First Nephi 1:1.
29. Ending Beginnings
Summary: The Unintentional Hero
Introduction
29. Ending Beginnings
Discussing the spiritual, powerful, eternal you.
View the Video (5:31)
Nephi’s records were far more comprehensive than just his day-to-day dealings. He quoted prophecies about events that happened centuries before his time and will happen in times beyond ours. He was writing to God’s perspective, our beyond-this-earth natural state, which is eternity. Today, we will conclude by discussing our own endings and beginnings.
Studying life through God’s perspective is not box-checking or slogging through some painful, arbitrary homework assignment. It is you reading His word every day, learning who you are and who your Heavenly Father is and how you can become more like Him. That, plus prayer, is the most important thing you can do any day. These daily opportunities will help change your life and help you love yourself and others better. You will learn about a being of light that stood in the presence of God before coming to Earth, joyfully receiving a specific assignment to be a leader in His great work here. That being is you, prior to being burdened with earthly crusts. That is the spiritual, powerful, eternal you.
The adversary’s greatest weapons against you include doubt, discouragement, and distraction. They also include ignorance, willful or otherwise. It takes active effort to maintain whatever spiritual ground you have gained. This effort is not punishment, it is not some sort of game, it is life, a goal to become like our Father in Heaven that we have been reaching for since before this Earth. It is you developing skills to be greater in the next life, building on skills you had before coming here, and mastering the gifts you have been given here. You have done good in the lives of many people. You have spiritual power and potential. Each gift you have been given has eternal potential and consequence. God knows what you can do. Never doubt who you are or the life you should live.
It is not easy to keep that truth in front of you. It is easy to slide into doubt and distraction. But helps are in place to overcome challenges, and your goal set by God and yourself is to achieve. You will be blessed for what you choose to do, each day, every moment, one way or the other.
Nephi’s words, as I said in opening this series, point you toward everything you need to know about God and yourself. Like any good book’s first paragraph, they invite you to continue reading. They try to convince you that investing your time in this book is one of the best investments you will ever make. That promise is true here.
To conclude: Anciently, prophets would ceremonially “shake the dust from their robes”, as we touched on in the episode “Spiritual Concrete”. This symbolic gesture testified that they had done all they could to warn the people from their sins and the consequences that would, without fail, follow. Nephi’s record is a written form of that ceremony, his personal “shaking of his robes” testifying not only in his life but for generations afterward that he had done what he could to teach the people of the consequences of sin and point them toward their only source of salvation and a fulness of joy. He had fulfilled his earnest desire and his obligation to tell us about it. His robes are clean. His record is this testimony.
These words are my testimony, as are yours. Each time we share our faith, our understanding of God, our testimonies about what we know to be true, we in effect shake the dust from our own robes and do what we can to warn people. These testimonies will lift burdens and add joy in a world over-weary with pain.
God bless you to seek and return to Him with joy. May this ending form your new beginning.
Thank for listening.
Summary: The Unintentional Hero
Celebrating and strengthening the unknown hero in you.
View the Video (4:44)
Nephi didn’t choose the life he led. He had been pretty well set as the fourth son of a wealthy merchant. He was probably looking forward to learning his father’s business, marrying that cute daughter of Ishmael, building his own home on that patch behind Dad’s house, having children, and growing comfortably old.
And then his father had that dream.
It upended Nephi’s life, as it did his whole family. Without warning, they were bludgeoned by community hatred for his father’s newfound evangelism; sharpened schisms within the family; anxiety as they abandoned their home, family and friends and fled into the desert; and uncertainty and privation as they became religious refugees.
Those were trying times.
You have your own problems, don’t you? We all do. God’s promise is that we will all experience pain. While sometimes dreadful, this process of experiencing, enduring, learning and improving is one of the great purposes of mortality. It is a core part of our glorious and carefully planned path to perfection.
Even as we struggle, God assures us that He is aware of our challenges and has emplaced powerful helps. “Come unto me,” he says, “all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”.
Though Nephi’s challenges never ended in his lifetime, he knew that if he remained faithful, He would enter into the Lord’s rest. The same is true for you.
His words provide a reliable roadmap for you and everyone you love. Quoting from his final great testimony:
“And now, my beloved brethren, and also Jew, and all ye ends of the earth, hearken unto these words and believe in Christ; and if ye believe not in these words believe in Christ.
“And if ye shall believe in Christ ye will believe in these words, for they are the words of Christ, and he hath given them unto me; and they teach all men that they should do good. And if they are not the words of Christ, judge ye—for Christ will show unto you, with power and great glory, that they are his words, at the last day; and you and I shall stand face to face before his bar; and ye shall know that I have been commanded of him to write these things, notwithstanding my weakness.”
Though his life took many unintended twists, Nephi adjusted and became a hero to the many millions who have been inspired by his unflagging determination to do God’s will. If you follow his example, he will become your hero, too, just as you will become an unintentional hero to those who follow your own example of patience, endurance, trust, and love.
Read the Book of Mormon. It teaches “all men that they should do good”. It will guide, inspire, and change for the better your life and the lives of those around you.