Daily With All Diligence

In his final talk in general conference, President Nelson said this, “The voices and pressures of the world are engaging and numerous. But too many voices are deceptive, seductive, and can pull us off the covenant path. To avoid the inevitable heartbreak that follows, I plead with you today to counter the lure of the world by making time for the Lord in your life—each and every day…. My brothers and sisters, I plead with you to make time for the Lord! Make your own spiritual foundation firm and able to stand the test of time by doing those things that allow the Holy Ghost to be with you always…. The Lord knows you and loves you. He is your Savior and your Redeemer. He leads and guides His Church. He will lead and guide you in your personal life if you will make time for Him in your life—each and every day.” So twice in this short talk he used the word “plead” to tell us to make time for the Lord in our life each day—surely this is an indication that he is serious about this invitation and we would do well to heed his counsel.

                In mathematics it is generally understood that the order in which you add a set of numbers is not important. For example, you can add the numbers between 1 and 10 in any order and you will always get the sum 55. But this is not true in all cases for infinite series. One such example is the Mercator series 1 – 1/2 + 1/3  – 1/4 + 1/5 - …. When added in this order, this series converges conditionally to ln(2)=0.693147, meaning that it converges to this number if the numbers are added in that order. But if we rearrange the order of addition, we can make it sum to any number that we want it to. For example, if we add more of the negative numbers first, such as in 1 – 1/2 – 1/4 + 1/3 – 1/6 – 1/8 + 1/5 – 1/10… where we follow each positive number with two negative numbers instead of 1, this converges to exactly half of the original sum. Even though we seem to be adding the exact same set of numbers, by rearranging the order we arrive at a different place. I have thought about this recently in the context of how we arrange the priorities in our life—we might think that the order we do things in doesn’t matter, but I believe it makes all the difference. When we truly put first things first we arrive at a very different place than when we simply let the most pressing demands of the moment dictate everything we do thinking that eventually we’ll get to everything that is needed. I believe this is exactly what President Nelson is telling us—we must put time with the Lord in prayer and scripture study first in our lives. It is easy to put off spiritual things because of the seemingly important nature of so many other demands on our time. But we can say with Nehemiah of old when we are tempted to set aside our time with the Lord for a day or a week or a month: “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down” (Nehemiah 6:3). I love the way that Elder Scott once put it directly regarding our time spent in scriptures study: “Don’t yield to Satan’s lie that you don’t have time to study the scriptures. Choose to take time to study them. Feasting on the word of God each day is more important than sleep, school, work, television shows, video games, or social media. You may need to reorganize your priorities to provide time for the study of the word of God. If so, do it!”

                After Lamoni’s people were converted in the Book of Mormon through the preaching of Ammon, the Nephite missionary continued to teach and nurture them with the word of God. Mormon recorded, “And Ammon did preach unto the people of king Lamoni; and it came to pass that he did teach them all things concerning things pertaining to righteousness. And he did exhort them daily, with all diligence; and they gave heed unto his word, and they were zealous for keeping the commandments of God” (Alma 21:23). Eventually through this daily devotion, they became so firm in their testimony that they were “were converted unto the Lord” and “never did fall away” (Alma 23:6). I think that is the key for us in our lives as well—we must give heed unto the word of the Lord daily and with diligence. We must, as President Nelson invited, follow the familiar exhortation of Nephi: “Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life” (2 Nephi 31:20).