Thou Hast Sought My Will

This fall season my two oldest children have suddenly been very interested in BYU football. I have also followed it to some degree in previous years, but it never really interested them. This year they have wanted to watch the games and talk about football with excitement, even if they didn’t really know much about it. Just the other day I heard them arguing about what a first down was and it was clear that neither really understood it, but it was fun to see their enthusiasm even if it was “zeal without knowledge.” I realized quickly why they were so interested in football this year when they never have been in the past: their friends. At school their friends were discussing their interest in the game and the local teams, and suddenly that made them deeply interested in watching it and talking about it. It was all about mimetic desire: they wanted to be like their friends.

I thought about this as I listed to President Nelson’s talk from conference today about making time for the Lord. In it he 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.” He continued, “If you are not also seeking the Lord through daily prayer and gospel study, you leave yourself vulnerable to philosophies that may be intriguing but are not true. Even Saints who are otherwise faithful can be derailed by the steady beat of Babylon’s band.” His message was that we have to be able to reject the voices of the world that seek to deceive, seduce, and pull us away from the gospel. We have to be able to desire more to please God than to please our peers around us. My children understandably want to be like their friends and want to fit in with them, and certainly there is nothing wrong with an interest in football. But for them and for all of us we have to know when it is not okay to be like our peers or to try to please the world. The downfall of Cain was not that he did not love God; it was that he “loved Satan more than God” (Moses 5:18). We must learn rather to love God more than Satan and the world and anyone else.

            In the Doctrine and Covenants the Lord said several times that we should not fear man; He told both David Whitmer and the Prophet Joseph that they should not have feared man (3:7, 30:1). Several years later He also told the Prophet in Liberty Jail: “Fear not what man can do” (122:9). In another scripture He said to a group of missionaries: “But with some I am not well pleased, for they will not open their mouths, but they hide the talent which I have given unto them, because of the fear of man” (60:2). They were afraid to speak about the gospel because they feared man more than they feared God, and this verse is a warning to us all that we must be more concerned about what God thinks of us than what our peers think of us or our actions. To do that we need to “make time for the Lord” as President Nelson urged us. Our goal should be to receive the commendation that Nephi received from the Lord: “Thou hast not feared [the people], and hast not sought thine own life, but hast sought my will, and to keep my commandments” (Helaman 10:4). I hope that my children and I can likewise learn to seek first His will above all else.