Counseling the Lord

I'm starting to find that I really enjoy the Book of Mormon. To me, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Bible are always the word of God, but it's a harder read. I feel that I have to work harder to get the gems. After all the admiration I've gathered for Moroni and others, here's Jacob, the unheralded brother of Nephi who pounds scripture down with such impressive power and humility.

So I landed today in Jacob 4. Verse 3 states "Now in this thing we do rejoice; and we labor diligently to engraven these words upon plates, hoping that our beloved brethren and our children will receive them with thankful hearts, and look upon them that they may learn with joy and not with sorrow, neither with contempt, concerning their first parents."

Here I see that Jacob understands that different people can look at the same event and come up with a much different reaction. For example, we live in a beautiful home near the lake, and will be building a more beautiful home across the street, next to the lake. Some will see that as awesome. Others will see that and feel jealousy or anger. One person I know will worry for me. After all, she worried about the lake flooding me when she found out where I lived - and now I'm going to be much closer. Let's just say I understand the risks and I choose beauty over fear.

Another example. Just had my birthday and now I'm - ugh - 57. How did I get so old? I still insist that my body and everything about me is somewhere in the 30's. I was mentioning on facebook that I'm starting a new business - therealestateedge.com, and someone asks me why I'm starting a business when I should be thinking about retirement. Why retire? I'm not tired! And what fun is sitting in the rocking chair anyway? But these are just examples of how different people see the same events differently.

So here's Jacob, he has the wisdom to know that some will see his writing with sorrow or contempt. He also knows that thankfulness is an option. He lets us all know that he'd prefer thankfulness - it's a higher energy emotion that gets us much further than those that are negative. He knows that thankfulness is a step to getting us moving toward Christ, as he describes in the next verse. Negative emotions may make the person feel something they want or choose to feel, but they don't move anyone toward Christ.

So then he moves us forward. Verse 10 says "Wherefore, brethren, seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand. For behold, ye yourselves know that he counseleth in wisdom, and in justice, and in great mercy, over all his works. 11 Wherefore, beloved brethren, be reconciled unto him through the atonement of Christ, his only Begotten son, and ye may obtain a resurrection which is in Christ, and be presented as having faith...".

We're all good at sometimes (or usually) thinking the Lord is like a fast-food order taker. Whether we realize it or not, we act like prayer is us making an order for what we want. Then we expect to be able to drive to the next window and pick it up. This is counseling the Lord. When we stop to think, we realize that the Lord will never give us what we don't need, even though we requested it, because he loves us. There are exceptions to that - sometimes when we insist on getting the wrong thing, the Lord lets us fail so we realize that we need a bit more humility and better ears. One example of that is Joseph and Oliver and the lost manuscript.

Gotta go. recording this morning. May we and I learn to make requests, and not orders from the Lord. And may we listen to his feedback when he tries to communicate in our prayers