Must be fulfilled

So I just finished a trip down to Marysvale with a bunch of friends. I knew them generally as good people with good vibes before, but now I could call them very good friends - people I could share my weaknesses with. Part of the trip was about traversing God's gift to us as we wheeled through the deserts and mountains, and part of it was getting to know each other better. Both parts were really awesome.

One of my new friends, as it turns out, is an escapee from Siberia and Russia. He, his dad, and the rest of his family were slated to be taken from Siberia to a labor camp in Siberia. As if Siberia wasn't bad enough - but I can't go into those stories here. Let's just say that day to day survival was iffy in "normal" Siberia.

So he gets a fair warning and escaped Russia through a set of miracles. Then he's living in Israel, but can't get citizenship because he has christian beliefs. He can't work, and he can't eat. At this point, he receives guidance from God to leave, using a path that clearly won't work. He's going to get on to a plane without the right papers. He doesn't have a visa or passport because he's not a citizen of anywhere. Can you travel internationally without those papers? No. He knows that, his dad knows that - everybody knows that. But he buys the tickets anyway. Why? Because he was told by his God to do so.

Fast forward past a few more miracles and he's in Canada, now an illegal immigrant - and without papers. Fast forward some more, and add another miracle or two, and now he's a Canadian citizen.

Nephi did that too. In Chapter 17 verse 3, "And thus we see that the commandments of God must be fulfilled. And if it so be that the children of men keep the commandments of God he doth nourish them, and means whereby they can accomplish the thing which he has commanded them; wherefore, he did provide means for us while we did sojourn in the wilderness"

Nephi was asked to do the impossible as well. Drop your life in Jerusalem, and go out to the desert where there was no food, no water, nothing except bad guys waiting to take your stuff and then kill you. Does that sound like a good idea? Maybe if you're suicidal, but it was a commandment of God. Rather than reason it out and decide it was a bad idea, Nephi and his family did what they were told to do.

It was far from easy. The Lord didn't make it easy at all, but he made them able. It turned out pretty well for them. For more information on that story, check out the entire Book of Mormon.

So now I'm looking for the difference between Nephi, my buddy Arthur, and the rest of us. We don't get guidance from God, right? Why them and not us?

Actually if I went down that road, this post might turn into its own book. To avoid that, I'll fast forward a bit and try to hit the highlights I see.

First, we must not block divine messages. A part of this probably involves keeping my soul clean enough that the message can get through. Sin, drugs, anger, and bad habits can cloud our spirit, and make it more difficult for the message to get through. I won't begin to guess as to how much of a negative shield we can build up before the message can't get through - that's up to God. I can only presume that the fewer shields we put up, the more the we allow the Lord's messages to get through.

Second, one must be looking for guidance from God. He must know that I will receive his guidance and act on it - I've discussed this in many other blogs.

Third, I have to act on it. It's super likely that I won't be shown all steps I need to take - just the next one. It doesn't matter that I'm asked to step into a pit of snakes and to stand there and wait for further instructions - if that's the instructions, that's what I need to do.

The last thing that comes to mind is also vital. How do you know when something is guidance from deity, or when it's just a random thought? This comes from practice and obedience, from faith and action. How did Abraham really know that the commandment to take his son into the middle of nowhere and kill him was a commandment? He knew. He had practiced following the word of God. He knew what the Lord's voice sounded like, and he was willing to bet his son's life on it. That's called certainty.

How do you get there? I'm thinking we follow steps 1 though 3 over and over. Thousands of times. Tens of thousands of times. We learn his voice, we request his voice, and we follow that voice. We communicate with God, we emulate Him, we try to become more like him. As we enlarge the pipeline with Him, we know his voice, and we hear it more often. The Lord's trust in our willingness to obey grows, and our willingness to follow grows. Then we can become greater disciples of Christ.

I'm sure there's more to the subject, but that's as far as I can go today. It's as far as the Lord can take me with the subject I guess. May we all seek for these gifts.