I will go and do

Sometimes in life we find ourselves stopped. Trapped. The battles have been waged and lost. You sit there feeling the pain of the loss and wondering perhaps where God is. Isn't he supposed to help you always?

So I opened to Alma Chapter 52 today. These are the war chapters of the Book of Mormon. These are sometimes criticized for being interesting, but not necessarily spiritually uplifting. The thing is - the Lord knows why they're in there. These of course are not just interesting war stories. There is wisdom in them.

So I was reading through the chapter, and while I enjoyed the story, I knew that I wasn't getting much in the spiritual strength category. I thought "I haven't found those easter eggs I'm looking for yet", when the thought occurred to me that I'd probably already passed two or three of them. Didn't catch them. I did find at least one though.

So the Nephites just lost a battle for some of their biggest and most important cities. The cities are well walled, the Nephites made sure of that. They made sure that a small army and the city defenses could hold off a much bigger Lamanite army, and now the city was in the hands of the Lamanites. Can you get that back? Nope.

But if the Lord needs you to get it back, you get it back. You find another way. You consult with the Lord, and use your resources, and you get it back.

And if the Lord needs you to keep podcasting, or writing, or if he needs you to be a better sunday school teacher despite the abuse you may have taken from students, parents, etc, then that's what you do. If your spouse doesn't support your wishes to raise the kids in a certain way - you find another way. It's about relentless dedication to doing what you know you should be doing. Not that I'd be an expert in that, but Teancum, Moroni and Lehi (the ones in the book of Alma) were.

To be clear, it's not about enforcing a person's personal will. It's about making the Lord's will happen. Big difference. Huge. Doing the first makes a person very unpopular and difficult to live or work with. It also results in a person being truthfully and properly called some very unpleasant names. The second makes a

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person a follower of God. The methods of doing these tasks will be very different as well. One will feel like force, while the other feels like love. One feels like "my way or the highway", while the other probably feels like relentless dedication.

So what did they do? These important and lost cities were critical to both sides, they were very well defended from a military perspective, and they were inhabited by a large army of very unpleasant soldiers. It would seem to be a very lost cause.

So does a person give up? If you're doing your own will and it's not working very well, perhaps so. You might be doing something that doesn't need to be done - or shouldn't be done. If you're following the Lord and it's not done yet? Find another way. The Lord doesn't make getting his work done easy - he just makes it do-able.

Teancum followed his leaders, and through military strategy, won an unwinnable battle. It's kind of in the same category as Nephi saying "I will go and do".

If it's the Lord's will, it will happen. The Lord will make it happen, but only if we surrender our will to his. Only if you and I do what the Lord needs us to do to get there. For whatever reason, he won't snap his fingers and make things work while we sit on our lawnchairs. I think I know why that's the case, but that's a topic for another day.

May we "go and do", even when the battle seems lost to us. To quote Yoda, there is no try.

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