Nourishing the Saplings of Life

In my previous post we took a look at planting the seeds of belief, exercising faith, and watching them grow into sprouts of knowledge. The question that was posed was how do we nourish our sprouting seeds so they can grow into trees of life? One of the great things about our field is that it contains natural moisture. Hence, when we plant the seed (exercised a particle of faith) the Holy Ghost bore witness to us of the truthfulness of that seed (it will begin to grow and swell within us). This allegory points out that all we have to do is give a place to plant the seed and the natural moisture in the soil will help it sprout. In this way, we know the seed is good.

What would you then have to do in order to grow a plant? The natural answer would be to give it water. After we have given place for the word of God and it begins to swell within us, we need to give our sprout water so it will grow. Hopefully, you know where I am going with this. By following the Doctrine laid out by Jesus Christ himself, we can give water to our sprouts so that they may grow into saplings.

3^rd Nephi 11 “…this is my doctrine… the Father commandeth all men everywhere to repent and believe in me and whoso believeth in me and is baptized the same shall be saved and they are they who shall inherit the kingdom of God… ye must repent and become as a little child and be baptized in my name… ye must repent and be baptized in my name and become as a little child…this is my doctrine…”

Great! So we get baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and follow his Doctrine and thus give all of our little sprouts the required water they need to grow. Hopefully you have been baptized in a manner that is prescribed by the Savior himself. Hopefully you have sought earnestly for the guidance of the Spirit and prayed diligently for the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost. Hopefully you have sought out someone who has authority given them BY JESUS CHRIST, as he gave authority to his disciples in 3^rd Nephi. Hopefully you have not taken the commandment given to us by the Lord HIMSELF (who has all authority, power, might, majesty, glory, and truth) lightly and have sought out HIS guidance for your baptism. If not, I would exhort you to read 3^rd Nephi 11 and ask yourself if you have been faithful to the commandment given to you by your Lord and Savior.

Now that we have watered our sprouts and they have taken root and have begun to grow, is our knowledge perfect? Nay, but we have grown in knowledge and intelligence. We have seen that the water we have used is good and it has filled our souls. This will strengthen our faith (the motivation to take action), and we will have a desire to exercise more faith. Our sprout has now grown into a small sapling.

Next we have to care for our sapling and nourish it. The amount of nourishment needed for a seed to grow is not enough to nourish a sprout. The amount of nourishment needed for our sprout to grow is not enough to nourish our sapling. The amount of nourishment needed for our sapling to grow is not enough to nourish our tree. The amount of nourishment needed for our tree to stay alive is not enough to produce the fruit we so desire. It is the same with the Gospel. As you grow from one level to the next, the amount of effort required increases.

The natural moisture from the ground was not enough to nourish our sprout into a sapling. We had to give it water in order for it to grow. Now that it has grown into a sapling, water alone is not enough. So how do we begin to nourish our sapling?

Last night I sat down with my family and we engaged for the first time in a legit scripture study. Normally we just read the Book of Mormon through and then start over and maybe have a small discussion on what we read. Recently, I have been teaching my children study skills using the Book of Mormon and showing them how to use the scriptures as a Urim and Thummim. I told my children that we were going to start our scripture study with a prayer and ask the Lord for guidance. I asked them to think about topics while we prayed and see if any stuck out in their minds. After the prayer, my youngest told me that we should focus on service.

I pulled out my “A Topical Guide to the Scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”, published in 1977, and we looked up Service. I asked them to peruse the scripture references and see if one stood out to them.

Deuteronomy 6:13 “Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.”

I asked them, “What does it mean to fear the Lord thy God?” They were puzzled because we have never taught them to be afraid of God and so I explained in terms that children could understand.

“If Grandpa were here with us, you wouldn’t walk up to him and spit in his face. You wouldn’t call him names and show your butt to him, right?” This of course elicited a round of laughter from the boys. “What do you think Grandpa would do if you stuck your butt at him? He’d probably swat you right? That’s because you were rude to him and offended him. We have great respect for Grandpa because he is caring and wise. He loves us and is always kind to us. That’s what fearing the Lord means. You should be afraid that your actions will show disrespect for God. It doesn’t mean to be afraid of him because He is mean and angry, but we should be afraid of offending Him because he loves and cares for us.

How do we serve him?” My children were quick to answer this question with a long list of ways we can serve God. I proudly told them that all of the suggestions they put forth were excellent answers. We have been taught a lot of great ways to serve God from primary and our experiences. “Let’s see if we can find something in the scriptures to learn about how we can serve God.” I next showed them how to use the footnotes in the scriptures to find other passages that focused on the same subject. We then turned to:

1 Samuel 7:3 “And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord, and serve him only…”

One of the study skills I have been teaching my children is to find lists within the scriptures. We noted that Samuel was giving us a list to follow. So we listed the steps Samuel taught the people of Israel:

1. Return unto the Lord with all your hearts 

2. Put away the strange gods (note the little “g”) 

3. Prepare your hearts unto the Lord 

4. Serve him only

This opened up a fantastic discussion about serving strange gods and how we in our modern day don’t worship foreign gods like Greek Mythology or Egyptian gods of old, but rather we have replaced them with materialism, addiction to entertainment, hero worship, and earthly pursuits. We then turned our attention back to the fourth point of serve him only.

At this point, one of my sons told me that he knew how to serve God. I asked, “Do you know from the scriptures how to serve God?” He replied that in Mosiah, King Benjamin told us that when we serve others we are serving God. Happy to see my 10 year old actively participating and feeling the inspiration of the spirit, we looked in Mosiah to find that scriptural reference.

Mosiah 2:17 “And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.”

After reading this, my children had a moment of clarity and realized that the way we serve God is by serving everyone. I told them about a blog post I read where someone pictured everyone as Jesus. “That homeless person is homeless Jesus, the beggar is hungry Jesus, the person who just lost their job is distressed Jesus. When we view others as our Lord and Savior, we can see how to love all mankind as he loves us.”

My youngest son then remembered another scripture in Mosiah that gives us instructions of how we can serve others. Mosiah 4:26, one that he had marked in his scriptures. We found that this scripture listed ways we can serve each other and so we made a list:

1. Impart of your substance to the poor
       a. Every man according to that which he hath 

2.  Feed the hungry 

3. Clothe the naked 

4. Visit the sick
       a. Administer to their relief

                       i. Spiritually

                      ii. Temporally

                     iii. According to their wants

I find that my children have a great deal to teach me. I asked them what each point of this list tells us about serving others. So according to my children, this is the message of Mosiah 4:26:

1. We need to give to the poor. Not just the things that we have extra, but we need to give freely to them of everything we have. Giving to the poor should be a sacrifice, something special we give to them to show our love for them and for God.

2. We need to make some food and find people who don’t have anything to eat. We have plenty of food in the house but some people don’t have anything to eat. It makes me sad to think of someone out there hurting because their belly is empty.

3. I haven’t seen anyone walking around naked, but maybe their feet are naked. Maybe they need socks and shoes because it’s hot outside. Maybe they need a shirt or a jacket. Clothe the naked probably means that if someone doesn’t have something to cover themselves with, we should provide that covering for them.

4. We should visit people who are sick. Maybe they are lonely and need someone to make them feel better. Maybe they need someone to get them medicine or to help them clean the house.

a.    When someone is sick they can’t do a lot because their bodies are trying to get better. When I’m sick I feel pain in my body and so I want someone to make my pain go away. We can go over and read them a book or make them some soup so they feel loved. We can ask them if there is anything they want or something we can do for them to make them feel better.

I am often humbled by the sweet words of my children. Don’t let them fool you though, they can be little devils as well. It fills my heart to know that they understand the needs of others and how much they can love and empathize with the afflicted. They are young, and yet they have great spiritual wisdom that I think only children can have. Christ has commanded us in his Doctrine to become as little children, and through the answers of my children I can see why.

This is how we begin to nourish our sapling. We serve God. We serve God by relieving the suffering of others. When we begin to do all we can do to serve others, we will begin to find the strength to perform work beyond our capabilities. This is the growth from sapling to tree.

In my next post, we will visit the topic of weeds in our field. At every stage of growth, the weeds always threaten to overtake our progress and devour the nourishment we are trying to give to our orchard.