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.

An Orchard of Faith Seeds

“I advise all to go on to perfection, and search deeper and deeper into the mysteries of Godliness. A man can do nothing for himself unless God direct him in the right way” (TPJS p109).

I am not an elegant writer, nor can I express the Words of God in the same way that He has made them known unto me. While reading the following scriptures, the Spirit of the Lord enlightened my mind and I understood them in a way I had not perceived before. I have arranged the following scriptures in such a way that you might understand how I was inspired to look at them. I will add my own words in (parenthesis) so if you want you can completely ignore those.

Alma 32:

(In the beginning of Chapter 32, verse 17, I read something that stood out to me as I was studying faith. I want to use an allegory of us as children being taught about flowers. There are no pictures of flowers in the house, nor are there flowers in the yard or anywhere around. We are only taught about them from books which contain no pictures and by the words of those that we trust.)

v17. If thou wilt show unto us a sign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe. (This makes sense. Because we have no personal experience with flowers, we can only imagine what they might be like. After some time, we might ask, “Will you show me a flower please, that I might know of these things?”)

v18. If a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it. (Before our actual encounter with a flower, people had told us about flowers and how beautiful they were. We had dreamed of seeing a flower and wondered what it might be like. As we are walking one day we see something in the green field next to the sidewalk. “What is that daddy?” we ask. “That’s a flower.” Now we have seen a flower, make the connection, and know what it is. We no longer need belief.)

v19. And now, how much more cursed is he that knoweth the will of God and doeth it not, than he that only believeth and falleth into transgression? (Perhaps when we saw something beautiful before this encounter, we would point and say “Flower!”. Then the correction comes, “No, that’s not a flower. That is a weed. It is only pretending to be a flower.” What happens to our lawn if we later reject the knowledge we have of the flower and instead plant all the weeds that only pretend to be flowers?)

(This is an important introduction to the lesson on faith that Alma is about to teach us. We learn that the reason God doesn’t send Angels to everyone that asks is because they will have knowledge given to them before they are ready to live by it. Laman and Lemuel beheld an Angel and still they turned away from the Lord. If we are not prepared to DO the will of the Father, it is better for us to not HAVE the knowledge of His will lest the demands of justice have claim to our souls. This shows how wise and loving our Father in Heaven is and how much He wants to give us mercy. If He were to give us our every desire, we would surely become fallen and cursed.)

v21. Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true. (Like the flower.)

v22. God is merciful unto all who believe on his name; therefore he desireth, in the first place, that ye should believe, yea, even on his word.

v26. Now, as I said concerning faith—that it was not a perfect knowledge—even so it is with my words. Ye cannot know of their surety at first, unto perfection, any more than faith is a perfect knowledge.

v27. Experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith.

(Joseph Smith taught in The Lectures on Faith “…it is faith, and faith only, which is the moving cause of all action in them…and as faith is the moving cause of all action in temporal concerns, so it is in spiritual; for the Savior has said, and that truly, that "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” So in order to exercise a particle of faith, we must DO something.)

v27. Yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words. (Step 1 in this process is believing. When we believe something, we accept it as truth. Someone tells us there is a beautiful plant called a flower and we believe them. This belief blossoms into faith when we go out and seek to find a flower. The desire to seek is belief and the seeking is the maturation of belief into faith.)

v28. Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. (Before moving on, forget about the flower now and picture your life as a newly plowed field. There are no weeds, no plants, just rich soil ready for the planting. You have a bag of seeds. These seeds are everything you have been taught and the resources you have available to you.)

v28. Now, if ye give place in your heart…(You find a good spot and decide to plant one of the seeds in your bag. In this allegory, what we are hoping for is a fruit tree. For this example, let’s use an orange tree, although it could really be any fruit tree. So you plant an orange seed in your empty field because you have been told that oranges are delicious and you want to grow a tree so you too can taste the oranges. Keep in mind that you have never seen or tasted an orange before. Someone gave you bags full of orange seeds and told you that if you plant them, you too can have oranges.)

**EDIT - (Someone made a wonderful remark the other day about this post. Some of us have our bags of seed and we think that because we have the seeds we have the fruit of the tree of life. No need to plant or plow, toil or labor. They hold the seeds in their hand and raise them high into the air and proclaim, "I am saved because I have fruit meet for salvation!" Such a person is deceived and will not produce fruit worthy of heaven's attention.)

v28. If it be a true seed, or a good seed...it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me. (You plant the seed and your mouth starts watering because your hopes and dreams of an orange elicit an emotional response. The brain is an amazing organ! If you were to close your eyes and picture a lemon and visualize cutting the lemon and licking the juice, your mouth will start to water. Why? Because the brain can’t differentiate between the abstract thought and reality. This might be the reaction you have when you plant the seed. You feel good about planting the seed because it is the first step towards getting the fruit.)

v29. Now behold, would not this increase your faith? (Would this not motivate you to plant more seeds?)

v29. I say unto you, Yea; nevertheless it hath not grown up to a perfect knowledge.

v30. But behold, as the seed swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, then you must needs say that the seed is good; for behold it swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow. And now, behold, will not this strengthen your faith? Yea, it will strengthen your faith: for ye will say I know that this is a good seed; for behold it sprouteth and beginneth to grow. (A few days later you see little sprouts coming out of the ground! Now you know that the seed is alive! It is a good seed!)

v31. And now, behold, are ye sure that this is a good seed? I say unto you, Yea; for every seed bringeth forth unto its own likeness.

v32. Therefore, if a seed groweth it is good, but if it groweth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away.

v33. And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good.

v34. And now, behold, is your knowledge perfect? Yea, your knowledge is perfect in that thing, and your faith is dormant; and this because you know. (Before, when you planted the seed, you had no idea if it would sprout. Now that the seed has sprouted you KNOW that the seed you planted is good. You now have knowledge “in that thing”.)

v34. Ye know that the word hath swelled your souls, and ye also know that it hath sprouted up, that your understanding doth begin to be enlightened, and your mind doth begin to expand.

v35. O then, is not this real? I say unto you, Yea, because it is light; and whatsoever is light, is good, because it is discernible, therefore ye must know that it is good; and now behold, after ye have tasted this light is your knowledge perfect? (Everyone has the light of Christ in them which light is able to discern between good and evil. When the seed sprouts, you can tell that the sprouting is a good thing. This is what is supposed to happen when you plant a seed. Since the seed is beginning to sprout, does that mean we have an orange in our hands, peeled and ready to eat? No. All we know is that the seed is good and alive.)

v36. Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither must ye lay aside your faith. (You can’t stop exercising your faith at this stage. You now have knowledge that the seed is alive and good, but you can’t stop at this stage.)

v36. Ye have only exercised your faith to plant the seed that ye might try the experiment to know if the seed was good.

v37. Let us nourish it with great care, that it may get root, that it may grow up, and bring forth fruit unto us. And now behold, if ye nourish it with much care it will get root, and grow up, and bring forth fruit. (This is where I constantly fall short. You see, I have an endless supply of seeds. The scriptures are a bag of seeds. Prayer is another bag of seeds. Revelation is an endless bag of seeds. Each time I plant one, I can see whether or not THE WORD is good. But how do I nourish my tree. How are you nourishing your tree?)

v38. If ye neglect the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out.

v39. Now, this is not because the seed was not good, neither is it because the fruit thereof would not be desirable; but it is because your ground is barren, and ye will not nourish the tree, therefore ye cannot have the fruit thereof.

v40. And thus, if ye will not nourish the word, looking forward with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof, ye can never pluck of the fruit of the tree of life.

v41. But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life. (How do we nourish our tree with our faith? Faith is the principle cause of action in all beings, so we must DO something more. What do we do? Pray, read the scriptures, go to church? These are actions that resupply our bag of seeds. What must we do to nourish this tree though?)

v42. And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst.

v43. Then, my brethren, ye shall reap the rewards of your faith, and your diligence, and patience, and long-suffering, waiting for the tree to bring forth fruit unto you.

End of Alma 32.

I have said that the tree is an orange tree, but in reality, it is the tree of life. What is the tree of life?

1 Nephi 11:21-22 (1830 edition) “Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Eternal Father! Knowest thou the meaning of the tree which thy father saw? And I answered him, saying: Yea, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all things.”

Jesus Christ. He is the tree of life. He is the fountain of living water. He is the gift that God freely gave to us to show His eternal love for us. He is eternal life.

This experiment is found in the Bible as well. Jesus said “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.”(John 7:16-17)

So again, I pose the question to you, how are we nourishing our sprouts? If all we do is the “Primary Answers”, then all we are doing is going around our vast field, planting seeds throughout our life and constantly resupplying ourselves with seeds. Some people don’t even resupply, but pull up the sprouts and replant them somewhere else or throw them away entirely. Then they sit there looking on the empty field and say within themselves, “What a lovely clean field I have. I don’t have any weeds or thorns or briars or thistles.” We have been foolishly led to believe that this is the fruit of our labor. It is not enough to cast away the weeds. We have to nourish our sprouts!

Partaking of the fruit of the tree of life is the goal. What does that mean to you? What are you willing to DO to obtain it? How diligent, patient, and long-suffering are you willing to be in order to finally taste of this fruit which is most desirable above all other fruit? 

The First Step

As earthly creatures, we have collectively endeavored to define every aspect of our world. From the largest mountain to the smallest particles, we have invented ways to track it all. Counting the objects in our world is a skill that is taught to us early in our lives and increases in complexity as we grow. Though we continually improve the way in which we can observe and track our world, and though we make tremendous technological advancements increasing our ability to measure everything in the known universe; time, as we know it, is limited by the boundaries we place upon it. But why?

Time is an invention of man used to measure his existence. It is the globally accepted way of tracking the revolutions of our world as we circumnavigate the sun through the vast expanse of space. It is the abstract creation by which nearly all of society revolves around. It is a limited imagined resource that is either used productively, or wasted. The creature Gollum poses this riddle to Biblo Baggins in J.R.R Tolkien's fiction "The Hobbit" which illustrates one way we view time:

This thing, all things devours.

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers.

Gnaws iron, bites steel.

Grinds hard stones to meal.

Slays kings, ruins town, and beats high mountain down.

Whether you view time as a motivating force that propels us forward into the future, a destroyer of lives that leaves nothing but memories in the past, or the timeless experiences existing in this present moment, time is an illusion. Not just time, mind you, but this very existence is an illusion of the reality that exists just beyond the veil. It comes as no surprise to me that the first words we have been given from the creator of heaven, earth, and all things that exist are:

In the beginning

Many religious scholars and educated scientists have spent their time dedicated to defining exactly when "the beginning" happened. There are widely accepted theories, speculations based on inspiration, and wild notions founded on occult beliefs, and yet we have barely scratched the surface of what knowledge there is to find within the realm of our existence. I believe the whole purpose of God's introductory words to man is to awaken him to reality that the exact "beginning" is as unimportant as the concept of tomorrow. The ever present "now" is all that is important, as it pertains to our existence because we can only ever experience the now.

In "The Book of Mormon", the prophet Alma teaches us that, "the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors...do not procrastinate the day of your repentance (Alma 34:32-33)". Alma admonishes us to repent and come to Christ NOW, for there is no such thing as tomorrow. The Lord revealed to Joseph Smith that, "NOW it is called today until the coming of the Son of Man (Doctrines and Covenants 64:23)". To solidify this concept of an eternal present, we learn throughout all of the scriptures that, "God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever." There is only this moment in time. You live in the eternal "now".

So it is, that I begin a new chapter of my life and introduce my words to the world. I am the least among those who call themselves Saints. I have lived a life of depravity and have wasted my time satisfying my lusts and committing great and malignant sins. In the sincerity of my heart, I feel as though my whole mortal tabernacle is defiled and that Satan has the awful chains of hell wrapped around me. But I have hope in Christ. It is my never ending prayer that I might perform some works of good upon this earth that I might glorify my Father in heaven. It is through the atonement of Christ, which I make a part of every "now" that I, a wretched and pitiful man, can become sanctified through Jesus Christ.

I would like to welcome you to my journey. This day, this hour, this minute, this moment, as you read these words, I pray you will find something of value. I try to fill my time with the things of God, though the world is always trying to pull me down into its insanity. I hope that by sharing my words and my experiences, that you will be edified and inspired to turn your life to the Holy One of Israel. I pray that I will be inspired to share the things from my life that will be of worth to you; not for glory or honor, but to show how the lowliest of souls can climb their way out of the pit of darkness and into the glorious light of truth.

As of the writing of this, I am 3 years into my search for further light and truth from true messengers. I have made tremendous strides towards my salvation and have had some serious set backs, but I am ever striving for perfection.