For the natural man is an enemy to God, Mosiah 3:17-21

I woke up thinking about some of the things that “so easily beset” us in general and, of course, me in particular, thwarting our personal discipleship.

When, as a teenager, I first read “For the natural man is an enemy to God...unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, full of love....” I thought about the temptations that I, personally, was most aware of amongst myself and my peers: judgmentalism, arrogance, unkindness, cliquishness, sexual promiscuity, foul language, substance abuse, dishonesty, etc.

Today I woke up mulling over the questions of what are some of the temptations that thwart some of us who have been attempting discipleship for a much longer period of time than I had been back then.  And then reviewing my own life identify some of those at play in my own daily interactions and decisions.

Some of the pitfalls that I think we face at this stage of discipleship:

Focus on screens, audio-visual media, or the printed word instead of on the people around us

Valuing efficiency more than taking careful time to accomodate requests, requirements, or others’ needs

Retreat into solitude when there is good work to be done

Self-consciousness instead of other-consciousness in formal and informal meetings

Focus on results instead of process

Measuring our worth by how well we are listened to or how insightful we are perceived to be

Giving answers more than we ask questions

Finding greater satisfaction and sense of worth in leadership than in serving in less noticed capacities

Fear

Placing our trust in financial gain

Listening to those in power or in leadership roles more than we do to those who are not

Focusing on failures in our own performance rather than on gratitude for grace

Again, the scriptural admonition to seek to become “submissive, meek, humble, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict” by coming “to a [better] knowledge of the Savior” seems like a good way for me to start making better headway against those.

Revised third verse for Hymn #19

We’ll sing the Lord’s goodness and mercy.

We’ll praise Him by day and by night,

Rejoice in His glorious gospel, 

And bask in His life-giving light.

Thus, grateful and seeking to serve Him,

The honest and faithful may go

Rejoicing and speaking His gospel, 

That all people their Savior may know.

Faith, Repentance, Baptism, the Gift of the Holy Ghost

from the Introduction to First Principles and Ordinances by Samuel M. Brown

"The principles and ordinances of the fourth article of faith are familiar to most traditional Christians. Among Latter-day Saints, though, these concepts have dramatically expanded meanings.  I believe that the first principles and ordinances are much more about relationships--among humans and between humans and [the Father, Son and Holy Ghost]--than is generally recognized  I feel that particularly in the last fifty years, many of us Latter-day Saints have tended toward traditionally American views on faith, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost.  These traditional American Protestant views have emphasized individuals over their relationships.  Faith, repentance, baptism and confirmation have sometimes been about an individual making her often lonely way toward God.  In this book I describe an approach to the first principles and ordinances of the  gospel that acknowledges the relationships that stand at the core of the gospel and the meaning of life...For each principle, emphasizing relationships transforms a familiar concept.  As markers of relationships, the elements of the fourth article of faith point toward the temple and the grand story of connection that the temple contains.  Put another way, the revelation of temple ordinances was built line upon line, precept upon precept, from the very simplest of our doctrines--the first principles and ordinances of the fourth article of faith."

I'm interested.