Our Part

One of my favorite scriptures in the whole Book of Mormon is Alma 7:24. In this chapter, Alma, the high priest, has left his judgement seat and is preaching to the people. Here, he is in the city of Gideon preaching to a righteous people. This whole chapter is beautiful because it was written for a group of people who were living how God wanted them to live, so they were blessed with a deeper understanding of gospel topics and not chastened by a call to repentance as is common in the Book of Mormon (and in our lives, today, honestly, Hey, no body is perfect.) Anyways, they get this beautiful chapter, and we get to study it today and get more out of it.

So, this verse says...

"And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity,

and then ye will always abound in good works."

This verse just makes me smile. I think we often think that we need to have faith, hope, charity, and do good works, and then we will be blessed--which can often be the case. But, I love how this verse argues that if you work towards having faith, hope, and charity, then the blessing is that you will do good works. It's all in that fabulous word, "THEN" followed by the use of the future tense. "Then" means that whatever follows after it is the result of what came before it. The future tense means that something is coming in the near or distant future. So, when we put all of these ideas together, we see that having good works is the blessed result of having faith, hope, and charity. Or in other words, when we are doing our best to live a Christ-like life, we are blessed with the ability to live a Christ-like life. It's, as the scriptures say, "one eternal round." I LOVE IT!

So, my friends, I want you to think about what this idea means to you. Are you being faithful, hopeful, and charitable? Because if you are, you are definitely on the path of discipleship, so keep going. Use this scripture as motivation to be better and more Christ-like, that's what I do. 

The Lord loves you and wants to bless you. 

Have fun doing good!