In my last article, I presented the first half of a talk I was blessed to share at the Sidney B. Sperry Book of Mormon Symposium in 1990. This month, I am grateful to be able to share Part II of that address with you, but first I’d like to share a little of the context or what some might call “back-story” of that amazing experience.

On August 1, 1989—the day I submitted my proposal to Brother Monte Nyman, Chairman of the symposium for that year—I was a 40 year old housewife, struggling to keep a very troubled family together. My oldest daughter, Carolyn, had become involved with a group of other youth in the Orem, Utah area who were “acting out” in defiance toward their LDS upbringing. In other words, they had dropped all pretense of religious activity and had begun using alcohol, tobacco and other mood altering drugs. I had spent the last year doing all that I could do, using every approach, from gentle persuasion to every tough-love measure I could think of to pull my daughter back from the edge of the cliff on which she was already teetering. Knowing on both sides of our family, in her grandparents’ generation, there had been severe alcoholism, I spent a lot of time pleading with the Lord to turn aside my child from the very thin ice she was all but stomping on, daring it to break. I felt a lot like Nemo’s father in “Finding Nemo,” when Nemo leaves the safety of the reef and defiantly swims out to touch the boat he has been taught all his life to avoid at all costs. “Nemo! Nemo! Come back! Come back . . .”

In other words, 1989 had already been a rough year through which I had been trying to maintain my own recovery from a life-long dependency (addiction) to unhealthy eating behaviors. I can’t tell you how many times I had wanted to throw away my own “sobriety,” and just drown myself in excess “comfort” foods. It had only been through the grace (power) and guidance of my Savior Jesus Christ, conveyed to me from studying and likening the testimonies of the Book of Mormon prophets to my own life I had found the sanity to not relapse into my own form of “substance abuse.”   During that year, I had read King Benjamin’s great discourse, identifying with every word.   My daughter’s exercise of her own agency and my own inability to convince her of the danger of her choices had brought me, like the elder Alma to a place where all I could do was pray for God to intervene in her life. I knew what it felt like to face my own “nothingness,” and be brought down into the depths of humility in a way I had never before imagined. I had also had my eyes opened to see a message of such comfort and hope in King Benjamin’s address, where for years I had heard nothing but what I assumed was chastisement and commandment.

And so, against all odds—after all, I was “just” a housewife with only a high school education and absolutely zero public speaking experience beyond teaching Relief Society and giving a very occasional Sacrament Meeting talk—I composed the proposal letter the first day of August, 1989 and mailed it. Little did I know then I was only 3 ½ weeks from having to exercise total faith and trust in the goodness of God—that He has all wisdom and all power both in heaven and in earth and that He comprehends things I cannot comprehend—just as Benjamin pled with me to believe (Mosiah 4:9).

On August 26, 1989, on a Saturday evening, as I was in the middle of getting my youngest children bathed and ready for bed, there came a knock at my door that I was in no mood to answer. But one of my older children went to the door and came running back to the bathroom where I was bent over the tub washing my three-year-old’s hair, yelling, “Mom! Mom! Come quick. It’s a policeman and he wants to talk to you.”

As I stood on the last stair of my split-entry stairs, just above the entry floor and looked at the somber faces of not only a Utah Highway Patrolman, but also a member of my ward bishopric, framed by the gorgeous colors of the fading August sunset, I seemed to know what was coming. I knew it had to do with Carolyn. Still drying my hands on the towel I held in front of my tub-water wet waistline, I heard the Utah Highway Patrolman tell me he was sorry to inform me my daughter, (calling her by her entire legal name—first, middle, and last), had been killed several hours earlier in an automobile accident, north-bound on I-15. That’s when King Benjamin’s invitation to remember “the goodness of God and his matchless power, and his wisdom, and his patience,” and to put my “trust in the Lord” even unto the “end of [this] life, . . . the life of the mortal body” really took hold in my heart. (See Mosiah 4:6.) It was the moment when the thoughts I hoped to share about King Benjamin’s message became a living reality for me—not just a theory.

And so it was when my letter of acceptance for my proposed presentation, “Benjamin’s Promises” came in the mail, several months later, the Lord had prepared me to bear testimony of something I knew from my own lived experience: That by cultivating a relationship of total trust of God in all things, we can find the gift to face even the hardest we can imagine. In this article I pray I can give adequate expression to my testimony that the actions itemized in Mosiah 4:12-16 are promises! Supernal promises which he knew he could make to those who would truly surrender themselves to the conditions he had just summarized in Mosiah 4:6-11.

First, before we explore the promises King Benjamin begins to make with these words, “If ye do this, ye shall . . . ,” let’s review the true principles of being in a right relationship with God that he has just summarized):

1. Put [our] trust in the Lord" (v. 6). (Recognize and trust the Lord Jesus Christ, specifically.)
2. Believe that “salvation, through the Atonement of Christ” is sufficient to redeem all of mankind (v.7) including yourself. (That last part may be the hardest of all to believe and accept.)
3. Believe that “there is none other salvation save this" (v. 8). (Acknowledge that ALL salvation [improvement] from any source in coming [though often anonymously] from Jesus Christ.)
4. "Believe that he is" (v. 9). (Believe that Jesus Christ is even now, in the present, a living entity, available to each of us personally this very day and hour, through either the Light of Christ or the Holy Ghost or both.)
5. Believe “that he created all things" (v. 9). (Believe that Christ created all things and that He is the instrument of the Father’s will and purpose manifest in and through all creation.)
6. "Believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth" (v.9). (Believe that we can counsel with Christ in all our doings--that no subject is too trivial or too intimate.)
7. Believe that “man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend" (v. 9). (ALWAYS remember that if you feel yourself able to comprehend anything, it is nothing compared to what the Lord can comprehend, and to give credit to God, not yourself, for your success in any area.)
8. "Repent of your sins . . . and humble yourselves before God" (v. 10). (Realize that humility and repentance are the key principles in Christ's plan, not perfectionistic striving and self-sufficient pride.)
9. "Ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you" (v. 10). (Be willing to humble yourself and seek Christ's personal administration of His atoning sacrifice and grace in your own life even as Alma the younger demonstrates in Alma 36:18 and Alma 38:8.)
10. "Always retain in remembrance . . . your own nothingness and his goodness" (v. 11). (Continue to practice remembering the goodness of GOD, and the truth He testified of in John 15:5: “for without me ye can do nothing.”)
11. "Calling on the name of the Lord daily" (v. 11). (Be willing to not only do lots of good works, giving service in His name, but to also take His name upon you as His son or daughter. Mosiah 5:7)
12. "Standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come" (v. 11). (“That which is to come includes the personal prophetic promises Benjamin is about to make, as well as many future events pertaining to our Savior’s second coming.)
    

RESULTS THAT WE CAN BE CERTAIN OF

I propose as we follow King Benjamin’s counsel to open our hearts to total humility before the Father and reliance on the Savior, we can be absolutely certain we will begin to experience some of the miraculous results listed in verses 12-16.

Admittedly, these promises won’t be fulfilled as if by magic. It will take time for them to materialize as we grow closer to the Lord, but we have a prophet’s promise that according to the Lord’s will and timetable, they will come to pass. We must stand steadfast in hope for ourselves and practice faith in Christ. We must be patient with the process. We must be willing to keep believing what King Benjamin pleads with us, that is to believe about the goodness and patience and long-suffering of God. When we find that this mighty change of orientation from self-sufficiency to Christ’s sufficiency ebbs on occasion and we have to humble ourselves and repent yet again, we need to remember His own merciful testimony: “Yea, as often as my people repent will I forgive them their trespasses against me. As He has modeled this degree of compassion for me, I have learned to feel it for myself and for others.   I have found Him often reminded me that it is good to remember that darkness retreats gradually, not instantly, as dawning sun rises.  

THE FIRST FIVE PROMISED CHANGES ARE INTERNAL

Also, as we pause to consider each of these promised results, it is vitally important we notice the first five changes we can hope for are internal changes. This fact is in perfect harmony with the testimony of the prophets that as President Ezra Taft Benson put it, “The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people” (First Presidency Message, Ensign, July 1989, p. 4). In other words, God begins changing a person in “the inner man.” He knows that as our heart is gradually changed, our habits (outward behaviors) will also gradually change.

These first five promises are: “Ye shall”—

1. “Always rejoice” (v. 12).

How often will we feel a feeling of joy? Always, and under all circumstances.

As I shared before, I experienced this transcendent miracle just months before I stood to testify of it at the Book of Mormon Symposium. Through the sudden and potentially devastating experience of opening my door to a highway patrolman bearing the news of my oldest daughter’s sudden death, through her funeral at which He gave me strength to speak, I was suspended in a state of joy, not shock, as most people thought.

Why? Because I choose to believe in God’s goodness and benevolence, even in the face of such a terrible turn of events. I have come to know for myself and not by anyone else’s witness, that not even a sparrow falls (Matthew 10:29) without our Father and Savior’s divine consciousness, and that “all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28). I know that Carolyn loved God. Her precious journals, kept from the time she was eight years old, were full of her words of love for God. And I know that I love Him, and that I trust Him enough to be “willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [me], even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19).

2. “Be filled with the love of God” (v. 12). A two-way love—His for you and yours for Him. It is absolutely essential that it be two-way.

Today, 23 years after Carolyn’s passing, I am even more convinced than ever of and “filled with the love of God”—not just His love for me, but even more important, my love for Him. In the intervening years, the results of a lot of hidden addiction and abuse in our family has stripped me of all my anticipated self-satisfaction as a wife and mother in an exemplary LDS family. Still, in the course of these same years, I have been aware of the Lord’s intervention and goodness and mercy in every “coincidence,” in so many miraculous moments of clarity and rescue that it would take volumes to rehearse them. Though my faith has wavered, He has always met my honest confession of less-than-perfect belief with the same merciful response He gave the man in Mark 9:17-29.

3. “Always retain a remission of your sins” (v.12).

As I have continued to practice being willing to be humble and honest enough in His presence to share not only my worst mistakes with Him, but also my daily less-than-perfect thoughts and feelings of fear, regret, resentment, sorrow, frustration, etc., I have watched in amazement as a portion of His wisdom and power lightens my burden of negativity, giving me comfort and counsel that I know beyond a doubt is not coming from myself. And so, one day a time, one admittance of imperfection at a time, I find Him continually remitting my sins and covering me with His own perfect love, not only for others but also for myself. Over the years I have watched Him consecrate even my worst mistakes to my gain by His charity and power.Today, one day at a time, I find that as I wrote in 1989, I do not have a past that I regret. Instead I have only a glorious history of lessons—finally learned.

I have found, however, that the hour I cease to retain in my remembrance this relationship with Him set forth by King Benjamin, I begin to lose that remission of the “dis-ease” of sin. Thus, my weakness becomes a blessing because it reminds me to keep my covenant to “always remember Him,” so that I can “have His Spirit to be with me.”

4. “Grow in the knowledge of the glory of him that created you…of that which is just and true” (v. 12). We will increase in our ability to receive personal revelation.

In other words we will grow in the gift of personal revelation borne to us through the medium of the Holy Ghost. It was because of this promised blessing that I knew from the moment I heard of my daughter’s death that it was all right; it was just and true.

I know that such a degree of conscious contact with God and with His glory and purposes comes only through recognizing and acknowledging that while things seem incomprehensible to me—like how my own “baby” daughter could precede me in death—He comprehends (takes in and orchestrates) all things together. God is love combined with infinite vision. God is good and has the power and patience to bring all things around right. I continue to learn to say, “Thy will be done” with a greater depth of sincerity and trust as life unfolds.

5. “Ye will not have a mind to injure one another” (v. 13). Our natures will be changed.

As we spend our time and attention cultivating this degree of trust of God in all things, we will outgrow our desire or need to injure (do harm, do evil) to either ourselves or others. Our dispositions will be changed. (Mosiah 5:2). This inside-out change places me in a position of neutrality toward unhealthy kinds or amounts of food. I can take them or leave them and for the love of myself, I choose to leave them. It has taken me a long time to believe what God asks of me is to simply remember my own nothingness and in stark contrast, He has all wisdom and all power and I can counsel with Him in all things (Alma 37:37). When I choose to act in faith in Him and do just that—counsel with Him—I find myself in possession of the wisdom and power I need to feel temptation and forgive myself and not act on it. In other words, as long as I look to God and live (Alma 37:47), I am able feel compassionate and patient towards myself and others and have no “mind” to injure anyone.

OUT OF THESE PROMISED INTERNAL CHANGES, EXTERNAL CHANGES BEGIN TO GROW

I know it is only because of these five internal, heart-deep changes I have experienced the consistent and genuine external, observable results I have experienced—many of which correlate well with the remaining promises made by King Benjamin. We need to remember the essence what King Benjamin is doing is trying to explain to us how we can “Put God first in our lives” so everything else will “fall into its proper place,” just as President Benson stated:

When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives.   Our love of the Lord, [must] govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities (President Ezra Taft Benson, Ensign, May 1988).

Though King Benjamin emphasized behaviors toward our children, we can be sure each of us will realize results the results tailored by the Lord to our personal needs will extend into every facet of our lives. Anywhere we have had a weakness, we will find if we admit it to the Lord and seek His grace, He will transform that weakness into a strength (Ether 12:27).

6. “Ye will not [have to] suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked [either emotionally or physically]” (v. 14).

Over the years, as my need to keep up the appearance of perfection has faded, I have been able to let go of my previously strict, cold, “letter of the law” brand of parenting. Gradually, I have found myself spending far more time loving and sharing with my children and far less time criticizing and judging them. Their hunger for my attention and their “nakedness” to my misdirected frustration and anger was relieved.

7. “Neither will ye [have to] suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another” (v. 14). And this because you will have a “mind to…live peaceably” with them and “render to [each of them] according to that which is [their] due” as children of God (v. 13).

As I became a “peaceable follower of Christ” (Moroni 7:3), I found myself more naturally inclined to love and accept, to listen and understand my children’s feelings and needs.

8. “Ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness” (v. 15). You will have the natural ability to teach, especially through example. Your nature will be such that you will be able to walk in ways of truth and soberness, calmness and faith. They will thus learn it deeply. It will be something you are—not just something you say.

As I changed, my children began to change. My ability to “walk in the ways of truth and soberness” (v. 15) caused them to become more honest and “sober” also. Their excesses of misbehavior began to diminish even as mine did. How humbling it has been to see much of the confusion and contention in them had been a response to the behavior they had observed in me.

9. “Ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor” (v. 16). You will become more selfless, completely so—and in the best ways. You will not even fear financial insecurity. You will have a feeling of abundance, not scarcity, in all areas of your life.

Viewing everyone as equal before God, we will become “no respecter of persons” (D&C 38:16). We will continue to progress in Christlike qualities, and our faith and charity will begin to affect our dealings with others. The fear of being too generous will leave us (v. 16).

In fact, fear of anything will begin to fade because we will have come to “know in whom [we] have trusted” (2 Nephi 4:19). We will have come to believe His assurance that while there are numberless ways to sin (Mosiah 4:29), “[His] grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before [Him]” (Ether 12:27). We will be able to enter into His rest (Matthew 11:28), knowing it is “not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength” and what God requires can be accomplished if “all these things are done in wisdom and order” (Mosiah 4:27).

SUMMARY           

In summary may I echo King Benjamin’s testimony “that [we] are eternally indebted to [our] heavenly Father,” and we should “render to him all that [we] have and are” (Mosiah 2:34)? May I also testify our Father has sent His Beloved Son into the world so we might “hear Him” (Joseph Smith History 1:17), and more than just hear Him, that we might become like Him (Moroni 7:48)—something that is impossible for us to do without coming unto Christ and relying wholly upon His merits and His grace (power)? Do we have power in ourselves to accomplish it? No.The power is in Christ (Moroni 10:32). Will self-sufficiency achieve it? No. We are not sufficient (Mosiah 2:20–21). Will church activity alone accomplish it? No. Keeping the “law…availeth nothing” (Mosiah 3:15). While it is true the Lord is bound when we do what he says (D&C 82:10), it is also a transcendent truth God considers the motive and intent of the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). Christ spoke to the prophet Joseph about the professors of religion, saying, “They draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Joseph Smith History 1:19).

I have learned from King Benjamin that just as the Lord declared in Matthew 7:21-23, I cannot think a life of good works is enough if I am not personally seeking to cultivate the total humility and surrender to Christ King Benjamin testified of with such power. The words of President Benson’s testimony, given just one month before my daughter died, have continued to be my anchor through every storm I have faced in subsequent years:

“May we be convinced that Jesus is the Christ, choose to follow Him, be changed for Him, captained by Him, consumed in Him, and born again” (First Presidency Message, Ensign, July 1989, p. 5.)

Finally, I would like to conclude with my personal witness of the Book of Mormon. Truly, there is no other book in the history of mankind that contains any more powerful example of how we must relate to God in order to grow closer to Him as our life unfolds. I testify with all my heart while it is 100% true the Book of Mormon is and always will be the most powerful instrument in bringing nonmembers into the Church, its even greater purpose is to bring the already baptized, confirmed, endowed member unto Christ—into the fellowship of Christ (D&C 88:133), into the “church of the Firstborn” (D&C 88:4–5), to make of us not just His servants, but His friends (D&C 93:45–46). 

The preceding article has been adapted from an address given by the author on February 5, 1990 at the Book of Mormon Symposium, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. The full text of the original address can be found in the appendix of the book, He Did Deliver Me from Bondage, which can be previewed at www.hearthavenpublishing.com

In my last article, I presented the first half of a talk I was blessed to share at the Sidney B. Sperry Book of Mormon Symposium in 1990. This month, I am grateful to be able to share Part II of that address with you, but first I’d like to share a little of the context or what some might call “back-story” of that amazing experience.

On August 1, 1989—the day I submitted my proposal to Brother Monte Nyman, Chairman of the symposium for that year—I was a 40 year old housewife, struggling to keep a very troubled family together. My oldest daughter, Carolyn, had become involved with a group of other youth in the Orem, Utah area who were “acting out” in defiance toward their LDS upbringing. In other words, they had dropped all pretense of religious activity and had begun using alcohol, tobacco and other mood altering drugs. I had spent the last year doing all that I could do, using every approach, from gentle persuasion to every tough-love measure I could think of to pull my daughter back from the edge of the cliff on which she was already teetering. Knowing on both sides of our family, in her grandparents’ generation, there had been severe alcoholism, I spent a lot of time pleading with the Lord to turn aside my child from the very thin ice she was all but stomping on, daring it to break. I felt a lot like Nemo’s father in “Finding Nemo,” when Nemo leaves the safety of the reef and defiantly swims out to touch the boat he has been taught all his life to avoid at all costs. “Nemo! Nemo! Come back! Come back . . .”

In other words, 1989 had already been a rough year through which I had been trying to maintain my own recovery from a life-long dependency (addiction) to unhealthy eating behaviors. I can’t tell you how many times I had wanted to throw away my own “sobriety,” and just drown myself in excess “comfort” foods. It had only been through the grace (power) and guidance of my Savior Jesus Christ, conveyed to me from studying and likening the testimonies of the Book of Mormon prophets to my own life I had found the sanity to not relapse into my own form of “substance abuse.”   During that year, I had read King Benjamin’s great discourse, identifying with every word.   My daughter’s exercise of her own agency and my own inability to convince her of the danger of her choices had brought me, like the elder Alma to a place where all I could do was pray for God to intervene in her life. I knew what it felt like to face my own “nothingness,” and be brought down into the depths of humility in a way I had never before imagined. I had also had my eyes opened to see a message of such comfort and hope in King Benjamin’s address, where for years I had heard nothing but what I assumed was chastisement and commandment.

And so, against all odds—after all, I was “just” a housewife with only a high school education and absolutely zero public speaking experience beyond teaching Relief Society and giving a very occasional Sacrament Meeting talk—I composed the proposal letter the first day of August, 1989 and mailed it. Little did I know then I was only 3 ½ weeks from having to exercise total faith and trust in the goodness of God—that He has all wisdom and all power both in heaven and in earth and that He comprehends things I cannot comprehend—just as Benjamin pled with me to believe (Mosiah 4:9).

On August 26, 1989, on a Saturday evening, as I was in the middle of getting my youngest children bathed and ready for bed, there came a knock at my door that I was in no mood to answer. But one of my older children went to the door and came running back to the bathroom where I was bent over the tub washing my three-year-old’s hair, yelling, “Mom! Mom! Come quick. It’s a policeman and he wants to talk to you.”

As I stood on the last stair of my split-entry stairs, just above the entry floor and looked at the somber faces of not only a Utah Highway Patrolman, but also a member of my ward bishopric, framed by the gorgeous colors of the fading August sunset, I seemed to know what was coming. I knew it had to do with Carolyn. Still drying my hands on the towel I held in front of my tub-water wet waistline, I heard the Utah Highway Patrolman tell me he was sorry to inform me my daughter, (calling her by her entire legal name—first, middle, and last), had been killed several hours earlier in an automobile accident, north-bound on I-15. That’s when King Benjamin’s invitation to remember “the goodness of God and his matchless power, and his wisdom, and his patience,” and to put my “trust in the Lord” even unto the “end of [this] life, . . . the life of the mortal body” really took hold in my heart. (See Mosiah 4:6.) It was the moment when the thoughts I hoped to share about King Benjamin’s message became a living reality for me—not just a theory.

And so it was when my letter of acceptance for my proposed presentation, “Benjamin’s Promises” came in the mail, several months later, the Lord had prepared me to bear testimony of something I knew from my own lived experience: That by cultivating a relationship of total trust of God in all things, we can find the gift to face even the hardest we can imagine. In this article I pray I can give adequate expression to my testimony that the actions itemized in Mosiah 4:12-16 are promises! Supernal promises which he knew he could make to those who would truly surrender themselves to the conditions he had just summarized in Mosiah 4:6-11.

First, before we explore the promises King Benjamin begins to make with these words, “If ye do this, ye shall . . . ,” let’s review the true principles of being in a right relationship with God that he has just summarized):

1. Put [our] trust in the Lord" (v. 6). (Recognize and trust the Lord Jesus Christ, specifically.)
2. Believe that “salvation, through the Atonement of Christ” is sufficient to redeem all of mankind (v.7) including yourself. (That last part may be the hardest of all to believe and accept.)
3. Believe that “there is none other salvation save this" (v. 8). (Acknowledge that ALL salvation [improvement] from any source in coming [though often anonymously] from Jesus Christ.)
4. "Believe that he is" (v. 9). (Believe that Jesus Christ is even now, in the present, a living entity, available to each of us personally this very day and hour, through either the Light of Christ or the Holy Ghost or both.)
5. Believe “that he created all things" (v. 9). (Believe that Christ created all things and that He is the instrument of the Father’s will and purpose manifest in and through all creation.)
6. "Believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth" (v.9). (Believe that we can counsel with Christ in all our doings--that no subject is too trivial or too intimate.)
7. Believe that “man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend" (v. 9). (ALWAYS remember that if you feel yourself able to comprehend anything, it is nothing compared to what the Lord can comprehend, and to give credit to God, not yourself, for your success in any area.)
8. "Repent of your sins . . . and humble yourselves before God" (v. 10). (Realize that humility and repentance are the key principles in Christ's plan, not perfectionistic striving and self-sufficient pride.)
9. "Ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you" (v. 10). (Be willing to humble yourself and seek Christ's personal administration of His atoning sacrifice and grace in your own life even as Alma the younger demonstrates in Alma 36:18 and Alma 38:8.)
10. "Always retain in remembrance . . . your own nothingness and his goodness" (v. 11). (Continue to practice remembering the goodness of GOD, and the truth He testified of in John 15:5: “for without me ye can do nothing.”)
11. "Calling on the name of the Lord daily" (v. 11). (Be willing to not only do lots of good works, giving service in His name, but to also take His name upon you as His son or daughter. Mosiah 5:7)
12. "Standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come" (v. 11). (“That which is to come includes the personal prophetic promises Benjamin is about to make, as well as many future events pertaining to our Savior’s second coming.)
    

RESULTS THAT WE CAN BE CERTAIN OF

I propose as we follow King Benjamin’s counsel to open our hearts to total humility before the Father and reliance on the Savior, we can be absolutely certain we will begin to experience some of the miraculous results listed in verses 12-16.

Admittedly, these promises won’t be fulfilled as if by magic. It will take time for them to materialize as we grow closer to the Lord, but we have a prophet’s promise that according to the Lord’s will and timetable, they will come to pass. We must stand steadfast in hope for ourselves and practice faith in Christ. We must be patient with the process. We must be willing to keep believing what King Benjamin pleads with us, that is to believe about the goodness and patience and long-suffering of God. When we find that this mighty change of orientation from self-sufficiency to Christ’s sufficiency ebbs on occasion and we have to humble ourselves and repent yet again, we need to remember His own merciful testimony: “Yea, as often as my people repent will I forgive them their trespasses against me. As He has modeled this degree of compassion for me, I have learned to feel it for myself and for others.   I have found Him often reminded me that it is good to remember that darkness retreats gradually, not instantly, as dawning sun rises.  

THE FIRST FIVE PROMISED CHANGES ARE INTERNAL

Also, as we pause to consider each of these promised results, it is vitally important we notice the first five changes we can hope for are internal changes. This fact is in perfect harmony with the testimony of the prophets that as President Ezra Taft Benson put it, “The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people” (First Presidency Message, Ensign, July 1989, p. 4). In other words, God begins changing a person in “the inner man.” He knows that as our heart is gradually changed, our habits (outward behaviors) will also gradually change.

These first five promises are: “Ye shall”—

1. “Always rejoice” (v. 12).

How often will we feel a feeling of joy? Always, and under all circumstances.

As I shared before, I experienced this transcendent miracle just months before I stood to testify of it at the Book of Mormon Symposium. Through the sudden and potentially devastating experience of opening my door to a highway patrolman bearing the news of my oldest daughter’s sudden death, through her funeral at which He gave me strength to speak, I was suspended in a state of joy, not shock, as most people thought.

Why? Because I choose to believe in God’s goodness and benevolence, even in the face of such a terrible turn of events. I have come to know for myself and not by anyone else’s witness, that not even a sparrow falls (Matthew 10:29) without our Father and Savior’s divine consciousness, and that “all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28). I know that Carolyn loved God. Her precious journals, kept from the time she was eight years old, were full of her words of love for God. And I know that I love Him, and that I trust Him enough to be “willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [me], even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19).

2. “Be filled with the love of God” (v. 12). A two-way love—His for you and yours for Him. It is absolutely essential that it be two-way.

Today, 23 years after Carolyn’s passing, I am even more convinced than ever of and “filled with the love of God”—not just His love for me, but even more important, my love for Him. In the intervening years, the results of a lot of hidden addiction and abuse in our family has stripped me of all my anticipated self-satisfaction as a wife and mother in an exemplary LDS family. Still, in the course of these same years, I have been aware of the Lord’s intervention and goodness and mercy in every “coincidence,” in so many miraculous moments of clarity and rescue that it would take volumes to rehearse them. Though my faith has wavered, He has always met my honest confession of less-than-perfect belief with the same merciful response He gave the man in Mark 9:17-29.

3. “Always retain a remission of your sins” (v.12).

As I have continued to practice being willing to be humble and honest enough in His presence to share not only my worst mistakes with Him, but also my daily less-than-perfect thoughts and feelings of fear, regret, resentment, sorrow, frustration, etc., I have watched in amazement as a portion of His wisdom and power lightens my burden of negativity, giving me comfort and counsel that I know beyond a doubt is not coming from myself. And so, one day a time, one admittance of imperfection at a time, I find Him continually remitting my sins and covering me with His own perfect love, not only for others but also for myself. Over the years I have watched Him consecrate even my worst mistakes to my gain by His charity and power.Today, one day at a time, I find that as I wrote in 1989, I do not have a past that I regret. Instead I have only a glorious history of lessons—finally learned.

I have found, however, that the hour I cease to retain in my remembrance this relationship with Him set forth by King Benjamin, I begin to lose that remission of the “dis-ease” of sin. Thus, my weakness becomes a blessing because it reminds me to keep my covenant to “always remember Him,” so that I can “have His Spirit to be with me.”

4. “Grow in the knowledge of the glory of him that created you…of that which is just and true” (v. 12). We will increase in our ability to receive personal revelation.

In other words we will grow in the gift of personal revelation borne to us through the medium of the Holy Ghost. It was because of this promised blessing that I knew from the moment I heard of my daughter’s death that it was all right; it was just and true.

I know that such a degree of conscious contact with God and with His glory and purposes comes only through recognizing and acknowledging that while things seem incomprehensible to me—like how my own “baby” daughter could precede me in death—He comprehends (takes in and orchestrates) all things together. God is love combined with infinite vision. God is good and has the power and patience to bring all things around right. I continue to learn to say, “Thy will be done” with a greater depth of sincerity and trust as life unfolds.

5. “Ye will not have a mind to injure one another” (v. 13). Our natures will be changed.

As we spend our time and attention cultivating this degree of trust of God in all things, we will outgrow our desire or need to injure (do harm, do evil) to either ourselves or others. Our dispositions will be changed. (Mosiah 5:2). This inside-out change places me in a position of neutrality toward unhealthy kinds or amounts of food. I can take them or leave them and for the love of myself, I choose to leave them. It has taken me a long time to believe what God asks of me is to simply remember my own nothingness and in stark contrast, He has all wisdom and all power and I can counsel with Him in all things (Alma 37:37). When I choose to act in faith in Him and do just that—counsel with Him—I find myself in possession of the wisdom and power I need to feel temptation and forgive myself and not act on it. In other words, as long as I look to God and live (Alma 37:47), I am able feel compassionate and patient towards myself and others and have no “mind” to injure anyone.

OUT OF THESE PROMISED INTERNAL CHANGES, EXTERNAL CHANGES BEGIN TO GROW

I know it is only because of these five internal, heart-deep changes I have experienced the consistent and genuine external, observable results I have experienced—many of which correlate well with the remaining promises made by King Benjamin. We need to remember the essence what King Benjamin is doing is trying to explain to us how we can “Put God first in our lives” so everything else will “fall into its proper place,” just as President Benson stated:

When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives.   Our love of the Lord, [must] govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities (President Ezra Taft Benson, Ensign, May 1988).

Though King Benjamin emphasized behaviors toward our children, we can be sure each of us will realize results the results tailored by the Lord to our personal needs will extend into every facet of our lives. Anywhere we have had a weakness, we will find if we admit it to the Lord and seek His grace, He will transform that weakness into a strength (Ether 12:27).

6. “Ye will not [have to] suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked [either emotionally or physically]” (v. 14).

Over the years, as my need to keep up the appearance of perfection has faded, I have been able to let go of my previously strict, cold, “letter of the law” brand of parenting. Gradually, I have found myself spending far more time loving and sharing with my children and far less time criticizing and judging them. Their hunger for my attention and their “nakedness” to my misdirected frustration and anger was relieved.

7. “Neither will ye [have to] suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another” (v. 14). And this because you will have a “mind to…live peaceably” with them and “render to [each of them] according to that which is [their] due” as children of God (v. 13).

As I became a “peaceable follower of Christ” (Moroni 7:3), I found myself more naturally inclined to love and accept, to listen and understand my children’s feelings and needs.

8. “Ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness” (v. 15). You will have the natural ability to teach, especially through example. Your nature will be such that you will be able to walk in ways of truth and soberness, calmness and faith. They will thus learn it deeply. It will be something you are—not just something you say.

As I changed, my children began to change. My ability to “walk in the ways of truth and soberness” (v. 15) caused them to become more honest and “sober” also. Their excesses of misbehavior began to diminish even as mine did. How humbling it has been to see much of the confusion and contention in them had been a response to the behavior they had observed in me.

9. “Ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor” (v. 16). You will become more selfless, completely so—and in the best ways. You will not even fear financial insecurity. You will have a feeling of abundance, not scarcity, in all areas of your life.

Viewing everyone as equal before God, we will become “no respecter of persons” (D&C 38:16). We will continue to progress in Christlike qualities, and our faith and charity will begin to affect our dealings with others. The fear of being too generous will leave us (v. 16).

In fact, fear of anything will begin to fade because we will have come to “know in whom [we] have trusted” (2 Nephi 4:19). We will have come to believe His assurance that while there are numberless ways to sin (Mosiah 4:29), “[His] grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before [Him]” (Ether 12:27). We will be able to enter into His rest (Matthew 11:28), knowing it is “not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength” and what God requires can be accomplished if “all these things are done in wisdom and order” (Mosiah 4:27).

SUMMARY           

In summary may I echo King Benjamin’s testimony “that [we] are eternally indebted to [our] heavenly Father,” and we should “render to him all that [we] have and are” (Mosiah 2:34)? May I also testify our Father has sent His Beloved Son into the world so we might “hear Him” (Joseph Smith History 1:17), and more than just hear Him, that we might become like Him (Moroni 7:48)—something that is impossible for us to do without coming unto Christ and relying wholly upon His merits and His grace (power)? Do we have power in ourselves to accomplish it? No.The power is in Christ (Moroni 10:32). Will self-sufficiency achieve it? No. We are not sufficient (Mosiah 2:20–21). Will church activity alone accomplish it? No. Keeping the “law…availeth nothing” (Mosiah 3:15). While it is true the Lord is bound when we do what he says (D&C 82:10), it is also a transcendent truth God considers the motive and intent of the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). Christ spoke to the prophet Joseph about the professors of religion, saying, “They draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Joseph Smith History 1:19).

I have learned from King Benjamin that just as the Lord declared in Matthew 7:21-23, I cannot think a life of good works is enough if I am not personally seeking to cultivate the total humility and surrender to Christ King Benjamin testified of with such power. The words of President Benson’s testimony, given just one month before my daughter died, have continued to be my anchor through every storm I have faced in subsequent years:

“May we be convinced that Jesus is the Christ, choose to follow Him, be changed for Him, captained by Him, consumed in Him, and born again” (First Presidency Message, Ensign, July 1989, p. 5.)

Finally, I would like to conclude with my personal witness of the Book of Mormon. Truly, there is no other book in the history of mankind that contains any more powerful example of how we must relate to God in order to grow closer to Him as our life unfolds. I testify with all my heart while it is 100% true the Book of Mormon is and always will be the most powerful instrument in bringing nonmembers into the Church, its even greater purpose is to bring the already baptized, confirmed, endowed member unto Christ—into the fellowship of Christ (D&C 88:133), into the “church of the Firstborn” (D&C 88:4–5), to make of us not just His servants, but His friends (D&C 93:45–46). 

The preceding article has been adapted from an address given by the author on February 5, 1990 at the Book of Mormon Symposium, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. The full text of the original address can be found in the appendix of the book, He Did Deliver Me from Bondage, which can be previewed at www.hearthavenpublishing.com

In my last article, I presented the first half of a talk I was blessed to share at the Sidney B. Sperry Book of Mormon Symposium in 1990. This month, I am grateful to be able to share Part II of that address with you, but first I’d like to share a little of the context or what some might call “back-story” of that amazing experience.

On August 1, 1989—the day I submitted my proposal to Brother Monte Nyman, Chairman of the symposium for that year—I was a 40 year old housewife, struggling to keep a very troubled family together. My oldest daughter, Carolyn, had become involved with a group of other youth in the Orem, Utah area who were “acting out” in defiance toward their LDS upbringing. In other words, they had dropped all pretense of religious activity and had begun using alcohol, tobacco and other mood altering drugs. I had spent the last year doing all that I could do, using every approach, from gentle persuasion to every tough-love measure I could think of to pull my daughter back from the edge of the cliff on which she was already teetering. Knowing on both sides of our family, in her grandparents’ generation, there had been severe alcoholism, I spent a lot of time pleading with the Lord to turn aside my child from the very thin ice she was all but stomping on, daring it to break. I felt a lot like Nemo’s father in “Finding Nemo,” when Nemo leaves the safety of the reef and defiantly swims out to touch the boat he has been taught all his life to avoid at all costs. “Nemo! Nemo! Come back! Come back . . .”

In other words, 1989 had already been a rough year through which I had been trying to maintain my own recovery from a life-long dependency (addiction) to unhealthy eating behaviors. I can’t tell you how many times I had wanted to throw away my own “sobriety,” and just drown myself in excess “comfort” foods. It had only been through the grace (power) and guidance of my Savior Jesus Christ, conveyed to me from studying and likening the testimonies of the Book of Mormon prophets to my own life I had found the sanity to not relapse into my own form of “substance abuse.”   During that year, I had read King Benjamin’s great discourse, identifying with every word.   My daughter’s exercise of her own agency and my own inability to convince her of the danger of her choices had brought me, like the elder Alma to a place where all I could do was pray for God to intervene in her life. I knew what it felt like to face my own “nothingness,” and be brought down into the depths of humility in a way I had never before imagined. I had also had my eyes opened to see a message of such comfort and hope in King Benjamin’s address, where for years I had heard nothing but what I assumed was chastisement and commandment.

And so, against all odds—after all, I was “just” a housewife with only a high school education and absolutely zero public speaking experience beyond teaching Relief Society and giving a very occasional Sacrament Meeting talk—I composed the proposal letter the first day of August, 1989 and mailed it. Little did I know then I was only 3 ½ weeks from having to exercise total faith and trust in the goodness of God—that He has all wisdom and all power both in heaven and in earth and that He comprehends things I cannot comprehend—just as Benjamin pled with me to believe (Mosiah 4:9).

On August 26, 1989, on a Saturday evening, as I was in the middle of getting my youngest children bathed and ready for bed, there came a knock at my door that I was in no mood to answer. But one of my older children went to the door and came running back to the bathroom where I was bent over the tub washing my three-year-old’s hair, yelling, “Mom! Mom! Come quick. It’s a policeman and he wants to talk to you.”

As I stood on the last stair of my split-entry stairs, just above the entry floor and looked at the somber faces of not only a Utah Highway Patrolman, but also a member of my ward bishopric, framed by the gorgeous colors of the fading August sunset, I seemed to know what was coming. I knew it had to do with Carolyn. Still drying my hands on the towel I held in front of my tub-water wet waistline, I heard the Utah Highway Patrolman tell me he was sorry to inform me my daughter, (calling her by her entire legal name—first, middle, and last), had been killed several hours earlier in an automobile accident, north-bound on I-15. That’s when King Benjamin’s invitation to remember “the goodness of God and his matchless power, and his wisdom, and his patience,” and to put my “trust in the Lord” even unto the “end of [this] life, . . . the life of the mortal body” really took hold in my heart. (See Mosiah 4:6.) It was the moment when the thoughts I hoped to share about King Benjamin’s message became a living reality for me—not just a theory.

And so it was when my letter of acceptance for my proposed presentation, “Benjamin’s Promises” came in the mail, several months later, the Lord had prepared me to bear testimony of something I knew from my own lived experience: That by cultivating a relationship of total trust of God in all things, we can find the gift to face even the hardest we can imagine. In this article I pray I can give adequate expression to my testimony that the actions itemized in Mosiah 4:12-16 are promises! Supernal promises which he knew he could make to those who would truly surrender themselves to the conditions he had just summarized in Mosiah 4:6-11.

First, before we explore the promises King Benjamin begins to make with these words, “If ye do this, ye shall . . . ,” let’s review the true principles of being in a right relationship with God that he has just summarized):

1. Put [our] trust in the Lord" (v. 6). (Recognize and trust the Lord Jesus Christ, specifically.)
2. Believe that “salvation, through the Atonement of Christ” is sufficient to redeem all of mankind (v.7) including yourself. (That last part may be the hardest of all to believe and accept.)
3. Believe that “there is none other salvation save this" (v. 8). (Acknowledge that ALL salvation [improvement] from any source in coming [though often anonymously] from Jesus Christ.)
4. "Believe that he is" (v. 9). (Believe that Jesus Christ is even now, in the present, a living entity, available to each of us personally this very day and hour, through either the Light of Christ or the Holy Ghost or both.)
5. Believe “that he created all things" (v. 9). (Believe that Christ created all things and that He is the instrument of the Father’s will and purpose manifest in and through all creation.)
6. "Believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth" (v.
   
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