46 By Faith All Things are Fulfilled

Ether 7-15
I want to share an experience I had with this lesson this week. I had read the chapters and wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. So I went on a walk in freezing temperatures and started talking to myself out loud, like all geniuses do, just saying out loud some of the versus I was thinking about centering my lesson on, when I said the verse, “the Lord will point out our weaknesses” and all of a sudden this warm blanket enveloped me and believe me, in freezing temp. it was noticeable. It was then I thought one of 2 things, I must have a lot of weaknesses that the Lord is going to point out—yeah I didn’t think that was it either so I went with my second thought- “My class must have a lot of weaknesses we need to point out this week. Just kidding, naturally the answer is that the spirit needs us to learn about our weaknesses and how to change them to strengths. So this is our lesson.
But before we get into that I wanted to just mention a couple of things about the chapters we aren’t going to cover in depth.
Chapter 7-10 can pretty much be summed up by chapter 10’s heading. “one king succeeds another-some of the kings are righteous and others are wicked-when righteousness prevails the people are blessed and prospered by the Lord”
There is a lot of genealogy and history here. Here is where we will see a gradual but steady decline in this people to their destruction.

Back in Ether 6 the Brother of Jared prophecies that if his people were to have kings they would fall and be destroyed. These chapters are showing us the fulfillment of that prophecy and we can learn from that. If we have wicked government leaders, we will fall, fortunately we also have the promise from the Lord we will not be destroyed.

I loved this passage from the Institute manual:p504-505
“Ether saw the future glory of Zion when the Savior would come to it. It is your [our] privilege to live in the day when that vision may be realized. The promise is yours [ours] as you [we] do your [our] part in righteousness. Though the future holds much of anguish, the faithful saints of God have little to fear.” Marion G. Romney put it this way, “It has always been faith in a lofty goal and confidence that it may be attained that have held people on the rugged course to high attainment. It was the assurance that they could obtain the land flowing with ‘milk and honey’ that held Moses to the task of leading Israel through the wilderness. It was faith that they could obtain the ‘land choice above all other’ (1 Nephi 2:20) that led Lehi and his colony through the desert and across the sea. It was the vision of Zion as it shall yet be that sustained the pioneers as they trudged across the plains. Paul says that even Jesus himself endured the cross ‘for the joy that was set before him.’ (heb.12:2) “if we are to remain on course through the stresses of the rising storm, it is imperative that we have a similar sustaining and motivating goals.” (Oct. 1966)

Elder McConkie offered the same counsel, “ We can rest assured that if we have done all in our power to prepare for whatever lies ahead, he will then help us with whatever else we need…We do not say that all of the Saints will be spared and saved from the coming day of desolation. But we do say there is no promise of safety and no promise of security except for those who love the Lord and who are seeking to do all that he commands. It may be, for instance, that nothing except the power of Faith and the authority of the priesthood can save individuals and congregations from the atomic holocausts that surely shall be. And so we raise the warning voice and say: Take heed; prepare; watch and be ready. There is no security in any course except the course of obedience and conformity and righteousness.” (Ensign, may 1979)

Those are heavy statements, statements that if pondered would give you nightmares unless we do as Romney suggests and ‘remain on course’ and as McConkie suggests in preparing, watching, obedience and conformity. In other words everyone in this room needs pay attention as the spirit teaches you today, I admonish you to pay attention and work on those things that we may be found among the righteous who are spared.

*How do we do this?
This brings us to Ether 12:27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, them will I make weak things become strong unto them. As I read this verse I felt the need to dissect this some more to really grasp what Moroni was trying to teach me here.

Show unto men their weakness: “not all clean” D&C 66:3, Acts 4:13: unlearned, ignorant, ordinary, and plain
Is it easy for us to see our weaknesses? Just comparing ourselves to others’ fabulous moments, we immediately get down on ourselves. However there are other ways the Lord shows us our weaknesses that we miss or pass off as unimportant.
Such as: Ether 13: 20 there is a king named Coriantumr who is confident, strong, and courageous and yet he and his house needed repenting (13:16-17) In other words, He needed to be shown his weaknesses. So He sent Ether, a prophet to tell Coriantumr to repent, and if he did the Lord would spare him and his people. Coriantumr didn’t listen. Are we smarter than him? Do we listen when our prophets tell us things to do, watch out for, repent of? What has He told us lately? Do we pass it off as someone else’s counsel or do we take a deep examination of our own lives and make needed changes?
*He shows us our weakness through prophets.

Another way he shows us our weakness is Ether 8:23 It is wisdom in God that these things (their(evil kings & People) weaknesses) should be shown unto you, that thereby ye may repent of your sins, and suffer not that these murderous combinations shall get above you, which are built up to get power and gain-and the work, yea, even the work of destruction come upon you, yea, even the sword of the justice of the Eternal God shall fall upon you, to your overthrow and destruction if ye shall suffer these things to be.
*So what is Ether saying? How does the Lord point out weaknesses to us? By helping us to see the same weakness exhibited by others in the scriptures and what happened to them when they didn’t repent of them?
Like wise we can learn faith, hope, charity; we can be strengthened by the scriptures as well. I had a story handed to me that teaches us how this can work in our own lives.

**Story: Plenty
Five Pounds. That’s all the coal we had to heat our little house in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Barely enough to get us through one night, let alone the entire Christmas holiday. The temperature had dropped and the weatherman said a big snowstorm was on the way. I rung my hands and tried to stay calm. I didn’t know how my 4 year old son, Shawn, and I would get through it.
“Read to me,” Shawn said that night of December 23, 1978. He grabbed his children’s Bible and opened to the story of the prophet Elijah visiting the poor widow. The widow is down to her last bit of oil and flour, fearful that she won’t be able to feed herself and her son, let alone her visitor. “Fear not” Elijah says. He asks her to bake him a cake. “The jar of meal shall not be spent and the jug of oil shall not run dry,” he reassures her.
Like the widow, I was trying to raise a son on my own and we never seemed to have enough. I pictured the nearly empty bag of coal.
Shawn pointed to the illustration in the book. “The widow didn’t look, mom,” he said. I saw what he meant. The picture showed her reaching for the oil and flour without checking to see how much was in the jar and the jug. She trusted in God’s provision, I thought, and there was enough. That’s what I needed to do. Trust.
That night before going to bed I deliberately turned my head away as I reached inside the dwindling bag of coal and pulled out three lumps for the fire. Then I crawled under the blankets, asking for God’s warmth and protection.
The next morning there were snowdrifts three feet deep outside our door and the thermometer read three degrees below zero. But the house was warm and toasty. Once again I reached into the bad without looking and put three more lumps onto the fire. We stayed inside all day, baking cookies, making ornaments for the tree, singing carols. From time to time I would stoke the fire, always making sure never to look and see how much coal was left.
Christmas Day the sky was finally clear and the house was still toasty. Around noon a neighbor dropped by. “We saw so much smoked coming out of your chimney last night,” he said, “you must have gone through a lot of coal.” Then he gave me a most welcome Christmas gift, a big bag of coal-to add to the few lumps that I still somehow had.

*Yes the Lord can point out our weaknesses through others mistakes, but He can also point out others strengths to us, so that we too can be strengthened.

Let’s go back to Ether 12:27 I give unto men weakness: How does he do that? Why does He do that? He created everything, He created us. He gave us things in our make-up to overcome to make us stronger. By getting stronger, more confident we are willing to do new things or do old things differently. For example: Have you ever heard your mother say, “I hope you get a child just like you, then we’ll see how you handle them” and then you do, and you find yourself handling things just like your mother did, or perhaps you are strong enough to conquer, if in the middle of your screaming, that phrase comes back to haunt you and you have the strength to stop and handle it differently than your mother. That is how we become humble, stronger, we conquer things as we live them differently and better than our parents did with us.

What if you feel you aren’t strong enough to stop. The next line tells us what we must do to conquer our weaknesses. “My grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me;” What does that mean exactly? Well How can we become humble immediately? Drop to your knees? I love the saying- “When life gets to be more than you can stand, kneel” We need divine help. The Word grace in the bible dictionary tells us that grace is: divine means of help or strength, given through the bounteous mercy and love of Jesus Christ. It comes through angels beyond the veil and here. The dictionary also says, It is likewise through the grace of the Lord that individuals, through faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ and repentance of their sins, receive strength and assistance to do good works that they otherwise would not be able to maintain if left to their own means. 2 cor. 12:9-10 says our strength is made perfect through grace. Divine Power is also where the atonement comes in. Ether 12:11-12 it is by faith the law was given, but the only way it was fulfilled or lived was through the atonement. The only way to live righteously and conquer weakness is by the atonement. He can’t provide us with that divine help, or miracles if we don’t have faith in the atonement.

*So how do we use the atonement? He tells us in the last line of that scripture.

In the last line of Ether 12:27 the Lord gives us a promise, if we humble ourselves, and take upon ourselves the Lords power “He will make weak things become strong unto them”

I followed the footnotes to the word ‘weak’ to find out how we can make weak things become strong? Deut. 11:8: Keeping commandments gives us added strength and power.
D&C 38:15 tells me that weak things becoming strong means fearing not, having courage.
1 Nephi 4:2 means: being strong like Moses, where he controlled the waters. We have our own talents and powers that we will tap into as we find out the path our lives are supposed to take. 12:23 Sometimes we complain like Moroni says that, he did about his writing skills, but then he recognized that the Lord gave him talents, power to make him mighty in writing. Do you think Nephi complained that he didn’t get Moses’ power of dividing the waters? “Oh, if only I had Moses talent so we could just walk to the promised land then none of these bad things would’ve happened on the ship” Or did he just have enough faith to believe the Lord knew what talents and experiences they needed? Can we trust that the Lord will bless us with the talents and experiences we need to conquer our weaknesses and learn what we must learn?

*So to use the atonement, we grab onto those talents and use them in our lives to get us through trials, Ether saw we would have trials, so did Romney and McConkie. Our current Prophet has seen the destruction that is surely coming. We are not left alone, we have the scriptures to teach us how to conquer our weakness, we have prophets that are showing us the way, we have the power of prayer, coupled with the power of grace and the atonement to teach us and help us recognize then replace bad behavior with good. We have each others strengths and talents we can learn from. We have Ether 12:28 the promise that “He will show unto us that faith, hope and charity bringeth unto me-the fountain of all righteousness.” It is through these virtues we can achieve any worthy thing, that will keep us on course.

I love my Lord, I love His tender mercies, I love the trust He has in me a weak servant, I love that He shows me weakness through my mistakes and the mistakes of others, through not-so-perfect decisions made by me and by others, and trials. I love that He not only shows them to me, but that he provides a way for me to conquer them, with divine help, such as my angels, the atonement, scripture advice, Love, Faith. I have a testimony that the time is coming that we will need our weaknesses conquered, that we may be spared much of the tribulations that are coming if we do as McConkie and Moroni say, and conform our weaknesses into righteousness. In the Name of Jesus Christ Amen.