#27 They Must Needs Be Chastened and Tried, Even as Abraham

D&C 101; 103; 105 Our Heritage p27-29, 37-45

How many of you have ever prayed for cancer, or prayed to loose your job, or have always wanted to loose a child to death? Anyone? Now think about a trial you are going through now or have just gone through recently? What did you learn from that? We never pray for those types of trials, yet after going through something devastating like this, how many of you would give up the things you learned from them? What are some things we learn from going through trials like these?

According through all the accounts told of Zion’s Camp and the march, not one of the valiant men that came out of that ever said they wished it didn’t happen. In fact, when Brigham Young was asked what he gained by the journey, he said, “Just what we went for;…I would not exchange the knowledge I have received this season for the whole of this County”.

Just in case you need to be reminded as to what Zion’s camp was, let’s talk about it? What was Zion’s camp? What was the army supposed to accomplish? What was promised to the army by the Lord?

Missourians fought and kicked 1000 saints out of Zion, Joseph prayed and was inspired to organize a camp to go and redeem Zion, to get their lands back. D&C 103:20 is the promise of the Lord that Zion would be redeemed

Now we know the promise of the Lord and what was supposed to be accomplished. We also know that men of Zion’s camp were not righteous and they didn’t get to redeem Zion and they turned around and came home. We know that because of Zion’s camp some apostatized.

So my thoughts were this. If the Lord had come to them and said, “You will go to Zion and you will not redeem it, the way will be tough, the food will rot, but this is a test to see if you will be valiant in following my prophet and being obedient to my commands”, do you think all of them would have gone, been happy about it and not complain? I think they may have, so why didn’t the Lord just tell them that? Then he would’ve lost none of them.

So what are the reasons we go through trials and hardships? If the Lord told us what the trial entailed and what we would experience and told us to just hang in there and be valiant, how much less would we whine while going through our trials?

So what are the reasons, why doesn’t He tell us, what is it He wants to accomplish? He wants us to get our mortal lives aligned with this principle in D&C 101:35-36 He wants us to endure in faith, lay down our lives to him, Fear not anything in this world, and most importantly find Him, develop a relationship with Him, because it is only through Him that our joy is full, in this life and in to the eternities.

First let’s ask why the Lord tests and tried Zion’s camp and us?
D&C 101:2 In consequence of our transgressions, and we are
D&C 101:4 Chastened and tried
I looked up Chasten in the dictionary and it said it was this:
1: to correct by punishment or suffering : discipline ; also : purify2 a : refine b: to cause to be more humble or restrained : subdue

D&C 101:7-8 Slow to hearken unto the voice of the Lord their God. V8 In the day of their peace they esteemed lightly my counsel.
Meaning we don’t seem to care if we have a relationship with the Lord until things are going wrong, then we are willing to talk to him.

I have often asked myself if it truly has to be this way, do we really have to be tried constantly?

D&C 103:5-8 it says as plain as day if we hearken from this very hour meaning now at 11:40 am (or whatever the time is) to the Lords counsel and what is His counsel? Pray, read, develop a relationship with Him, use the atonement daily, stay close to Him and if we do that we can prevail against this world and our enemies. We will continue to prevail if we do these things but inasmuch! That is a big word though isn’t it? Only if we continue to do those things and keep all His commandments shall we prevail without trial.

Now we know why we are tried, we know we don’t have to be, but we also know we are weak and we sometimes forget the importance of following the Lord’s counsel so he does continue to try us.

So let’s go back to our trials, the ones you thought of in the beginning that you are currently going through or have gone through. What is it we are supposed to learn from them? They are the same things that the men and women in Zion’s camp learned in hindsight. (p151 Church Hist. manual)
1- By volunteering, the members demonstrated their faith in the Lord and his prophet and their earnest desire to comply with Latter-day revelation.
Volunteering for what?
2-a willingness to lay down their lives if necessary to assist them. How do we lay down our lives today? Service to others through daily, kind, acts and through callings.

*do you see that by volunteering, we demonstrate to the Lord that we have faith to follow His counsel and the counsel of the prophet by serving.

3- A test, it was a test to determine who was worthy to serve in positions of leadership and trust and to receive an endowment in the Kirtland Temple.
I was joking with Keith the other day because he is in the process of waiting to be inspired to fill callings in leadership and is having a difficult time. I told Him you know how the Lord picked His 12 apostles? He sent them to Zion in an army, so I said maybe you should set up an obstacle course for the brethren in the ward. But we don’t have to do that do we, the Lord knows who has already been willing to step up and teach, go to their meetings, who hold appropriate meetings, love unconditionally, train those they are over to take over in leadership positions etc. Our Zion’s camp experience goes on already through assignments we are given and callings we are set apart to do.
A TEST, A TEST are you passing?

Through this camp 9 of the 12 apostles were chosen and all 70 members of the Quorum of seventy were organized.

Joseph said this to His men about the camp experience, “Brethren, some of you are angry with me, because you did not fight in Missouri; but let me tell you, God did not want you to fight. He could not organize His kingdom with 12 men to open the Gospel door to the nations of the earth, and with 70 men under their direction to follow in their tracks, unless He took them from a body of men who had offered their lives, and who had made as great a sacrifice as did Abraham.”
We are under this same scrutiny!

4-Zion’s camp chastened, polished, and spiritually refined many of the Lord’s servants.
5-The observant and dedicated received invaluable practical training and spiritual experience that served them well in later struggles for the church.

6-The hardships and challenges experienced over its thousand miles provided invaluable training for Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Straight from the prophet Joseph Smith and others who led the exiled Saints from Missouri to Illinois and from Nauvoo across the plains to the Rocky Mountains.
*Can we put our names in place of Brigham’s or Heber’s? Are we gaining valuable experience from our trials that will help us build up the Lord’s Church, are we learning from our leaders and prophets?

7- The participants were strengthened by several miraculous manifestations of the Lord’s power. Think of the things Zion’s camp witnessed, disease manifested itself and was cured by the mouth of the Prophet. The Lord’s power was shown to them through a huge storm that dispersed their enemies who were in waiting for them. Their band of 207 was made to look like 600 men when it was needed to. And when the 207 needed to go through a city unseen they were made to disappear among the other city inhabitants, and not even noticed.
Joseph recalled, “God was with us, and His angels went before us, and the faith of our little band was unwavering. We know that angels were our companions, for we saw them.”

When you go through your trials, did you feel or are you noticing the angels around you? Are you recognizing the Lord’s help? Are you accepting the Lord into your life? Or are you on the road to becoming bitter through your trials? Through our trials the Lord asks us to seek peace 105:40 seek peace unto those who have smitten you. Whether ‘those’ means people who are working against you, a terminal disease, financial struggle, He is asking us to find peace with those trials and learn from them all the things Zion’s camp learned, then use that learning to come closer and develop a relationship with Him that will take us through even tougher times that come up.

I have not always seen the reasons behind my trials, but I have often recognized the Lord’s hand in them, as He helps me get through them. I know He is there for us individually, training us for something bigger than we can even fathom. I know He lives just so we can know Him. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen.