Do you find that your spiritual and prayer life goes in spurts? You oscillate between meaningful and satisfying prayer and having joy in daily living; and then plunging into depths of a dark brooding mood. It may not be that dramatic, but it may seem everything goes right and then nothing can go right. You can go for days or weeks or longer and you just can’t seem to get into the groove. You read scriptures and you can’t even remember what you read a few minutes later. And then for a period of time you are able to make a connection to heaven and your prayers seem to become intimate with the divine. The scriptures seem to open up to you. Maybe at these times you feel a sacred presence and your soul is lifted, not being dragged down by the incidental worries and cares that shout for your attention because you are alive in this world.
If you are like me, and I suspect you are, there are times you can feel a presence and a peace that envelops you when you pray and read scriptures. Sometimes that peace carries you through the day until you do something to offend the spirit. You have an inappropriate thought, you judge someone, are unkind, exercise unrighteous dominion with your spouse, kids, or co-workers, or you participate in an inappropriate activity. When the spirit is offended as this happens, it leaves, and sometimes it does so with a huff. By that I mean it leaves immediately and suddenly. So sudden, that if you are paying attention, the difference is palpable, like switching off a light in a dark room. More then likely though we don’t notice the difference because we are engaged in the activity or thought that causes the spirit to withdraw.
It can be very discouraging to be on this roller coaster ride of trying to live by the spirit and continue to have to live in the world and abide its rules. I find I keep beating myself up about the lapses and the constant pleading with the Lord for help. If you are like me you might think along these terms: “Why would the Lord listen to my prayers? I keep doing stupid things and keep coming back asking the Lord to forgive me for the same dumb things, over and over again?”
How do you stop judging people? How do you forgive someone who feels justified in hurting you on purpose? How do you, as a very flawed person, approach a God who is perfect and can see through your elegantly phrased pleadings and hypocritical thoughts in prayer? He can see that your prayers are sometimes nothing more than an attempt to manipulate Him. Often I will wonder why the Lord would work with such a weak and stubborn man.
But , then I am reminded of a verse from Nephi in the Book of Mormon, which informs me that if I press forward, keeping my sights on Christ and follow His example, even when I fail miserably at times –over and over at times it seems– feast on His words, and endure to the end, I shall have eternal life. That is the promise (2 Nephi 31:19-20). And there is Nephi’s lament:
Oh then, if I have seen so great things, if the Lord in his condescension unto the children of men hath visited men in so much mercy, why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow, and my flesh waste away, and my strength slacken, because of mine afflictions?
And why should I yield to sin because of my flesh? yea, why should I give way to temptations, that the evil one have place in my heart to destroy my peace and afflict my soul? Why am I angry because of mine enemy?
Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul. (2 Nephi 4:2-28)
What keeps me going back, even when encumbered with deep seated flaws and persistent habitual violations of Christ’s laws given in the Sermon the Mount? His promises keep me coming back. And so I PRESS forward against the boulders I have placed on the path. I figure if there is hope for Nephi, surely there is hope for me.
I love this! Thanks for writing it.