LITTLE BY LITTLE

If your life is anything like mine, there are days when you become frustrated with your personal progress towards righteous living.  It seems like every time we make some headway towards being a better person we discover something else that needs fixing. After years of making little changes and cutting away the excess fat (figurative, not literal J for some of us) from our lives there still seems so much to do in finding the way back to God. 

I suppose that is the nature of mortal life but oftentimes it makes me crazy and other times it is just downright discouraging. 

Elder David A. Bednar

 Recently I was reviewing a message by Elder Bednar (Ensign, Nov. 2007, 80-83) entitled Clean Hands and a Pure Heart where he made the following statement:

Small, steady, incremental spiritual improvements are the steps the Lord would have us take.  Preparing to walk guiltless before God is one of the primary purposes of mortality and the pursuit of a lifetime; it does not result from sporadic spurts of intense spiritual activity.

Elder Bednar must be a mind reader – or maybe a prophet.  Not only is he interesting to hear but he gets how hard life can be as a Latter-day Saint.  His encouragement is to not become discouraged if it seems like we are making snail-like progress in our efforts to become better.  The process is meant to be slow – almost imperceptible – as we struggle through the experiences of mortality.  Sort of like his other message where he used pickles to show how we are changed by being immersed completely in the gospel (Ye Must Be Born Again, Ensign, May 2007, 19-22).

I LOVE dill pickles so I listened to this message!!!

But what about those little things that always seem to be hanging on to us, like barnacles on the great whale?  Is it possible to eventually overcome and find peace?

Again, quoting Elder Bednar:

I witness that the Savior will strengthen and assist us to make sustained, paced progress. The example in the Book of Mormon of “many, exceedingly great many” (Alma 13:12) in the ancient Church who were pure and spotless before God is a source of encouragement and comfort to me.  I suspect those members of the ancient Church were ordinary men and women just like you and me.  These individuals could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence, and they “were made pure and entered into the rest of the Lord their God” (v. 12).  And these principles and this process of spiritual progress apply to each of us equally and always. (Ensign, Nov. 2007, 80-83, emphasis added)

One word stuck in my mind from this quote!!

ABHORRENCE

I think that’s my weak spot.  I need to review what I let in and what I exclude and see how much of the first includes things I should abhor. 

It is little by little that good or bad becomes part of life!!!