6-20-11 “He did deliver me from bondage” p.14, day 7

Moses 1:10

I read this yesterday but did not get to write.  I have thought about this with Moses: Why did he feel that man was nothing?  I must admit it has me perplexed.  The only thing I can come up with is that maybe after seeing some of the works of the Almighty that he realized the greatness of God’s power and the puniness of man’s power.  But to say that man is nothing is removes man from their role as God’s most precious of all His creations.  We are His work and His glory; his joy and where all His deepest hopes lie.  We are not nothing to Him.  We are precious to Him.  Maybe the difference lies in how the word nothing is used.  If referring to our power, yes we are nothing.  If referring to our importance we are not nothing.  Maybe before Moses could learn of God’s love, he needed to be humbled to learn of God’s power, so that he would be able to trust God.

We have been watching the cartoon “King of Egypt” a lot recently because we just got it from my sister.  Moses’ mind frame after being raised in Egypt as a Prince of Egypt was that he was ‘almost a god’.  The Egyptians in their theological beliefs thought that Pharaoh was God: “he was the morning and the evening star; so it is said, so let it be written” implying that Pharaoh’s word was is an unbreakable decree.  That was the whole aim of their society was to become a god and they believed they could do it by their own power. 

As for the author’s question:  Why do we resist relying on God’s power and choose to lean, instead, on self and the answers the world provides?

It my mind, it is a matter of faith.  Things which are seen are easier to believe.  Things which are not seen are much more difficult to believe.  If we have not seen for ourselves the works of God, we may be doubtful of His power to act.  If we do not know of His love for us, we would doubt His desire to act in our behalf.  It is one of the tests of mortality: to trust in God to see ‘if man will do all whatsoever God seeth fit to inflict upon him.’  Beginning at a very young age, a child acts on the feeling ‘I can do it by myself’.  We have a basic need to do all we can for ourselves.  Then in adulthood, in the childhood of our parenthood, we have to learn the opposite: that we can’t do it by ourselves, and we are powerless.  It is a symbiotic relationship.  There is only part which we have power to act on, and part which we do not.  We must learn how to appropriately work in our stewardship to invite the agency of our children so that they learn to choose for themselves the right way to go, and grow in the process.  There can be no growth where there is not choice.  That was the difference between God’s plan and Satan’s plan in the Pre-mortal council in Heaven.  God wanted to see us grow because He loved us.  Satan was only thinking of himself and his greed for power. 

p.17  “As I continued to study the Book of Mormon, I found no support for any of the ideas of [spiritual] self-reliance, self-mastery, or self-sufficiency.  Instead, I found testimony everywhere that all my efforts at goal-setting, life planning, or life-management were manifestations of vanity and unbelief if there were not first based on prayerful counsel with the Lord. (Alma 37:37)  and then empowered by His grace (power to carry them out).

I need to ponder on this today. 

“I finally realized as I once heard it said, “True self-mastery comes from turning our “self” over to the Master.”

I truly am nothing without God and cannot of myself, no matter how hard I try, answer the ‘ends of the law’ by my own power.  I am completely helpless and subject to His justice and mercy.