"But behold, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God" (Moroni 7:13).
We can learn a lot from this interesting scripture. We learn that which of God invites and entices us to do good continually. In other words, that which of God does not just invite us to do good; it invites us to do good all the time. Another important lesson from this verse is that God does not force us - He invites us and even entices us (for example, with the promise of eternal life) because that is sometimes what it takes to motivate us. Being enticed to do good provides us with hope; hope and faith are inseparably connected. Another thing that this part of the verse teaches us is that there are things that invite us to do good that are not necessarily "of God", or rather, there are good things that are not necessarily inspired of God. The second sentence in this verse teaches us more about the conditions of inspiration.
"Every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God" (Moroni 7:13). This is a conjunctive statement. That means that all of the separate conditions or clauses of the sentence are required to support the conclusion. That which is inspired of God invites us to do good and love God and serve Him. It requires all three - do good, love, and serve. Why is this important to understand?
This means that there are things that invite us to do good that are not necessarily directly inspired of God, as I mentioned earlier. I don't want to minimize any good thing but that which is good does not necessarily equal that which is best. As Elder Oaks stated in General Conference in October 2007, "We should begin by recognizing the reality that just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them. Some things are better than good, and these are the things that should command priority attention in our lives" (Source).
1 comment:
I appreciate your insights on this topic. I loved that talk by Elder Oaks. This is something I'm working on--trying to make sure that the things I am doing fall more in the "better and best" category.
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