12.5.16
Will you have lived in such a way that God can work His miracles through you (or will you be cut to pieces)?
President Dieter Friedrich Uchtdorf gave a world-class talk (as usual) in the Priesthood Session in October of 2015 called, Be Not Afraid, Only Believe. The talk begs the question: What would you do if an opportunity or challenge appears that you are not ready to take-on or accomplish? Really, the talk speaks of Daniel, who becomes kidnapped and forced to walk 500 miles to his new home live in the land of Babylon where he would be taught to live with and around those who practiced a foreign religion. Daniel was a follower of the Hebrew God, Jehovah, and he stayed true to his faith.
That foreign religion would have been, to Daniel, the worship of a false God. Their rites and prayers would have all been vein. The kicker, though, was that Daniel could and would been burned in a fiery furnace (think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego who miraculously survived a fiery death!). In fact, Daniel and his colleague students taken to Babylon were under a threat from King Nebuchadnezzar to perform he seemingly impossible: Recount a dream that the king had had and reveal it's interprettation! Who could do such a thing? Impossible, right?
Daniel, however, did not doubt that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God that he had worshipped his entire life, could and would reveal it to him. In fact, He did. "Daniel believed. He did not doubt." The fact that he did, saved the life of not only Daniel, but all of all the soothsayers, astrologers, astronomers, priests, counselors, magicians, and wise-men whom Nebuchadnezzar had charged with the task or they would be cut into pieces!
My question, then, is similar to President Uchtdorf's and applied to each of us: Will you have lived in such a way that God can work his miracles through you? What if Daniel had eaten the food offered to him by the King, what if Daniel hadn't kept his covenants and commandments he'd entered into. and culminating in question: what if Daniel hadn't lived in such a way that God can work His miracles through him?
What if we don't? Are we fulfilling every promise made to us by our Stake Patriarch? Are we living the way we should?
JPS
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