Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Inasmuch

In 1 Nephi 2: 20, the Lord promised Nephi "inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper," and I'm sure He extends the same promise to each of us as well. I think that the "inasmuch" part is important. It means "to the extent that" or "insofar as." In other words, we will prosper to the extent that we keep the commandments. If we keep the commandments with all our hearts, we will be richly blessed. If we keep the commandments half-heartedly, we'll be blessed about half as richly. If we do the bare minimum of what it takes to keep the commandments, we'll receive a bare minimum of blessings. If we don't keep the commandments at all, then we won't be blessed at all.

Actually, that's not quite correct. God still gives is children plenty of blessings, even the disobedient and barely obedient ones, so the correlation between blessings and obedience isn't perfect. But still, the general idea holds true. If we want a lot of blessings, we should offer God a lot of obedience in return.

God wants to bless us, so I'm sure He blesses us as much as He can, but many of His blessings are contingent on righteousness. As long as we're even trying, God gives us some credit, and some blessings, for that. If we do a little better, God blesses us a little more. If we do well, God blesses us well. And so on, until we are completely obedient to all of God's commandments and are granted complete access to all of His blessings.

I am grateful for a God who wants to bless His children and who eagerly tells them what they must do to qualify for those blessings.  By keeping the commandments, we can earn blessings. By keeping a lot of commandments to the best of our ability, we can earn a lot of blessings. I encourage all of us to try to keep the commandments to the extent to which we desire to be blessed. If you want or need more blessings, or just want to keep getting the blessings that you've got, you know what to do, and how much to do it.

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