The War We Wage

Over the past several years I have become more keenly aware of the polarizing that is taking place in this world in which we live. So easy it is to get lost. So easy it is to become blind, discouraged, or embittered. I personally have felt the struggle. The pull to one side or the other is becoming frighteningly intense. I have felt my heart torn as my desire to live as God would have me competes with the weakness of my flesh. I have witnessed in sorrow, as friends and loved ones turn their lives away from God. It happens so subtly. I have wept at my own realization that my soul is mirrored in theirs as I too turn from Him at times in weakness. Then I have joyed in the presence of those whom I know yearn for God. Those who seek to make manifest the attributes of Godliness in their very lives. I love you. I thank you. I know the pain that accompanies your journey. There is a feeling of loneliness, and of estrangement that can take hold of one who stands for the right. But fear not. For God is on your side. I have been thinking a great deal of this fight in which we are all enlisted. It seems to me that the more I desire to right my life with God, the harder I am assailed with the enemy's fire. But no surprise! Is this, or is this not, a war for the souls of men? I imagine it in literal terms. If we, as an opposing army are not actively fighting the enemy(maybe we're even negotiating with the enemy) then is that enemy going to assail us with their attacks or spend their warriors on our indifferent armies? No, it is only as we attack that the enemy becomes especially hostile. When we destroy our own fortifications there is no need for the enemy to waste their ammunition. But when we are the attacker, when we are the ones laying siege to Satan's fortress, when we are fortified, and armored and actively making plans to undermine that opposing army we can expect some serious artillery fire being pointed right in our faces. So the question is, are we up for it... and is it worth it? It is easy to wonder this when times get tough and the world drags us down. But frankly I think that we all know that if God is worth believing in then He is worth trusting in. He would not create a plan that was not worth the reward. So to me, whether or not it is worth it is not really the question. The question is, are we willing? Do we want it? It will be worth it, no doubt. But is it worth it to you? I am determined that nothing is more worth the effort that what God has to give. But there is danger, I think, in feeling like maybe that reward is not for us. Or maybe we are just not "heaven material". The danger, I think, is summed up very well in one of my favorite quotes by Henry B. Erying, "When we reject the counsel that comes from God, we do not choose to be independent of outside influence. We choose another influence. We reject the protection of a perfectly loving, all-powerful, all-knowing Father in Heaven, whose whole purpose, as that of His Beloved Son, is to give us eternal life, to give us all that He has, and to bring us home again in families to the arms of His love. In rejecting His counsel, we choose the influence of another power, whose purpose is to make us miserable and whose motive is hatred. We have moral agency as a gift of God. Rather than the right to choose to be free of influence, it is the inalienable right to submit ourselves to whichever of those powers we choose." In "striving for mediocrity" so to speak I do not believe we will end up in the middle. I believe that we will be in danger of falling completely. For in knowingly rejecting that counsel which comes from a loving God and is designed for our eternal happiness, we choose that other leader, who then has power to lead us where he will. The fight is what matters. As the prophet Joseph Smith said, "Shall we not go on in so great a cause?"