From Fasting to Feasting

For years I have been trying to share this information by going through verses in 1 and 2 Nephi but it seems that the point is always lost. So, instead of trying to teach verse by verse, I am sharing a very general overview of what to look for and how to see. Then I hope you will take these things and study and read 1 and 2 Nephi for yourselves. In the books of 1 and 2 Nephi, we read so many wonderful stories full of incredible truths and doctrine. Among the virtues and principles we learn are humility, obedience, repentance, and consistency. We see deeply throughout those books two kinds of love - the love for God and the love for family. We learn about the sweetness of drawing near to Christ and the bitterness of turning away. We learn how consistent actions bring about mighty changes. The lessons go on and on. We also learn one very important over-arching lesson which is what I’d like to focus on. We learn what it takes to enter back into the presence of the Lord. Nephi, as an old m...

The last verse of 1 Nephi 1 and the first two verses of 1 Nephi 2 read: "But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender  c mercies  of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of  d deliverance . "For behold, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto my father, yea, even in a dream, and said unto him: Blessed art thou Lehi, because of the things which thou hast done; and because thou hast been faithful and declared unto this people the things which I commanded thee, behold, they seek to  a take away  thy  b life . "And it came to pass that the Lord  a commanded  my father, even in a  b dream , that he should  c take  his family and depart into the wilderness." We again see that God often communicates in dreams. This is a very normal way for us to begin to see and understand the revelations God has for us. Most nights I find myself praying to have revela...

We learn in the next few verses of chapter 1 that Lehi was not accustomed to Spiritually intense manifestations. He came home exhausted and fell to his bed. Here is the next truth we learn…often the initial revelation is only the tip of the iceberg.  There is another beautiful truth we gain here - God is aware of our human bodies and the limitations they have when we are beginning our interactions with the Spirit in very powerful ways. Again and again the doctrines, instructions, truths, and mysteries are revealed in dreams. This is incredibly efficient as the body can rest and the conscious mind doesn’t fight the message that is coming. God is able to do things like that and He does them for us often. But the big takeaway for me in verses 6-14 is that there was SO much more the Lord desired to reveal to Lehi than what was revealed in the very beginning. Lehi could have panicked after that first pillar revelation and fought through his exhaustion to talk with his family about it al...

 Over the years, as I’ve talked with people about the Book of Mormon and especially about Nephi, I always hear the same things. It goes something along the lines of, “The stories are good, but those Isaiah chapter…” And that seems to be what people get from 1 and 2 Nephi.  At one point I thought to write a book about how I see and understand those pages of scripture. But let’s face it, I’m me. Writing a book takes organization and that is something I really do not do well. So instead I’m going to try to pull things together here.  To me, the first 117 pages of the Book of Mormon are the manual for how to enter into the presence of Christ, not when I die, but here in this mortal world in this mortal body. But to convince you of this, I need to first explain what I feel it means to follow Jesus Christ. For as long as I can remember I was told to follow Jesus, to do as He did. As a little girl I wondered how in the world I was going to be able to walk on water, or cause the ...