Spiritually Self-Reliant

“Those with firm spiritual foundations are blessed with peace, reassurance, and greater faith when calling on Heavenly Father for help. . . . If we lose our emotional and spiritual independence, our self-reliance, we can be weakened quite as much, perhaps even more, than when we become dependent materially” (March Ensign p. 65).

Now the servants of the king began to murmur, saying: Now the king will slay us, as he has our brethren because their flocks were scattered … And they began to weep exceedingly, saying: Behold our, flocks are scattered already.  Now they wept because of the fear of being slain. Now when Ammon saw this his heart was swollen within him with Joy” (Alma 17:28-29).

While all the servants were in the exact same situation, their reactions could not be more opposite: the servants wept in fear of their lives and Ammon rejoiced.

Ammon continues to explain why he was filled with joy: “I will show forth my power unto these my fellow-servants, or the power which is in me , in restoring these flocks unto the king, that I may win the hearts of these my fellow-servants, that I may lead them to believe in my words” (Alma 17:29).

Rather than fearing for his life, Ammon found joy in the hope that the Lord would fulfill his promise to deliver his people, in other words Ammon was spiritually self-reliant as described in the first part of the chapter

Ammon and the sons of Mosiah

·         had waxed strong in the knowledge of truth

·         were men of sound understanding

·         searched the scriptures diligently to know the word of God

·         gave themselves to much prayer and fasting

·         received the spirit of prophecy and revelation

·         taught with power and authority

These insights were rather timely considering I faced several temporal realities that come with graduating from college. While both graduate schools I applied to interviewed me, I was faced with choosing a school before I heard back from either school. While sitting in elder’s quorum the thought to drop my anthropology class came to mind. My initial response was I can’t do that. I will just man it up and work hard. I can read the several hundred pages and write the reaming 20 pages in reports. After talking it over with several friends, I realized the University of Utah was the only program that required me to take Anthropology 101. If I withdrew from the class, I would become ineligible to attend the U’s occupational therapy program, which was okay because I did not want to attend the program after all. The day after I withdrew from Anthropology 101 I heard back from Pacific University. I had been placed rather low on the wait list. However, there was a peace reassuring me that things would be okay. Now that I only had 15 credits I would have the time to do well in my classes and raise my prerequisite GPA. I also realized that it was okay if I did not make it into the program. Questions such as grad school, jobs, and where to live after graduation are all temporal concerns that could have consumed and overwhelmed me, but I trusted that becoming spiritually self-reliant would enable these temporal concerns to fall into place. My focused turned from my situation to my own heart and desires. I began seeking to become more spiritually self-reliant. I searched for the weapons I could bury, such as the anti-Nephi-Lehies