2.207 What Did Alma Do When He Was Grieved?
Show Notes
Allen Roberds explores Alma 35:15, revealing Alma's profound grief over his people's iniquity and hardened hearts despite extensive missionary work. This episode highlights Alma's inspiring response: turning to counsel his sons, offering a powerful lesson on strengthening family testimonies and teaching the gospel at home amidst worldly chaos.
Key Points
- Alma 35:15 depicts Alma's deep sorrow for his people's widespread iniquity, wars, and contentions, even after dedicated missionary efforts.
- Despite thousands embracing Christ, Alma observed a disheartening trend of people's hearts hardening and taking offense at the strictness of God's word.
- Instead of despairing, Alma chose to turn his focus inward, gathering his own sons to provide spiritual counsel and fortify their testimonies, as suggested by Alma 35:16.
- The reflection encourages listeners to emulate Alma's example by actively teaching the gospel to their families and ensuring their children understand and hold firm to their testimonies.
- Alma's actions offer a timeless blueprint for parents and leaders on how to effectively discuss and live the gospel within their own homes, especially during challenging times.
What we can also do is turn our attention to our families and make sure that our children know of our testimonies.
Episode Resources
Full Transcript
In Matthew 5:13, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth, a bold reminder that our lives are meant to carry his flavor, his truth, and his love to the world. Join me each day to explore one verse of scripture and one thought, striving to stay full of savor and truly live as savory salt. Hello, my friends, it's great to have you with me.
Today let's be anxiously engaged in a good cause and bring to pass much righteousness. This week has been an introspective week for me. I hope you've enjoyed reading Doctrine and Covenants Sections 81 through 83 and our readings inside of Alma Chapters 34 through 38 are amazing.
We're going to take a look at Alma Chapter 35 today and then we're going to kind of plant a seed for tomorrow just a little bit because of the way that our verse is today. Our verse is going to come from Alma Chapter 35, Verse 15. Alma 35 is interesting because it's kind of this intermediary chapter, it kind of connecting two stories.
It's like their missionary work is finishing, but we're not quite to the war chapters. We're going to get these little kind of awesome letters to sons from Alma, is really what it is. And so that's what we're going to look at tomorrow a little bit.
But our verse first is going to come in Alma Chapter 35, Verse 15. It says, "Now Alma, being grieved for the iniquity of his people, yea, for the wars and the bloodsheds and the contentions which were among them, and having been to declare the word, or sent to declare the word, among all the people in every city, and seeing that the hearts of the people began to wax hard, and that they began to be offended because of the strictness of the word, his heart was exceedingly sorrowful." Now this is kind of a downer verse unless you connect it to Verse 16. And I'm not going to read Verse 16 in the tradition of Savory Salt here.
But what does Alma do? He's worked so hard all these years. He's done all of this missionary work.
He's gone over to the enemies of the Nephites. He has preached. He has taught the word of God.
Many thousands of people have turned to Christ because of him, and yet he still sees wickedness around him. What does it lead him to do? And I think that the lesson we can pull from here.
In Verse 16, we find out that he decides to turn to his own sons. He gathers them together to counsel with them. My friends, what an amazing lesson for you and for me.
If we see the world in chaos, if we see struggle and strife, if we see wickedness around us. Yes, we absolutely can stand and preach and bear testimony. No doubt about that at all.
What we can also do is turn our attention to our families and make sure that our children know of our testimonies. And I think that the beginning of what we're going to dive into tomorrow is the verses and chapters that are going to come through Alma 36, and 37, 38, all the way several chapters, right? It's going to go into next week, which is exciting.
But something we can pull from this is a model. Alma is going to turn to his sons in this time when he is grieved for the sins and the iniquities of the people around him. He's going to go to his family and make sure that they are sure to pray for testimonies, and he's going to provide them counsel.
My friends, what a great example for us to make sure we spend time in all of the chaos of the work that we have to do, in all of the work that we do in our wards and our stakes and all of those. Here Alma is going to say, 'Here's a blueprint of how to talk to your family about the gospel as well.'
This transcript was generated using AI and may contain errors. I do my best to review and edit them when I can.