Mosiah - Chapter 21

There are strong parallels between this chapter and my own bondage to addiction.  I was an addict for 45 years.  All of that time I was active in the church and therefore, very conflicted.  Why could I not escape my bondage.  I had tried and failed so many times I had become despondent about any possibility of escape.

Occasionally, I would get so frustrated with my captivity that I would muster all my courage and strength and go out and do battle with my enemy.  Always, I came back whipped, weaker, with even fewer resources with which to resist.  Every battle, left me in worse shape than when I began.  Like the people of Limhi, I saw no other way but to do battle to obtain my freedom.  Finally, because I read Mosiah 7:33 (which I mentioned the discussion of that chapter) I began to realize that this was not my battle to fight, it was God's.  Oh, I had things to do, but they were not the ones I supposed them to be.

14 And they did humble themselves even in the depths of humility; and they did cry mightily to God; yea, even all the day long did they cry unto their God that he would deliver them out of their afflictions.

  15 And now the Lord was slow to hear their cry because of their iniquities; nevertheless the Lord did hear their cries, and began to soften the hearts of the Lamanites that they began to ease their burdens; yet the Lord did not see fit to deliver them out of bondage.

This verse, very much, describes how it went for me.  My job was to humble myself and be obedient.  My job was to turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart.  My job was to be willing to submit to His will and to do that which He asked that I do.  My job was not to do battle with my enemy.  Gradually, He softened the impact my addiction had on my life.  He made it easier and easier to resist temptation.  He was slow to deliver me completely for the same reason, I suspect, that he didn't remove Paul's thorn in the flesh.  I need my affliction to require of me the humility the Lord desires.  He needed to teach me that I always need Him affliction or not.  He needed me to learn that submitting my will to His was not just a trick to get out of the trouble and torment I was in, but rather, was an eternal principle of promise.  I needed to learn that I must keep myself in a constant state of humility and then when I could learn to do that freely, voluntarily, I might not need to be compelled to it anymore.