Come Follow Me D&C with Sam 6-9

 Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! I got pinched on time, but here are a few thoughts from each section below.

Section 6

Section 6 contains some guidance and admonition to Oliver Cowdery. It seems that Oliver had some pretty significant fears in his life. This is evidenced by vs 22, 'cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart... did I not speak peace to your mind... and vs 34 'fear not, little flock; do good; let earth and hell combine against you, for if ye are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail.'

There are some admonitions. vs 6 - 'seek not for riches but for wisdom... he that hath eternal life is rich.' This personally is very difficult for me to do. There is some much on this earth that money can buy (I know) and it is so difficult to not be sucked up into this spiraling need to experience and have anything and everything. It isn't what we came to earth for and it isn't going to make you any happier or better if you aren't pursuing wisdom. And yet, it seems like people with wealth are so much more satisfied with life than those without. Joseph and Oliver don't know about the law of consecration yet but God is preparing them and others to receive it. If I aim for the good of mankind, I find it more compelling, and easier to focus on, than accumulating worldly possession for myself.

Another Admonition is to 'say nothing but repentance to this generation' and 'trifle not with sacred things'. Jordan Peterson defines a sacred thing as 'something that you don't change, no matter your intentions'. I think there is a lot more to it than that, but it turns out that may be a surprisingly accurate good start.

Section 7

Section 7 is Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery asking about John the Beloved; whether he really did get translated to tarry on the earth. There a lot of interesting things about this section; J&H have 2.5 pages of pure commentary on the event. Remember that John and the 3 Nephites both asked for this, and I don't find that coincidental; I think that God purposed this for them from the beginning, for some purpose that we really have a tiny grasp on. 

I would like to focus more, though, on the ease at which Joseph Smith felt he could approach Father in Heaven for answers. In the previous post, I mentioned both that Joseph said that you should wrestle with a question before approaching God, and not do it for light causes. Yet here, it seems as though Joseph wished to know more of something that didn't have a lot to do with his specific work, and God was still happy to impart that knowledge. How does that work?

I mentioned in the same post that to gain revelation, the scriptures suggest you should be 

1. unspotted from the world, 

2. filled with righteous desire, 

3. filled with a certain intensity of connection with the heavens. 

I believe that the key for Joseph was that he had all three of these attributes, and he was doing God's work. Just because we don't approach God lightly doesn't mean that we should treat our interactions like a business meeting. It just means you need to understand what you are doing and really desire that thing which you seek. 

Without being disrespectful, I can say that in my own prayers, God and I have both deep, difficult, soul-wrenching conversation, and we laugh all the time about things too (P.S. be careful on the laughing thing; when you get to 'the pearly gates', Peter might tell you that God didn't find any of your jokes funny, you were just too out-of-tune to realize you were only laughing by yourself :D.

I'd love to talk more about how to approach the throne of God if anyone else wants to.

Section 8

In this section, Oliver asked for the ability to translate. Echoing many themes that I talked about earlier, God speaks of how to obtain revelation (mind and heart), and shows such a willingness to let Oliver translate. It is not as though God filled the translator slot and then said 'that's it, everyone else go find another job'. Instead, God was teaching Joseph and Oliver how this was done.

I found this interesting note from J&H: President John Taylor says that, "If they possess the principle of intelligence and truth, there will be a power and an influence manifested in and accompanying all their words."

Section 9

Ultimately, Oliver Cowdery was not successful in his aim to translate, and this is the follow-up to that. I would love to write more but I ran out of time this week, so hopefully I can come back to this one later. Stay tuned.