The Change of Heart
by Autumn Dickson
In the chapters for this week, we find various sermons and experiences from Alma as he is traveling from city to city to try and build up the church. In one of the areas, Zarahemla, he found some issues within the church that were plaguing the Saints and taking them away from the Lord.
This is another one of those chapters growing up that troubled me and made me worry about my salvation. As I read verses about being stripped of pride and envy (particularly difficult as an insecure teenager), or when I read verses about walking blameless before God, I was convinced I didn’t stand a chance.
I never think it’s a bad idea to consider the state of your soul and talk to the Lord about it, but it has to be done right. There have been plenty of times that I’ve examined the apparently black state of my soul growing up and thinking that there was no way I’d ever be good enough to live with God again. This wasn’t uplifting or helpful. It didn’t make me a better person. It just made me focus more on myself. I was doing plenty of good things, but those good things weren’t changing me. Which is rather unfortunate and ironic when you think about the fact that change is literally the entire point of this earthly exercise.
A mighty change of heart absolutely includes a desire to do what’s right, to follow the Lord, and serve those around us. However, a mighty change of heart includes much more than that. There is a process to follow that I believe often gets pushed out of order to our own detriment.
Let’s observe exactly what Alma is teaching here, and I think we’ll find how to have our hearts changed in a way that is uplifting and joyful. Understanding exactly what Alma is teaching about being prepared to meet God can help us to accomplish more good works than we otherwise would be able to, and it can also help us go about this process in a way that fills our souls rather than leaving us empty.
How does the change of heart occur?
Alma is addressing the Saints in Zarahemla when he starts talking about remembering the captivity of their fathers. He talks about them being encircled by the bands of death and chains of hell. An everlasting destruction awaited them. Were they destroyed? No. Their restraints were loosed. Alma then asks:
Alma 5:10 And now I ask of you on what conditions are they saved? Yea, what grounds had they to hope for salvation? What is the cause of their being loosed from the bands of death, yea, and also the chains of hell?
That’s what we’re trying to find out here, right? We’ve all found ourselves encircled with bands that we can’t break ourselves. We’ve all sinned. So how did our fathers escape? Because if we can figure out how they escaped, we can know how to escape ourselves. Luckily, Alma describes it clearly.
And if I had been able to observe the answer as a teenager, it would have surprised me.
Alma 5:12 And according to his faith there was a mighty change wrought in his heart. Behold I say unto you that this is all true.
What saved them? It wasn’t an incessant, bullheaded attempt to do everything right. It was faith! It’s so funny because I was absolutely surrounded by Texas Christians growing up who were of the opinion that “works” were completely unnecessary. You were only saved by believing in Christ. We believe in works, and there is a place for works, and we will talk about works. But maybe they were onto something. I feel like we have a culture in the church that talks about our belief in grace and faith as they are related to salvation, but we also inwardly scoff a little. We’re afraid to lean on grace and faith to the extent that we relinquish responsibility for our actions to our detriment. I feel like we profess the idea of grace and faith, and yet oftentimes, our beliefs about our own worthiness and the extent to which we beat ourselves up does not reflect this belief in the Savior’s ability to redeem.
And yet, here we have Alma, teaching that it was faith that freed them from their bonds.
So let’s cover grace and works again. Where does faith come in and what’s the point of works? How do the two relate together? I’ve only talked about it a million times, but that’s because the relationship between the two is complex. There are a lot of ways to teach it and better understand it. There are layers to it, so we’re going to add another layer here that can hopefully add to what we’ve already studied about grace and works.
Works-first method
Perhaps we don’t mean to, but I believe we often follow a “works first” method and we believe that the faith (and all the feelings associated with salvation) just kinda descends later. I tried that for a long time, and it never descended. I think sometimes we believe that if we’re following the commandments and standards, those good feelings of freedom and peace and salvation are simply going to show up. Not so.
Here is a disclaimer before I start elaborating...
8 июн 2024
