BYU (Brigham Young University) is operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often mistakenly called the “Mormon Church.” As part of their undergraduate coursework, BYU students take multiple semesters of spiritually uplifting, stimulating religion classes.
In this series (see below), students enrolled in scripture study classes have shared their thoughts, insights, and reflections on the Book of Mormon in the form of letters to someone they know. We invite you to take a look at their epiphanies and discoveries as they delve into the scriptures.
In publishing these, we fulfill their desire to speak to all of us of the relevance, power and beauty of the Book of Mormon, a second witness of Jesus Christ and complement to the Bible. The Book of Mormon includes the religious history of a group of Israelites who settled in ancient America. (The names they use are those of prophets who taught the Book of Mormon peoples to look forward to the coming of Christ—Nephi, Lehi, Alma, Helaman, and other unfamiliar names. We hope those names will become more familiar to you as you read their inspiring words and feel the relevance and divinity of their messages through these letters.)
Let us know if you’d like to receive your own digital copy of the Book of Mormon, and/or if these messages encourage and assist you spiritually as well.
Mormonism: Come Unto Him
In my Book of Mormon class, I learned a lot of amazing things. I was able to learn a lot about how sins affect us. The Lord wants to help us, and He will, if we are willing to listen to Him and follow the promptings that He gives us. 3 Nephi 10:6 says, “O ye house of Israel whom I have spared, how oft will I gather you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, if ye will repent and return unto me with full purpose of heart.” The Lord will gladly accept us. We just need to go to Him. After that verse, it starts mentioning all of these terrible things that happened to the people because of their sins. What they were inwardly feeling was being portrayed outwardly and was affecting them. Sins never bring happiness. There are always going to be consequences, and they bring a lot of pain. Sinning is very hard to overcome, especially if addiction is involved. I know that it is possible to overcome sin through the Lord. We need to go to Him, open our hearts and let Him in. If we continually block the Lord out, then it will be a lot harder for us to repent. We need His help, and He is there, waiting for us to come unto Him. I know that He loves us all so much, and He knows what we are feeling when we are going through pain. Overcoming an addiction is such a difficult thing to do, but it can be done through the Lord. It is important for us to try everything we can. We need to try to avoid sin so we don’t have terrible consequences, like what happened to this group of people in the scriptures. He loves us so much, and I cannot stress that enough. Never forget that.
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