Sufficient Strength

Alma 51:9 & 16

 9 "But behold, this was a critical time for such contentions to be among the people of Nephi...

 16 For it was his first care to put an end to such contentions and dissensions among the people; for behold, this had been hitherto a cause of all their destruction."

There is such a wonderful lesson to be learned from chapter 51, typically known as one of the "war chapters" in the Book of Mormon.  Moroni is up against a tricky situation in which the Lamanites are about to attack their city while at the same time a number of his own people are dissenting because they do not feel like the city is being run according to their desires politically and therefore will not help Moroni defend the city.  As verse 9 states, this was an awful time for there to be contentions among his people because it meant that they might not be sufficiently strong to fight off the Lamanites.

So what?  What does this have to do with me and with my spiritual development as I learn and grow more than 2000 years after this event?  It means that I need to make sure that my personal life is in order, spiritually as well as in all other ways, to ensure that when Satan comes tempting me, because he will, that I will have all of my faculties about me, and that I will be sufficiently strong to resist and stay clean and pure.  

I can think back to times in my life where I have been living my life mostly righteously, but then right before the Lord needed me to serve him I succumbed to a temptation that drove the spirit away and made me unworthy to perform the Lord's work.  If I am going to be able to be where the Lord needs me, when He needs me, and able to perform the labor that He has for me, I need to make sure that I am sufficiently strong.  I am my own worst enemy when I let my guard down and when I fail to live up to who I really am.