The Devil

The devil doesn't come to you

With his red face and horns.

He comes to you disguised

As everything you've ever wanted.

I found this one on pinterest of all places and I loved it.  I have learned that it is so true.  We imagine that the devil is responsible for our problems.  We imagine that we can recognize him and so avoid him.  We imagine that we can recognize evil easily.  The problem is that the devil does not come to us a pure evil.  Normally, at least in my life, he comes as something that I wish for.  He comes as something that I want.  He comes with a portion of the truth, but not the whole truth.  He adds to the truth with a little lie here and a little lie there, until at last, we swallow it all, hook, line and sinker.  

The other thing that I have discovered is that the closer I am to my Heavenly Father, the easier it is for me to recognize those things which are not of God.  It become easier to discern between what is right, and what is merely wanted.  Our wants are not always the things that we need.  They are not the things that help us to remain in our Heavenly Fathers presence.  They are never the things that invite us to come closer to Christ.

I love reading the scriptures.  They invite us to come unto Christ.  

Come, for he stands “with open arms to receive you”  (Mormon 6:17). 

Come, for “he will console you in your afflictions, and he will plead your cause”  (Jacob 3:1)

“Come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him”.  (Omni 1:26)

As Moroni closed the record of the Jaredite civilization, he wrote, “I would commend you to seek this Jesus of whom the prophets and apostles have written”  (Ether 12:41). 

In Moroni’s closing words written toward the end of the Book of Mormon when the Nephite civilization was nearly destroyed, he said, “Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, … and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you”.  Moroni 10:32 

I love the old poem that says:

All the water in the world

However hard it tries,

Can never sink the smallest ship,

Unless in gets inside.

All the evil in the world

The blackest kind of sin,

Can never hurt you one least bit,

Unless you let it in.