Looking Back

Day one hundred forty-seven

This morning I found myself thinking of my family members and friends that are in need of some extra blessings.  It is frustrating to have to watch things happen and not be able to control them or make them go away, but I know that there is power in prayer, so I choose to pray for them.  It is something I can do anytime, anywhere, and I know that the Lord will listen. 

I recently read a blurb on prayer that I really liked:

"Have you noticed that praying is especially helpful to the person saying the prayer, since God already knows what is going to be said?  It is a learning experience for us and allows us to formulate thoughts and express our feelings.  It allows the Spirit of the Lord to inspire and direct our thoughts, in effect, teaching us what the will of the Lord is." ~ David J. Ridges

Prayer benefits the person praying and the person or people we are praying for!  Another perfect system of the Lords.

Deuteronomy - "repetition of the law"

A widely used tenet in advertising is the "Rule of Seven". Simply stated, the "rule of seven" states that one must impact a prospective customer at least seven times, in as many different ways as possible, to turn them from a prospect into a customer.

This is not a new way to approach people, God has been using repetition as a teaching method from the beginning. He is constantly impacting our lives to get us to recognize Him and follow Him.  And He has proven it is a highly effective tool to use.

So it makes sense that the Lord would include a repetition of the law in the Book of Deuteronomy.  This book is written after the forty years of wandering in the wilderness.  It is a restatement of the law for a new generation.  The old generation has died off and the children that were part of the exodus are now adults.  Moses is getting ready to leave the children of Israel and he wants to make sure that the people understand that they will need to live by the law in order to have a blessed life in the Promised Land.  He will give three sermons before he leaves, each one with a special message.  Today I would like to talk about the first sermon found in Chapters 1-4.

This sermon could be titled:  Looking Back, because it focuses on the important events during the last forty years.  Moses talks about the establishing of leadership, the rejecting of the Promised Land, the failure at Kadesh-barnea, the wandering in the wilderness, the conquering of Heshbon and Bashon, the settlement of the land, the building of an army, his own mistake and punishment, the instances of idol worship, and Mt Horeb (Sinai) and hearing the voice of the Lord.  

Why would Moses start his first sermon with a message of looking back?  Because remembering something means that we are repeating it in our minds and the more we repeat it, the more likely we are to recognize the lessons that it has to teach us. President M. Russell Ballard has taught: "Learning the lessons of the past allows you to build personal testimony on a solid bedrock of obedience, faith, and the witness of the Spirit."  (Learning the Lessons of the Past, April 2009 General Conference).  Moses wasn't asking them to just think about the events of the past, he wanted to make sure that they would remember the lessons learned from the past.
 
What lessons did God repeatedly teach the Israelites?  Here are a few examples:

God will give His people a prophet to lead them.  And leaders need to learn to delegate.

Disobedience has serious consequences.  Obedience brings blessings.

The people around you influence you.

God is faithful.

Take a moment and look back at the events in your past. What lessons have you learned?  It is likely that you have learned the same lessons that the Israelites did, just through different experiences.  It says something about human nature that we have the stories in the scriptures
to teach us, but we still do things in our lives that lead us to have to experience them for ourselves.  We seem to be very forgetful, and so the need for repetition in our lives.

I think of how much time I could have saved in my own life had I just looked back on the Israelites story and learned from their experiences instead of making some of the same mistakes and learning the hard way. I can think of some lessons that are still being repeated in my life today! I think if the Lord only had to repeat something to me seven times before I got it, He would be ecstatic! Something for me to shoot for.