In church yesterday, the instructor in Elder's Quorum shared Matthew 6:24: No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
This scripture is almost always used to illustrate the concept that, since you can only do one thing at a time, you can only serve one person at a time (unless there's one thing that you can do that would serve multiple people). Since there's no one thing you can do that would serve both God and Satan, you cannot serve them both at the same time.
But this got me thinking - You can only fight one person at a time, too.
Of the many times that the Nephites were losing in their fights against the Lamanites, a few of those times, it was because they were too busy fighting amongst themselves. They couldn't fight themselves and their enemies at the same time, and still expect to defeat their enemies.
Similarly, we can't expect to defeat our enemy, Satan, if we're busy fighting ourselves. Every negative thought we have about ourselves redirects our attention away from our real enemy, and since we're fighting the wrong target, we're not going to win.
1 comment:
hmmm I had not thought of it that way before. And of course, if we are tearing ourselves down, we are not fighting against Satan, we are helping him. great. Something else for which I need to repent.
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