Diligence of Mind

As I read the Book of Mormon this morning, I came across Mosiah 7:33, in which King Limhi tells his people how they can secure the Lord's help in escaping the Lamanites, which is also how we can secure the Lord's help in escaping sin.

But if ye will turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart, and put your trust in him, and serve him with all diligence of mind, if ye do this, he will, according to his own will and pleasure, deliver you out of bondage.

There are many phrases here that I could single out. "Full purpose of heart," "Put your trust in Him," and "According to His own will and pleasure" are all blogworthy. But for the purpose of this blog post, I want to focus on the phrase that stood out to me this morning: "Diligence of mind."

On my mission, I learned that diligence is sometimes defined as "steady, consistent, earnest, and energetic effort in doing the Lord’s work" (Preach My Gospel, Chapter 6). Applying that to the mind, we see that we need to steadily, consistently, earnestly, and energetically focus our thoughts on the gospel. This includes brief periods of intense scripture study and regular study over the course of one's life. It includes deep pondering of the gospel and frequent consideration of spiritual thoughts. It includes devout repulsion of evil thoughts and constant vigilance against their return. In almost all of these areas, I have significant room for improvement.

I have a long way to go before I can say that I "serve [God] with all diligence of mind," but at least I know now what that means and have an idea of how I can achieve it. I hope that I can diligently strive to be more diligent in focussing my thoughts on the gospel.