Talk Prep - We Are All Enlisted

I was recently asked to give a talk in an upcoming Sacrament Meeting, and since the date of my talk is now only a week away, I had better start to get serious about it. My topic is a question: How Do We Overcome the Adversary and Find Happiness? These are two important and closely-related goals, yet it seems that many people struggle with both of them. There is a lot of unhappiness in the world today, and most of it seems to be caused by people being overcome by the adversary. Even within the church, nobody is perfect, and nobody is happy all the time. So, how can we do better?

Reflecting on this question of overcoming the adversary and finding happiness, I was reminded of the hymn We Are All Enlisted, in which the first two lines of both the song and the chorus are "We are all enlisted till the conflict is o'er; Happy are we! Happy are we!" Clearly, this song at least touches on the two main elements of my question. I hope that, by analyzing the lyrics of this song, I can find some answers.

My first clue was in the title: We Are All Enlisted. I don't know for sure, but I believe that "Enlisted" means joining a military force voluntarily, whereas "Conscripted" means that one was compelled to join. Having had a choice in the matter would make our position in this war for souls more tolerable; however, a quick Google search revealed that "enlisted" and "conscripted" aren't mutually exclusive. According the the results I got, "Enlisted" means "enroll or be enrolled in the armed services," (with no mention of the enrollment having to have been voluntary), and "Conscripted" means "enlist (someone) compulsorily, typically into the armed services," showing that one can, in fact, be "enlisted" against one's will. And, come to think of it, we didn't have much of a choice in whether we joined this war or not. As far as I know, our options were to either join God's side in His fight against Satan or join Satan's side in his fight against God. If those two were truly our only options, that's not much of a choice, and there seems to have been no option for avoiding the war entirely. We didn't join this war voluntarily. We had to join. The one choice we did have was picking which side we fought on.

Okay, so "Enlisted" was a bust. Maybe there are other lyrics in here that can help us figure out how to overcome the adversary and find happiness while we're at it.

Immediately after the first two lines in the first verse and again in the chorus, we sing "Soldiers in the army, There's a bright crown in store; We shall win and wear it by and by." This also seems promising. The "bright crown in store" alludes to the reward for victory, and the assertion that "We shall win and wear it" alludes to an assurance of victory. The prize we are fighting for is Eternal Life, the greatest of all the gifts of God. That's certainly a prize worth fighting for, and it can sometimes be enough to motivate us to fight hard enough to overcome the adversary and win it, assuming we're thinking that far ahead. Yet, too often, too many of us live in the moment, not giving enough thought to how our actions in the present will affect our consequences in the future. Fighting for the crown can motivate us to fight hard enough to win it, but only if we keep that crown in mind, even when in battle.

As for the assurance that we'll win the fight and the crown, that depends entirely on our actions. Sure, affirmations about our victory can give us the confidence to fight hard enough to win, but there are cases where that confidence might become overconfidence and/or might shatter. If we lose too many fights that we were sure we were going to win, we might stop being so sure of our eventual victory. If we ever lose to Satan, we prove that we might lose to him again, destroying our confidence that "we shall win [the crown]."

Thinking of the crown we are going to win and how certain it is that we are going to win it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy in that the motivation and confidence that that thought gives us can propel us toward victory, but both the motivation and the confidence can be undermined, so perhaps those lines aren't all that helpful, either.

The next two lines of the first verse list some of our advantages: "Haste to the battle, quick to the field;
Truth is our helmet, buckler, and shield." So, we're not going into battle unarmored, and a later verse tells us that "Jesus, our Leader, ever is near. He will protect us, comfort, and cheer," so we also have a strong ally. This, too, sounds promising, and it may allude to some practical advice for overcoming the adversary and finding happiness: Rely on truth (and the other components of the Armor of God) and on Jesus. They will help us gain the strength to secure the victory and the rewards that come with it. Certainly, relying on the Savior and Putting on the Armor of God should be in my talk somewhere, but I'm not sure this hymn is the best place to pick up this advice.

The last line of all three verses is "We're joyfully, joyfully marching to our home," which is great, except that it isn't clear where that joy is coming from. Perhaps it's simply the joy of returning home?

I'm afraid that We Are All Enlisted may not be as helpful to me as I had hoped, but that's okay. When I was giving my topic, I was also given a General Conference talk from which to draw inspiration, so I'll look there next. And besides, reviewing We Are All Enlisted did remind me of a handful of topics that I want to address in my talk, namely the Armor of God, relying on the Savior, and perhaps also the joy of returning home, so I'll still address those things in my talk, whether or not I end up including any reference to the song itself.