I was reading Jacob chapter 2 and 3 today. Jacob taught about the dangers and consequences of the sins of pride and sexual immorality.
I do not know why, every time when it came to chastity, I would become more alert in reading and studying the related scriptures.
“For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abominsation before me; thus saith the lord of Hosts.” ~ Jacob 2:28
When you read Jacob 2:32-35 and 3:10, look for ways immorality was affecting the Nephites as a people and as individuals. How are these ways similar to the consequences of immorality you see in today’s world?
“Behold, ye have done greater iniquities than the Lamanites, our brethren. Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives, and lost the confidence of your children, because of your bad examples before them; and the sobbing of their hearts ascend up to God against you. And because of the strictness of the word of God, which cometh down against you, many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds. ~ Jacob 2:35
“Wherefore, ye shall remember your children, how that ye have grieved their hearts because of the example that ye have set before them; and also, remember that ye may, because of your filthiness, bring your children unto destruction, and their sins be heaped upon your heads at the last day.” ~ Jacob 3:10
My heart grieve as I read these 2 verses. May be it is because I have been through all these sufferings and pains before. It give me an insight that the consequences of immorality are the same at Jacob’s days (about 544 B.C.) and in today’s world. It is an eternal truth.
What do you find in Jacob’s words that could help you teach a loved one about the important of chastity?
The consequences of the immorality indeed hurts and affects one family deeply. It is just like a deep scare in the heart that you would feel pain and hurt, the feeling of being betrayed of your trust.
I know that my children are taught about the important of chastity through our own family experience, because they were all the time seeing, hearing and feeling how I have been through as a woman and themselves as children. They knows how pain and hurt it can be.
Sometimes on the other hand, I am worry if this had changed their perception towards marriage. One thing for sure, if they fall in love with someone, they would be very committed as what they had been through in the childhood.
How have you been blessed by your efforts to be chaste?
I have been blessed with guidance of the Spirit and the knowledge that see the Lord’s hand in my life even though sometimes I would have miss.
I think I have been blessed with the capacity to love and to forgive, even though I have been hurt many times. My capacity to be patience, perseverance have been stretched until the extend I do not realized it.
What do you find in Jacob 2:23-30 that helps you understand why the Lord has, in limitations, commanded His people to practice plural marriage? How does He feel about those who do so without His authorization?
Plural marriage is authorized only when the Lord commands it through His prophets. One reason is to raise up seed unto Lord or increase the number of children born in the gospel covenant.
The Lord delights in chastity, and sexual sin is an abomination before the Lord. The Lord condemned those who entering into specific plural marriages that He had not authorized. Unless the Lord commands otherwise, He has ordained marriage is to be between one man and one woman.
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a single, undeviating standard of sexual morality: intimate relations are proper only between a man and a woman in the marriage relationship prescribed in God’s plan. Such relations are not merely a curiosity to be explored, an appetite to be satisfied, or a type of recreation or entertainment to be pursued selfishly. They are not a conquest to be achieved or simply an act to be performed. Rather, they are in mortality one of the ultimate expressions of our divine nature and potential and a way of strengthening emotional and spiritual bonds between husband and wife. We are agents blessed with moral agency and are defined by our divine heritage as children of God—and not by sexual behaviors, contemporary attitudes, or secular philosophies.”
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