Editor's note: “Resources to follow Him” curates study resources, teachings, and thoughts to deepen your study of this week's Come, Follow Me.
This week’s Come, Follow Me, focuses on Mosiah 7–10. Below we share four topics taught in these chapters that you can explore for your lesson:
Topics
We hope these topics, in addition to the Come, Follow Me manual, will enhance your understanding of these chapters.
Parenting
In Mosiah 10:17, we see an example of bad parenting as the Lamanite parents taught their children to hate, murder, rob, plunder, and destroy the children of Nephi.
In a segment of this week’s Sunday on Monday Study Group podcast, host Tammy Uzelac Hall and this week’s guests, Ruth Cook and Holly Butterfield Rawlings, discuss how we can avoid passing bad traditions on to our family members. Hall read a quote from Elder L. Tom Perry’s talk, “Becoming Goodly Parents”:
“Lessons taught in the home by goodly parents are becoming increasingly important in today’s world, where the influence of the adversary is so widespread. As we know, he is attempting to erode and destroy the very foundation of our society—the family. In clever and carefully camouflaged ways, he is attacking commitment to family life throughout the world and undermining the culture and covenants of faithful Latter-day Saints. Parents must resolve that teaching in the home is a most sacred and important responsibility. While other institutions such as church and school can assist parents to ‘train up a child in the way he [or she] should go’ (Proverbs 22:6), this responsibility ultimately rests on the parents. According to the great plan of happiness, it is goodly parents who are entrusted with the care and development of Heavenly Father’s children.”
On the podcast, Cook shares, “That really resonated to me because in our house ever since March 16, we've been home. And it has been Church and school in our home. And it's really driven home how important those lessons are, and it's also made me feel incredibly overwhelmed, but it's also comforting. It's comforting to me that my children are also Heavenly Father's children, and they are in His care, and I am in His care, and we'll figure it out.”
The Sunday on Monday Study Group is a Deseret Bookshelf PLUS+ original presented by LDS Living. You can access the full study group discussion through the Bookshelf app. Listen to a segment of this week's episode below or listen to the full Sunday on Monday episode here.
Deliverance
In this week’s episode of “Don’t Miss This,” Emily Belle Freeman and David Butler step away from a sequential approach to Mosiah 7–10 and instead explain the chapters chronologically. One theme they highlight in the chapters is the theme of deliverance.
Freeman and Butler explain that God will still deliver us, even if we have our moments when we, like Zeniff, are "slow to remember the Lord our God" (Mosiah 9:3). Just like God delivered Zeniff from bondage, He will deliver us.
“Sometimes we’re not going to make good choices—we just won’t,” Freeman said. “The way our life goes sometimes things are not going to go the way that maybe would be the easiest path for us. I love the fact that God is not going to abandon us in that. He is going to stay with us until we long for deliverance and until the deliverance comes.”
Freeman and Butler also discuss the theme of deliverance as they talk about how Limhi saw Ammon as a messenger who brought them a message of deliverance. Referencing Mosiah 7:19, Butler testifies how God delivers us in our own lives: “Whether it’s a quick split through the Red Sea or whether its a 40-year-journey—whatever it looks like, the point is there is going to be a deliverance. We believe in a delivering God.”
Watch the video below and don’t forget to get a Don’t Miss This 2020 Journal so you can follow along.
The Blessing of a Prophet
Ammon teaches king Limhi about the wonderful blessing of a prophet in Mosiah 8:16-18:
“And Ammon said that a seer is a revelator and a prophet also; and a gift which is greater can no man have, except he should possess the power of God, which no man can; yet a man may have great power given him from God. “But a seer can know of things which are past, and also of things which are to come, and by them shall all things be revealed, or, rather, shall secret things be made manifest, and hidden things shall come to light, and things which are not known shall be made known by them, and also things shall be made known by them which otherwise could not be known. “Thus God has provided a means that man, through faith, might work mighty miracles; therefore he becometh a great benefit to his fellow beings.”
In 1994, President Boyd K. Packer shared:
“The scriptures speak of prophets as ‘watch[men] upon the tower’ who see ‘the enemy while he [is] yet afar off’ [D&C 101:54] and who have ‘beheld also things which were not visible to the natural eye … [for] a seer hath the Lord raised up unto his people’ [Moses 6:36; see also Mosiah 8:15–17]. “[Many years ago] the Brethren warned us of the disintegration of the family and told us to prepare. … “The weekly family home evening was introduced by the First Presidency. … “Parents are provided with excellent materials for teaching their children, with a promise that the faithful will be blessed. “While the doctrines and revealed organization remain unchanged, all agencies of the Church have been reshaped in their relationship to one another and to the home. … “… The entire curriculum of the Church was overhauled—based on scriptures. … “And years were spent preparing new editions of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. … “We can only imagine where we would be if we were just now reacting to this terrible redefinition of the family. But that is not the case. We are not casting frantically about trying to decide what to do. We know what to do and what to teach. … “The course we follow is not of our own making. The plan of salvation, the great plan of happiness, was revealed to us, and the prophets and Apostles continue to receive revelation as the Church and its members stand in need of more” (Boyd K. Packer, “The Father and the Family,” Ensign, May 1994, 20).
This week’s Come, Follow Me lesson asks readers, “When was the last time you pondered the blessing of having prophets, seers, and revelators on the earth? Perhaps you could record how prophets, seers, and revelators have been a ‘great benefit’ to you” (Mosiah 8:18).
Agency
Limhi teaches his people in Mosiah 7 that “if my people shall sow filthiness they shall reap the east wind, which bringeth immediate destruction” or “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” (Mosiah 7:31,33).
Both of these scriptural statements hinge on the single word, “if,” or in other words, it was their choice as it is ours, to follow the Savior.
Elder Robert D. Hales powerfully taught the principle of agency in his talk, “Agency: Essential to the Plan of Life.” In his talk, he shared how he painted himself into a literal corner. In a video for youth, Trevor explains how he overcame spiritually painting himself into a corner.
“Though we are spiritually stuck, there is always a way back,” Elder Hales taught. “Like repentance, turning around and walking across a newly varnished floor means more work—a lot of resanding and refinishing! Returning to the Lord isn’t easy, but it is worth it.”
Watch the video below.
