Natural Man

I have eaten some Bit O Honey Candies… Maybe a whole bunch of them. Yep, I wrote them in my food journal. It isn’t a matter that I ate them it is more a matter that I recognize that empty feelings that I felt that was the driving factor to eat them. I’m not sure how to describe empty.

I guess it’s the feeling I feel right before either one of two things happens…The first thing is easy to figure out, it is when I give into the urge to do whatever my addiction is. The other one is a bit more complicated it is being humble enough to admit I’m powerless over the addiction and allow Jesus Christ to carry me though the emptiness.

The stronger my desire to have faith in Jesus Christ is, the stronger my faith becomes. My faith doesn’t become stronger in just having desire; Christ grants me opportunities to travel through periods of emptiness on my journey so that I can learn that I am powerless. Who would have ever imagined that (at least for me) Bit O Honey candy could point towards Christ?

The natural man or the natural woman will not go away quietly or easily. Hence, the most grinding form of calisthenics we will ever know involves the individual isometrics required to put off the natural man. Time and again the new self is pitted against the stubborn old self. Sometimes, at least it's so with me, just when at last we think the job is done, and then the old self reminds us that he or she has not fully departed yet.

A vital, personal question for each of us, therefore, is, "Are we steadily becoming what gospel doctrines are designed to help us become?"

"Called to Serve" NEAL A. MAXWELL Brigham Young University on 27 March 1994