Book of Mormon: Day 289: Bringing Our Children to Christ

Today’s Reading:  3 Nephi 17: 12-25

 11 And it came to pass that he commanded that their little children should be brought.

 12 So they brought their little children and set them down upon the ground round about him, and Jesus stood in the midst; and the multitude gave way till they had all been brought unto him.

Most of us who are familiar with the Book of Mormon remember 3 Nephi 17 as that beautiful chapter in which Jesus Christ blesses the children in ancient Bountiful.  It moves us to tears to imagine Him taking these little ones in His arms, one by one, to bless them and to pray to the Father for them.  We don’t know what Jesus said to them or to His Father that day, but we do know that His pronounced blessings were followed by the ministration of angels who came down and surrounded the little ones and “they were encircled about with fire” (see v. 24).

Don’t we all wish we could have been there on that day?  Don’t we all wish that we could have basked in the Savior’s love and tenderness?  And don’t we wish that we could have given our own children the opportunity to be held and blessed by the Savior even for a moment?  Wouldn’t that experience have strengthened our children forever?

Jesus Christ lives in a different realm now, but His invitation to all of us remains the same.  We are to come unto Him, and we are to bring others with us!  And, as parents, we have the specific commandment to bring our children unto Him.

How do we fulfill that commandment to bring our children to the Savior?  Certainly, we need to take them to church, teach them the gospel in our own homes, and try to protect them from unrighteous influences that might distract them in their journey to Him.  But the very most important part of our bringing them to Christ is our own example.  To succeed in bringing our children to Christ, we must be rock-solid in our own testimonies and then demonstrate that strength by keeping the commandments with exactness.

In his April 2003 General Conference address “A Prayer for the Children,” Elder Jeffrey R. Holland expressed his concern that some children in the Church were in spiritual danger.  Why?  Was it something they had done? No, it was something their parents had done and were doing–namely, flirting with cynicism and skepticism and remaining on the outskirts of Church activity.  He warned:

We can be reasonably active, meeting-going Latter-day Saints, but if we do not live lives of gospel integrity and convey to our children powerful heartfelt convictions regarding the truthfulness of the Restoration and the divine guidance of the Church from the First Vision to this very hour, then those children may, to our regret but not surprise, turn out not to be visibly active, meeting-going Latter-day Saints or sometimes anything close to it.[1]

And then Elder Holland advised all of us:

Live the gospel as conspicuously as you can.  [2]

Really?  What about the Savior’s injunction not to let our left hand know what our right is doing?(i)  Well, that warning was given to those who were prone to observe religious practices primarily in public where they would receive outward praise for their devotion.  We must still avoid that hypocritical practice, but within the walls of our own home, we are to be as visible and as obvious as possible in our religious devotion.  We are to allow our children to see us reading, marking, studying, and clinging to our scriptures every day.  We should count it a blessing if our children accidentally walk in on us while we are kneeling in personal prayer.  And, we should not hesitate to share with them why we are fasting, why we spend time fulfilling our callings, why we attend the temple, and so on.  In short, we must bear our testimonies loudly and often, both in word and in deed. As we do so, we will find ourselves all coming unto Christ together.

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