Hold the Line

The story

Joshua was an old man when he gathered all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. They had come through the wilderness, crossed the Jordan and settled the land they had been promised. He had led them through all of it. And with the time he had left, he didn't give them a battle plan. He gave them a choice. Serve the Lord, or choose the gods of the people around you, but choose, and choose this day. Then he told them where he stood: "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."

Notice what he didn't say. He didn't say, "I hope my family turns out all right." He made the decision before the trouble came, and he made it for his household. That's what the father in this song does. The world is on his doorstep with its banners and its gold, calling to his children and his wife, saying lay your shield down and live an easy life. And he draws a line across his threshold.

Here's what I want us to understand about that line. Agency is not a small thing in the plan of salvation. It's the whole reason there was a war in heaven. Lehi taught that we are "free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death." Read that carefully. Liberty doesn't come from choosing in the abstract. It comes through the Mediator. Every real choice for God is a choice for Jesus Christ, because He is the only way the choosing can lead anywhere good.

Israel promised to serve the Lord, and Joshua didn't let that promise drift. He wrote it in the book of the law and set up a great stone under an oak, and he told them the stone would be a witness, because it had heard every word. In the song the father does the same thing. He carves it on the lintel, burns it into the wood over the door, so every time his children pass under it they'll know where their family stood.

We have stones like that. When we were baptized we took upon us the name of Jesus Christ. King Benjamin's people did the same, and he told them that because of that covenant they would be called the children of Christ, His sons and His daughters, because He had spiritually begotten them. Every Sunday we renew it. We take the bread and the water and promise to always remember Him and keep His commandments, and He promises that we may always have His Spirit to be with us. That's not a ritual we sit through. That's the line being drawn again.

The song makes a promise in its second pre-chorus: "The Lord will keep the house of any man who keeps the line / And the gates of hell won't break a door that He calls mine." That echoes what Jesus said of His own church, that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. You can't keep your family safe by yourself. But you can choose Him, out loud, at your own front door, and He keeps what is given to Him. Every other battle on this album starts right here.

Sources

• Joshua 24:14-15
• Joshua 24:23-27
• 2 Nephi 2:27
• Mosiah 5:7-8
• Doctrine and Covenants 20:77, 79
• Matthew 16:18

Think about it

If the choice you made at baptism had to be proven only by how your home ran this past week, with no words allowed, what would the evidence say, and what is the one thing you would put away to make it say more?

Tonight

Write "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" on a card and put it on or beside a door your family walks through every day. Let it be your stone of witness.

The story

We talk about the war between good and evil like it's a figure of speech. It isn't. Before this world was organized, our Heavenly Father gathered His children and laid out His plan. Abraham records it: we would go down, receive a body, and be proven, "to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them." That's the purpose of this life in one sentence. But a plan like that requires agency, and agency means some of us will fall, and falling requires a Savior. The Firstborn stepped forward and said, "Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever."

Then another rose up with an offer. Moses records it: "I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor." Listen to that offer carefully, because it's the most seductive thing ever proposed. Everyone you love, saved. No risk. But the Lord tells us what it would have cost: he "sought to destroy the agency of man." No choice, no sin, no need for grace, and no growth either. Safe, and stunted, and his. There was war in heaven over it, and you didn't follow him. You chose the Christ. That's why you have a body. That's why you're reading this.

He lost that war, and he has never stopped fighting it. But he can't take your body and he can't undo your choice, so he works on the only thing he can reach: your attention. Nephi saw our day. The devil will "pacify, and lull them away into carnal security," whispering that all is well in Zion, that there is no hell, that there is no devil. Notice that none of that tells you to be wicked. All of it tells you to relax. As the song says, he don't swing an axe, he just makes you forget home.

That's why the title says give up and not trade. Nobody sits down and signs their soul away. Esau came in from the field exhausted and sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. He wasn't being evil. He was tired, and the moment felt urgent. That's how it happens to us, one tired evening at a time. Jesus asked what it would profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul. Most of us aren't even gaining the world. We're losing our hours.

So here's what you're actually holding. The family proclamation teaches that each of us "is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents." Not a creation the way a potter makes a pot. A child. Paul said that if we are children, then we are heirs, "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." An heir doesn't receive a gift; an heir receives what belongs to the family. That's the crown the song is talking about. When Satan came at Moses, Moses answered him from that identity: "Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God." Identity was the shield then, and it still is.

President Russell M. Nelson invited us to think celestial, to let eternity shape the decisions we make today. That's the answer to forgetting. Remember who you are. Remember whose you are. Remember that Jesus Christ has already paid your way home, and that there is nothing in this world worth what it would cost you to give that up.

Sources

• Abraham 3:24-27
• Moses 4:1-4
• 2 Nephi 28:21-22
• Genesis 25:29-34
• Mark 8:36
• Romans 8:16-17
• Moses 1:12-13
• The Family: A Proclamation to the World
• Russell M. Nelson, "Think Celestial!", General Conference, October 2023

Think about it

The adversary doesn't need your hatred of God, only your forgetting. Looking honestly at the last month, what has he been using to make you forget home, and what would it look like to remember?

Tonight

Take an honest inventory, not of your sins but of your hours. Pick one hour this week that will belong to something eternal, put it on the calendar tonight, and protect it.

The story

An old smith sets two swords side by side on the table. Same shine on the edge. Same weight in your hand. One is honest steel and one is a lie dressed up in pride, and you won't find out which is which until you're in the shield wall and your life depends on it. That's how the enemy sells it. He doesn't sell you something evil. He sells you something that looks just like the truth.

Isaiah saw it coming: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness." Look at the order. Light and darkness get swapped first. He doesn't just want you to sin. He wants you to lose the ability to tell the difference, so you never think to repent. And Paul warned that Satan can transform himself into an angel of light. The devil doesn't wear black. He comes dressed like you and me.

So how is anyone supposed to know? This is one of my favorite things about the restored gospel: God didn't leave us to guess. The prophet Mormon taught it plainly, and his son Moroni preserved it. "The Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil." The Doctrine and Covenants says the same thing, that this Spirit gives light to every person who comes into the world. Every one of us was born with a measure.

And Mormon tells us how to use it. "Every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ." And whatever persuades us to do evil, and not to believe in Christ, and to deny Him, is of the devil. That's the test. It isn't whether something feels good, or whether everybody likes it, or whether the smart people approve. It's where it leads you. Toward Jesus Christ, or away from Him. Jesus gave the same test: by their fruits ye shall know them.

There's a second witness beyond that light, too. Moroni promised that by the power of the Holy Ghost we may know the truth of all things. The Light of Christ is given to everyone. The gift of the Holy Ghost, received after baptism by the laying on of hands, is a constant companion for those who keep their covenants. Between the two, Heavenly Father has given us everything we need to never be fooled by a counterfeit, as long as we keep listening.

So test the steel now, while there's time. Hold it to the fire and watch which way it bends. The day is coming when every counterfeit breaks, and on that day I want to be standing on the truth, holding the sword that Christ Himself put in my hands.

Sources

• Isaiah 5:20-21
• Moroni 7:12-19
• Doctrine and Covenants 84:46
• Matthew 7:15-20
• 2 Corinthians 11:14
• Moroni 10:4-5

Think about it

Think of something you have defended because it felt good, popular or harmless. Set aside how it feels and ask Mormon's question honestly: over time, has it drawn you toward Jesus Christ or away from Him?

Tonight

Pick one thing you watched, read or listened to today and hold it to the fire. Ask, does this invite me to do good and to believe in Christ? Then decide what to do with the answer.

The story

Lehi saw it in a dream. A tree with fruit sweeter than anything he'd ever tasted, and when he ate it, the first thing he wanted was for his family to have some too. A rod of iron ran along a narrow path to the tree, through a mist of darkness. And across the river stood a great and spacious building, high in the air, with no foundation under it, full of people in fine clothes, laughing and pointing at everyone who came to the tree.

Nephi asked what it all meant, and the angel showed him. Before he explained the tree, he showed Nephi a virgin holding a child in her arms, and said, "Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father!" Then he asked, "Knowest thou the meaning of the tree?" and Nephi answered, "It is the love of God." Sit with that. The love of God isn't an idea. It has a face. The fruit of the tree is what Jesus Christ came to give us. The rod of iron is the word of God. And the building is the pride of the world, and in the end it falls, and "the fall thereof was exceedingly great."

Here's the saddest part of the dream, and it's not the building. It's the people who made it all the way to the tree. They held the rod through the mist, they tasted the fruit, and then they looked up at the windows, felt ashamed, and wandered off. The mockery didn't drag them away. Shame did. The man in this song is honest about that: he's felt that pull himself, because it's a hard thing being laughed at when you're standing by yourself.

But listen to what Lehi said about the people in the building: "we heeded them not." That's the whole answer. The song puts it this way: a man who lives for their applause will die by it the same, so he quit counting up their voices and never learned their names. You don't have to win the argument with the building. You just have to stop listening to it.

Nephi made a promise about the rod: whoever hearkens to the word of God and holds fast to it will never perish, and the temptations and fiery darts of the adversary cannot overpower them to blindness. So keep both hands on the iron. Keep your eyes on the tree, on the love of God made flesh in Jesus Christ. Paul called Him the chief cornerstone, and a house without that Cornerstone was always going to fall. When it does, the people holding on will still be right where they were, standing by the tree.

Sources

• 1 Nephi 8:10-33
• 1 Nephi 11:21-25
• 1 Nephi 11:35-36
• 1 Nephi 15:23-24
• Ephesians 2:19-20

Think about it

Whose laughter, or whose applause, has had a vote in how openly you follow Jesus Christ, and what would change if you stopped counting their voices?

Tonight

Read 1 Nephi 8:24-33 slowly, and notice where Lehi kept his hands and his eyes. Then choose one thing tomorrow that you'd usually skip because someone might laugh, and do it anyway.

The story

There's an old saying the song is built on: a boat belongs on the sea; that's what she's built to do. But the day the sea gets in the boat, that's the day she's through. I don't know a better picture of what the Savior asked of us.

On the night before He went into the garden, Jesus prayed for His disciples. Listen to what He asked: "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." Then He said, "As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." He didn't want us hidden away in a harbor. He sent us out on purpose. That's the plan of salvation. We came here "to prove them herewith," Abraham says, and you can't be proven in the dry dock.

But the sea is the sea. You can't drink it, and you can't let it in. And the song is honest about how it gets in. It doesn't come like a breaker. It comes through a hairline crack in the timber, right where you swore the seal was good. One hour, then an evening, then you're bailing every day, and you never felt the moment the water got its way. That's the adversary's favorite door. Not a flood. A leak you don't notice.

So the man in the song checks his seams on Sunday, and he checks them on his knees. That's what the sacrament is for, and daily prayer, and repentance. They aren't a burden. They're how a boat stays dry. The Lord told Emma Smith to "lay aside the things of this world, and seek for the things of a better." And like Lehi's family with the Liahona, he knows the compass only points for the one who gives it heed. It worked by faith and diligence and heed, and it stopped working when they quit.

Then the song turns, and this is the part I love most. In the final chorus he isn't just keeping himself afloat anymore. He's pulling hard for the ones gone down, sure there isn't one of them too far to bring around. The Jaredites crossed the ocean in barges that were buried in the deep again and again, and the Lord kept driving them toward the promised land. A boat that's never wet ain't worth the wood. She was built to reach people no harbor could.

President Russell M. Nelson taught that because Jesus Christ overcame the world, we can overcome it too, by making and keeping covenants with God, and that as we do, we find rest. That's the secret of living in it and not of it. The Savior is the One who keeps the hull true. He's the harbor up ahead. And when you're serving the people still in the water, King Benjamin says, you're only in the service of your God.

Sources

• John 17:14-18
• Abraham 3:25
• 1 Nephi 16:28-29
• Doctrine and Covenants 25:10
• Mosiah 2:17
• Ether 6:5-8
• Russell M. Nelson, "Overcome the World and Find Rest", General Conference, October 2022

Think about it

Where has a little of the world been seeping into your boat so slowly that you've stopped noticing it, and who out there in the water might you be failing to reach because of it?

Tonight

Check your seams. Kneel tonight and ask Heavenly Father to show you one small leak to fix, and one person you could reach out to this week. Then write both down.

The story

Elijah was worn out. He had just stood against hundreds of false prophets, and now the queen wanted him dead. He ran into the wilderness, hid in a cave on the mountain, and told the Lord he was the only faithful one left. So the Lord told him to go stand on the mount. A great wind came and tore the mountain and broke the rocks in pieces, "but the Lord was not in the wind." Then an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. Then a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. "And after the fire a still small voice."

The man in this song climbs a mountain with a question he can't shake. His family needs answers, and he doesn't know which road to take. So he stands on the summit and shouts at the sky, expecting thunder. And what comes is a whisper. The Book of Mormon describes that voice better than anyone: "not a voice of thunder," not loud, but "a still voice of perfect mildness," and yet it "did pierce even to the very soul." That's how the Holy Ghost works. The Lord told Oliver Cowdery, "I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost."

Here's the part I don't think we talk about enough. The song names two things that keep us from hearing. The first is noise. A world that never sleeps, screens that never quiet down, every voice shouting louder than the last. The loudest voice is rarely the one that's true. But the second one is harder. Nephi told his brothers that the Lord had spoken to them in a still small voice, "but ye were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words." And Helaman teaches that the Spirit of the Lord "doth not dwell in unholy temples." Sometimes the silence isn't the volume. It's us.

That's not a word of condemnation. It's a door. Because the answer is repentance, and repentance clears the way. In the restored Church, after baptism, we receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. That gift is a promise of His companionship as long as we keep our covenants. When it feels like He's left, He hasn't. The song says it in His voice: "Son, I never left you / You just couldn't hear." We step away. He waits.

And sometimes there's no answer yet, and that doesn't mean anything is wrong. Jesus called the Holy Ghost the Comforter. He promised it would teach us all things and bring His words back to our remembrance, and He promised a peace the world can't give. Before the Spirit tells you which road to take, He'll often just sit there in the dark with you. Comfort first. Direction comes after.

President Russell M. Nelson pleaded with us to hear Him, and to make the effort it takes. That's the invitation of this song. Shut the door. Turn off the shouting. Open the Book. Be still, and know that He is God. The voice that found Elijah on the mountain is still speaking, and it is speaking to you.

Sources

• 1 Kings 19:1-12
• Helaman 5:30
• Doctrine and Covenants 8:2-3
• 1 Nephi 17:45
• Helaman 4:24
• Articles of Faith 1:4
• John 14:26-27
• Psalm 46:10
• Russell M. Nelson, "Hear Him", General Conference, April 2020

Think about it

When heaven has felt silent to you, was it the noise around you, something you needed to clear out of your own house, or a season when He was simply sitting with you in the dark? What would it take to find out?

Tonight

Put your phone in another room and shut the door. Pray, then stay on your knees a little longer than feels comfortable, and write down any thought or feeling that comes, even a small one.

The story

It's four in the morning. The house is still, there's frost on the window, and the world hasn't found this man yet. It hasn't called out his name. So he's down on the cold wood floor where no one else can see, because the battle ain't won on the field. It's won on bended knee. Jesus taught it: "when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret." The fight of the day is decided before the day starts.

Paul wrote about the whole armor of God: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Count them. Five pieces protect you. Only one is a weapon, and the weapon is the word. And Paul wraps the whole thing in prayer: "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit."

Then he tells us who the enemy is, and this matters more than anything else in this song: "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world." The enemy is never a person. Not your neighbor, not the person who disagrees with you, not the one who hurt you. This album is full of shields and swords, and I never want anyone to hear it as a call to fight people. The fight is against darkness, and the only thing that wins against darkness is light.

Here's the doctrine I think changes everything. When the Lord spoke of this armor to Joseph Smith, He called it "my whole armor." His, not ours. He said the sword is "the sword of my Spirit, which I will pour out upon you." We don't forge this armor. We couldn't forge a plate if we tried. It's issued. He gives it, freely, to anyone who will kneel and receive it. That's grace, and that's the Atonement of Jesus Christ giving us strength we don't have on our own.

So how do we put it on? On our knees, every morning. With the scriptures, sharpening the sword on every page. And every Sunday at the sacrament, when we take the bread and the water and renew the promise to always remember Him, and He renews His promise that we may always have His Spirit with us. Helaman describes people who fasted and prayed often and grew "stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ." The man in this song admits there were mornings he got lazy and walked out into the world with nothing but his pride, and came home cut in every place he'd left bare. That's why he doesn't skip it anymore.

And then the best part. His boy comes down the stairs, sees his dad on his knees, and asks, "Dad, will you teach me how?" Now there are two of them. Moses told Israel to teach these words to their children "when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." Sometimes the most powerful thing you'll ever teach your children is just letting them see you pray.

Sources

• Ephesians 6:10-18
• Doctrine and Covenants 27:15-18
• Matthew 6:6
• Doctrine and Covenants 20:77, 79
• Helaman 3:35
• Deuteronomy 6:6-7

Think about it

The enemy doesn't aim for the steel; he aims for what you left alone. Which piece of the armor have you been leaving at home, and what has it cost you?

Tonight

Before bed, put your scriptures where you will see them first thing in the morning. Tomorrow, kneel and pray before you pick up your phone.

The story

Nephi described exactly how the adversary binds people: he "leadeth them by the neck with a flaxen cord, until he bindeth them with his strong cords forever." A flaxen cord is a thread. You can hardly feel it. That's this song. It starts as a little thing you keep, a secret you can hide, and it doesn't seem that real. But every time you give it room, another cord gets tied, until the thread's a chain and the chain's a load, and you're dragging iron down the enemy's road.

The second verse names the links honestly. Pride first, then anger, then a screen at midnight and the lies told best. Kept quiet. Hidden from the light. And then the question every person caught in sin eventually asks: why does the Spirit feel so far away at night? Here's the hard truth the song tells: you can't swing a sword with chains on your hands. You can't stand in the army of the Lord while you're still bound in the devil's bands. Jesus said no man can serve two masters.

Then the man reads about a king. Lamoni's father was a powerful Lamanite king who heard Aaron teach about the plan of redemption and about Christ. And he wanted it. He bowed down to the earth and prayed, "O God, Aaron hath told me that there is a God; and if there is a God, and if thou art God, wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee." Not some of them. All of them. That's the trade that actually makes sense. Give away everything that binds you, to know Him.

But don't miss this. We can't break the chains ourselves. Alma the Younger tells us what it was like to be "harrowed up by the memory of my many sins," and then he remembered his father teaching about "one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world." He cried out in his heart, "O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me," and he says he could remember his pains no more, and his soul was filled with joy as exceeding as his pain had been. That's how chains break. Not by willpower. By Jesus Christ.

The bridge borrows Lehi's last plea to his sons: awake, arise from the dust, shake off the chains with which you are bound, and come forth. Alma reminded his people that the Lord had loosed their fathers from "the chains of hell." And the Lord promised in this dispensation, "he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more." Elder Dale G. Renlund taught that repentance is a choice we can make because of the Savior's Atonement, and that it leads to joy.

That's where this song ends. The tempo doubles, the chains are left rusting in the dust, and a man who was bound is marching with the army of the Lord. If you're carrying something tonight, you don't have to keep carrying it. Bring it out of hiding. Give it to Him. He's waiting to set you free.

Sources

• 2 Nephi 26:22
• Alma 22:15-18
• Alma 36:17-20
• 2 Nephi 1:13-14, 23
• Alma 5:6-9
• Matthew 6:24
• Doctrine and Covenants 58:42-43
• Dale G. Renlund, "Repentance: A Joyful Choice", General Conference, October 2016

Think about it

Lamoni's father didn't offer to give away some of his sins. Which one are you still holding back, and what do you think you would be giving up if you let the Savior take it?

Tonight

Privately, write on a piece of paper one thing you want to give away to know Him better. Pray and ask Heavenly Father to help you with it, then tear the paper up.

The story

Every war that people remember had banners and drums and thousands of spears. The battle that decided everything had none of that. It was fought without a sound, by one Man in an olive grove, face down on the ground, while His friends slept. No trumpet, no legion, no soldier of His own. Just a promise He made before the world began, and a cup He had to drink alone.

In Gethsemane Jesus prayed, "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done." An angel came from heaven to strengthen Him. And the agony was so great that "his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." The Book of Mormon tells us, in words an angel gave King Benjamin, that blood came "from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people." And the Savior Himself described it in the Doctrine and Covenants: suffering that caused Him, "even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore." He could have called more than twelve legions of angels. He didn't. He went willingly.

Here's the part of the Atonement that I think is the most tender thing in all of scripture. Alma teaches that the Savior would suffer not only for our sins, but take upon Himself our "pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind," our sicknesses and infirmities, "that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people." Succor means to run to someone's aid. He felt your darkest midnight. He felt mine too. He doesn't have to imagine what you're going through. He knows, and He knows how to help.

And it didn't end in the garden. On the third day the women came to the tomb and found the stone rolled away, and two men in shining garments asked them, "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen." Then the Book of Mormon gives a second witness the world almost never hears: the risen Lord came down out of heaven among the people in the Americas, and invited them to come forward, one by one, and feel the prints of the nails in His hands and in His feet. They did, every one of them, and they knew of a surety that it was He. He is alive.

So here's the turn the song makes, and it matters. The war is won. The enemy is bound. But the enemy can still take me, if I let him. The fight that's left for us isn't against a devil who has already lost; it's against the natural man, which King Benjamin says we put off "through the atonement of Christ the Lord." And Moroni says that as often as people repented and sought forgiveness with real intent, they were forgiven. As often as. There's no limit on the rising.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught that because Jesus walked that lonely road utterly alone, we don't have to. I don't carry what He carried. I don't pay what He has paid. I just stand on what He finished. So don't tell me your war is lost, and don't tell me it's too late. The fight you're in today is not a fight you face alone.

Sources

• Luke 22:39-46
• Matthew 26:53
• Mosiah 3:7
• Doctrine and Covenants 19:16-19
• Alma 7:11-12
• Luke 24:1-6
• 3 Nephi 11:8-15
• Mosiah 3:19
• Moroni 6:8
• Jeffrey R. Holland, "None Were with Him", General Conference, April 2009

Think about it

Alma says the Savior took on your pains and sicknesses so that He would know, from the inside, how to help you. What have you been carrying alone because you weren't sure He would understand?

Tonight

Read Alma 7:11-12. Then, in prayer, tell the Savior about one pain or sorrow you have been carrying by yourself, and ask Him to carry it with you.

The story

Jesus ended the Sermon on the Mount with a story about two builders, and when He came to the people in the Americas after His Resurrection, He told it again, word for word. A wise man built his house upon a rock. A foolish man built his house upon the sand. The rain came down, the floods came, the winds blew, and one house stood while the other fell, "and great was the fall of it."

It's easy to hear that story as hard work against laziness. One man dug deep and the other cut corners. But read it again. Both men heard. "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them." "Every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not." The difference wasn't what they knew. It was what they did. The song tells it as two chieftains on a northern shore: they both heard the word, and they both believed. One of them lived it. One just agreed.

That's what makes this parable so searching. The man on the sand isn't a stranger to the gospel. He could say every word by heart. He might be sitting in sacrament meeting every Sunday, maybe even teaching the lesson. And the narrator of this song confesses that he was that man: he built on the sand, and he knew what the Lord said. He heard it all his life, and he built there instead. I think that's the most honest line on the album, and it lands on all of us. James put it plainly: "be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves."

So what's the Rock? Helaman told his sons, and I want you to hear the whole thing: "remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down." Notice he doesn't promise there won't be a storm. He promises it won't drag you down.

The Rock isn't a program, or a set of habits, or even a church by itself. It's a Person. The disciples once woke Him in a boat in the middle of a storm, and He rebuked the winds and the sea, and they asked, "What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him!" That's who you build on. The One the wind and the waves obey.

The song ends after the storm. There's one hall left standing on the shore, and the man's children are asleep behind the door. They slept through all of it. They slept upon the Rock. That's what building on Christ does for a family. You don't build so you'll look good when the weather's fine. You build so that when the storm comes, the ones you love can rest.

Sources

• Matthew 7:24-27
• 3 Nephi 14:24-27
• Helaman 5:12
• James 1:22-25
• Matthew 8:26-27

Think about it

What is one thing you have known for years the Savior wants you to do, that you have agreed with and even taught, but never really built on?

Tonight

Pick one teaching of Jesus you already believe, like forgiving someone, reaching out to someone lonely, or kneeling to pray, and do it before you go to sleep.

The story

Three little ones are asleep in the loft above the hearth, breathing slow and dreaming like there's nothing dark on earth. Their father knows better. He's seen what's coming and he knows it's drawing close. So he pulls his coat around him and climbs up to his post. The world won't wait until they're grown. It's coming for them now.

That picture comes from Ezekiel. The Lord told him that a watchman's whole job is to see the sword coming and blow the trumpet to warn the people. And then He said something that ought to stop every parent cold: if the watchman sees the sword and doesn't sound the warning, and someone is lost, "his blood will I require at the watchman's hand." That's one of the heaviest accountability statements in all of scripture. The song doesn't soften it: I'd rather lose my sleep a thousand nights up on this wall than stand before my Father and say I never warned them at all.

In this dispensation the Lord made it just as plain. He told parents in Zion to teach their children "to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost," and "to pray, and to walk uprightly before the Lord." And if they don't, He said, "the sin be upon the heads of the parents." The world is already teaching our children who they are. It's telling them they're an accident, a body, a brand, a set of preferences. If the only voice telling them they are children of God is a Primary song on Sunday, they're outnumbered.

So what does keeping watch actually look like? The song answers that, and it's not complicated. Open the Word around the table in the evening. Teach them they're a child of God, the truest thing they've heard. Teach them good from evil before the world can twist it around. And let them see you kneel, so they know where strength is found. Nephi said it best: "we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ... that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins." President Russell M. Nelson has asked us to remodel our homes into centers of gospel learning and to transform them into sanctuaries of faith. That's the wall.

The Book of Mormon shows us what it produces. Two thousand young men who had never fought before went out without fear, because "they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them." And they said, "We do not doubt our mothers knew it." That faith wasn't built on the battlefield. It was built at home, years before.

And if you've stood your watch, and warned, and loved, and someone you love has walked away anyway, Ezekiel has a word for you too. To the watchman who warns, the Lord says, "thou hast delivered thy soul." You are not condemned for another person's choice. Keep loving them. Keep praying for them. Trust them to the Savior, who knows exactly where they are and who never stops watching over any of His sheep. The song ends with a grown son keeping a lantern burning on his own wall above his own home. The watch goes on. And to every young person reading this: you can stand watch too, for a brother, a sister or a friend.

Sources

• Ezekiel 33:2-9
• Doctrine and Covenants 68:25, 28
• 2 Nephi 25:26
• Proverbs 22:6
• Alma 56:45-48
• Russell M. Nelson, "Becoming Exemplary Latter-day Saints", General Conference, October 2018

Think about it

If the only voice telling the children in your life that they are children of God were yours, would they hear it often enough, and plainly enough, to believe it?

Tonight

Tell each of your children, or someone younger you love, "You are a child of God," and tell them one reason you believe it. If you can, kneel and pray with them.

The story

The title song starts on a battlefield at night. The horns blow from the ridgeline, ten thousand torches come down the hill, and the men beside him drop their shields and run into the dark. Soon he's standing alone with nothing left but the fight. Every voice inside him says run, son, there's nobody here to see. But the King he serves is watching, and He's standing right there next to him.

Most of our battles don't have torches. The song says so: sometimes it's a quiet room where every man around you bends and they're all watching you. Sometimes it's a boss who says just sign it, let it go. Sometimes it's your oldest friend, and you're the one who has to say no. In every one of those, holding the line means being willing to be the only one. The chorus is built on what the Lord told Joseph Smith in a revelation about wars and calamities to come: "stand ye in holy places, and be not moved." He didn't give that promise for easy times. He gave it for the worst ones.

Then the song turns to three young men in Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar set up a golden image and commanded everyone to bow down or be thrown into a burning fiery furnace. Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego said, "our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace... But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods." Listen to that. They didn't make their faithfulness depend on being rescued. That's the difference between faith and a transaction. Elder Dennis E. Simmons taught exactly this: we trust that God can deliver us, but if not, we will still trust Him, knowing He will deliver us in His own time and His own way.

And here's the part I don't want anyone to miss. When the king looked into that fire, he saw four men, not three, loose and walking in the middle of it, "and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God." They weren't alone in the furnace. That's the same truth the first verse of this song is pointing at. When you're the last one on the field, you aren't actually alone. The Lord Jesus Christ is standing in the fire with you.

Then the bridge, which is the heart of the whole album. A shield locks next to his, and then another, and men who ran are coming back to stand beside him. Courage catches fire. One man is all it takes. You hold, the next one finds his feet, and the line won't break. The Savior told Peter, "when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." Your faithfulness is never only about you. Someone is watching you hold, and finding the courage to come back.

So hold the line. Not because you're strong, and not because you're sure how it'll turn out, but because of who is standing next to you. And when the sun comes up, you may find you were never the last man on the field after all.

Sources

• Doctrine and Covenants 87:8
• Doctrine and Covenants 45:32
• Daniel 3:16-18, 24-25
• Luke 22:32
• Dennis E. Simmons, "But If Not …", General Conference, April 2004

Think about it

Is your faith in God tied to Him giving you a particular outcome? What would "but if not" faith look like in the hardest thing you are facing right now?

Tonight

Think of one place tomorrow where you might be the only one standing for what is right. Decide now what you will do there, and pray for the courage to do it.

The story

This is the most personal song on the album. It's about a season when the hammer kept falling, one blow after another: a lost job, a lost father, and then health giving out. The man in the song sees himself as raw ore dug out of a mountain, full of dross and stubbornness and pride, laid in coals burning white. And he cries out the question so many of us have asked in the dark: Lord, how long?

Malachi described the Savior as "like a refiner's fire," and then added a detail almost everyone skips: "he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver." Sit with that. A refiner can't walk away from the crucible. Silver left in the fire too long is ruined, so he stays right there beside it, watching the metal, for as long as it takes. That's why the song says He sat by me all night. He's not a distant God tossing us into the fire and leaving. He stays. And He never lets the fire get hotter than you can stand, because the Smith who holds the hammer holds you in His other hand.

In the winter of 1838 and 1839, the Prophet Joseph Smith and his companions were locked for months in a cold, cramped jail in Liberty, Missouri, while the Saints were being driven from the state. Joseph cried out, "O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?" And the Lord answered him: "My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment." He told Joseph that "all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good." And then, gently, He pointed him to Christ: "The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?" Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught that even in a place like Liberty Jail, every experience can become a redemptive experience if we stay bonded to our Father in Heaven through it.

I want to be careful here, because this is tender ground. The Lord doesn't cause every hard thing that happens to us. Lehi taught that there must be "opposition in all things" in this mortal life; hardship is part of the world we chose to come to. But the Lord can use all of it. When Alma's people were in bondage, He didn't take the burden off them right away. He said, "I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs," and He strengthened them so they could bear it with patience. That is the enabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ: not only forgiveness, but strength.

And the song is right about the steel. Quenching is what hardens a blade. Folding is what makes it strong. The Lord promised Moroni, "if men come unto me... my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them." The man in the song walks out of the fire whole, ready for a battle he never could have stood before.

The song ends with an old saying: the Smith knows the work is finished when He can see His own face in the steel. Alma asked, "have ye received his image in your countenances?" That's what all of this is for. Not to burn you down, but to make you like Him. So if you're in the fire tonight, you're not alone in it. He's sitting right there. And He's not finished with you yet.

Sources

• Malachi 3:2-3
• Doctrine and Covenants 121:1-8
• Doctrine and Covenants 122:7-9
• 2 Nephi 2:11
• Mosiah 24:13-15
• Ether 12:27
• Alma 5:14
• Jeffrey R. Holland, "Lessons from Liberty Jail", Ensign, September 2009

Think about it

In the hardest season of your life, where was the Lord? If you can't see Him there yet, what would it mean to believe that He was sitting by the fire the whole time?

Tonight

Write down one hard thing you are going through, and next to it one way you have seen the Lord with you in it, or one way you are asking to see Him.

The story

The last song on the album goes all the way back to the beginning. John calls Jesus Christ "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Before this earth was ever formed, the Savior had already been chosen, and the outcome was already sure. The war was won before it started. The enemy knows he's beaten. Revelation says he has great wrath, "because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." And he still comes on to fight. So the question isn't who wins the war. It's whose side I'm on tonight.

The title comes from Nephi. After he saw the Savior baptized, he taught that getting on the path is not the end of the road. "Ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life." Read that slowly. Enduring to the end isn't just hanging on and gritting your teeth until it's over. It's pressing forward, in Christ, full of hope, full of love, and feasting on His word. It's a way of walking, not a way of waiting.

The song uses a phrase from the Doctrine and Covenants: valiant in the testimony of Jesus. That's where valiance belongs. Not in how many battles you won, but in how faithfully you held to your witness of Him.

Then the song does something honest. In the title song it was other men who dropped their shields and ran. Here, at the end of the album, the same narrator admits he ran too. He's broken ranks. He took wounds he brought on himself, and he owned every one. That's Peter's story. On the night before His death, the Savior told Peter, "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." That same night Peter denied Him three times. And after the Resurrection, by the Sea of Galilee, the Lord asked Peter three times, "lovest thou me?" and three times gave him work to do: feed my sheep. He didn't cast Peter out. He handed back his sword and sent him back to the line. That's what the mercy is for.

Paul, near the end of his life, wrote, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." The Lord doesn't ask us if we won every battle. He asks if we finished the race. And Moroni's last invitation tells us how: "come unto Christ, and be perfected in him... and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you." We don't endure on our own strength. We endure on His.

That's the last word of this album, and it's the last word of this devotional: "Not because I never fell / But because He never did." Everything on this record has been pointing to Him. Jesus Christ chose the Father's will before the world was. He won in the garden. He walked out of the tomb. He's standing beside you on the line tonight, and He'll be standing when it ends. So get back up. Press forward. Hold the line with Him, and endure to the end.

Sources

• Revelation 13:8
• Revelation 12:11-12
• 2 Nephi 31:19-20
• Doctrine and Covenants 76:79
• Luke 22:31-32
• John 21:15-17
• 2 Timothy 4:7-8
• Moroni 10:32

Think about it

Where have you fallen and been afraid to get back in line, and what would change if you believed the Savior is already holding out your sword?

Tonight

Write your testimony of Jesus Christ in two or three sentences, and share it with one person, out loud or in a message.