Just before the children of Israel entered the promised land, Moses gave them a warning: don’t turn away from God in your new home. He said that if their descendants began to worship idols, they would not be able to remain in their new home. “The Lord shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen, whither the Lord shall lead you.” There, they would worship idols not by choice, but by compulsion. “And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell” (Deuteronomy 4:27-28). But God would continue to be available to them as soon as they were ready to return to Him:
But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.
Deuteronomy 4:29
Hundreds of years later, the prophet Jeremiah echoed that promise to people who had already experienced the displacement Moses foresaw. In a letter to exiles in Babylon, Jeremiah wrote:
Thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.
Jeremiah 29:10-14
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.
And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
And I will be found of you, saith the Lord: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.
Like Moses, Jeremiah emphasized that the children of Israel would find God when they sought Him not casually but wholeheartedly. “I will be found of you,” the Lord promised, but only when they were ready to truly seek.
Nephi also believed this promise. After his father shared with the family a spiritual dream and taught them about future events, Nephi wanted to know firsthand what his father knew. “I, Nephi, was desirous also that I might see, and hear, and know of these things, by the power of the Holy Ghost,” he wrote. Then he testified:
For he that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, as well in these times as in times of old, and as well in times of old as in times to come; wherefore, the course of the Lord is one eternal round.
1 Nephi 10:19
Immediately after, Nephi shared the story of a miraculous vision he experienced in which he saw what his father had seen. He wrote that the vision came after he did three things: he desired to know, he believed that God could make these things known, and he pondered in his heart.
About a thousand years later, the last author of the Book of Mormon, Moroni, invited his future readers to do the same:
Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.
Moroni 10:3-4
And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
Remember. Ponder. Pray with sincerity, pure motives, and faith in Jesus Christ. These are the activities of a person who seeks God with all of his or her heart and soul.
Today I will seek God with all of my heart, believing in the promise that I will find Him.
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